In the studio

 

 

Just a few glimpses of my studio/office (a spare room in our house), where I am spending even more time now that I am also teaching remotely:

 1  |  I have four of these bamboo picture ledges in two rows on one wall, with finished canvases and paintings that are drying. On the wall opposite I put this one up behind my desk to keep pencils, pens, small brushes and other supplies I use frequently within reach, but where they don't clutter up my desk. This is currently the backdrop for the majority of my video calls and classes.

2  |  One of these skinny drawers (which are great for storing work on paper) holds an antique letterpress tray I got John as a gift, with the type pieces he had bought. We use these to make cards and similar and are going to create the text for our next picture book with them. The plan is to get a glass lid made for the tray and put it on a frame with legs, so it can be used as a side table, but for now it is stored away in this drawer.

3  |  I have a couple of desk easels for smaller canvases and one standing easel. I try to paint standing at the large easel as much as possible, and the desk easels are great for displaying work-in-progress, as I tend to have several paintings on the go at any one time and like being able to have them all in view.

4  |  For oil paintings I mainly use water-mixable oils, for environmental reasons and so I don't have to breathe in turpentine fumes and other toxic solvents. Cleaning up is much easier with these, too. I bought a Dyson purifying fan heater (with a cooling function and a detailed analysis of potential pollutants) a few months ago, as I was worried about the air quality in the room, but it tells me everything is in the green range, so that is reassuring. We also had the house tested for radon after I was diagnosed with lung cancer as a young non-smoker. I try not to worry too much about all the external factors that may contribute to cancer, and some, such as electromagnetic radiation, are beyond my control to a large extent, but it gives me peace of mind to have these tests done. 

5  |  Marion Milner's books have their own shelf (most of my art books are kept in this room). I have started using my ink pen (not pictured) and bottled ink more again. The beautiful glass pen was a present from my aunt - I had kept it at my mum's house for years and finally took it with me after my last visit. 

6. We have plants in every room of the house and I am trying to keep these two happy. The vegetation in the self-portrait is a field with thistles close to my childhood home in Germany.

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The window is to the right of my desk and I can see a large part of the garden, including our three new hens and one of our bird feeders. There is a white horse in the field across the road, which offers some consolation in the wake of the departure of 'our' beloved donkeys that used to come to the wall in our back garden. They must have been moved to a different field, as that land was sold recently. We miss them a lot.

I have rituals around working from home that I have been using for years to mark some sort of division between work and home life (though the lines are blurred), but now they have taken on extra significance. At the moment I am recording videos for some of my classes, and I plan my outfits, jewellery and nail polish for those, whereas on days nobody will see me I put on my large painting jumper or apron (I am looking into sustainable boiler suits and dungarees for more coverage, even though I am not that messy a painter, but I still manage to get stains on unlikely areas of my clothes).

In any case I attempt to generate a 'going to work' feeling by getting ready as if I were leaving the house. This also involves a few morning routine clichés such as meditation, a yoga sequence, making celery juice and writing my morning pages. I air the room for a few minutes and clap to clear stagnant energy, and I mix essential oils for the diffuser that are stimulating and help with concentration or create an uplifting atmosphere, so a lot of peppermint, rosemary, clary sage, geranium, lemon, orange and lemongrass. There are endless mugs of (mostly herbal) tea and some of them get spoiled by accidentally dipping my brush in them, but I try not to eat in this room (as I want to eat mindfully - nothing to do with weight control; I am trying to put on weight!), though snacks will find their way in here.

I have my laughing Buddha on a bookshelf to the left of my desk and a stuffed elephant my younger sister made for me on my desk for a similar reason (or up on a shelf when I am recording videos for children and the elephant represents my audience - this was a tip we were given) - it keeps me in touch with my inner child and the playful side of life and is a reminder not to take anything too seriously.

Biophilia

Homemade bird food - attempt #1, and a book on bees

'Barnabee', oil on canvas board (the model was already dead!)

"The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure."

 Oliver Sacks, quoted in this Brain Pickings post

"When humans come into contact with benign soil bacteria such as Mycobacterium vaccae, proteins from its cell wall trigger a further release of serotonin from a specific group of nerve cells in our brains. So it seems that a bit of weeding can be good for more than just your herbaceous borders."

Mitchell, Emma: The Wild Remedy. How Nature Mends Us, 

Michael O'Mara Books Limited, London 2019, pp.9f.

I have always found weeding therapeutic (although sometimes it can lead to ruminating), but it was interesting to read the scientific explanation in Emma Mitchell's wonderful book about the medicinal effect of nature on her depression. Through that contact with soil, together with inhalation of the volatile compounds and oils of plants (which produce some of the same effects on the systems of the human body as on plants - protection from viruses and bacteria), the endorphins from exercise, and the release of serotonin via sunlight on our skin and the eye's retina, a simple walk in a green space yields numerous benefits from nature's pharmacy.

There was an interesting article in The Irish Times recently about reconnecting with nature that specifically mentioned fractals, the visually complex patterns found in nature. I cannot find it online, but it quoted physicist  Richard Taylor, who explained that "Your visual system is in some way hardwired to understand fractals, and the stress reduction [of being in nature] is triggered by a physiological resonance when the fractal structure of the eye matches that of the fractal image being viewed." In some of Joe Dispenza's newer guided meditations, he uses fractals for tuning into the energy centres of the body, and I am keen to get back into those, though they seem too advanced for this lapsed meditator (I have only been doing very short meditations in the last few weeks).

I know I will always feel better after spending some time outside, but some days I don't heed that call and self-sabotage instead. So I am grateful for friends who get me out even on my worst fatigue days. This morning I was on the couch as my body was aching all over (the now familiar aftermath of going to see my oncologist for results - thankfully they were good! And yet, for the first few days the relief and gratitude are mixed with utter exhaustion), and just as I was tempted to binge-watch Grace and Frankie at 9:30 in the morning my neighbour asked me whether I wanted to join her for a walk. And of course it helped.

A few weeks ago we were dog-sitting, and even though I had a flu-like cold and there were almost continuous storms, I managed to take the dog for walks. They were exhilarating. I would slowly crawl up the hill to the bog road at the end of our cul-de-sac while the dog kept running ahead and looping back. There was a puddle that had turned into a pond and was effectively blocking access to the grassy bog road. But I was wearing wellies and waded through it, and each time I would stop in the middle, feeling the cold of the water around my feet and legs and looking at the abundance of lichen on a tree which seemed to glow in the dim grey daylight, and I would temporarily be lifted out of whatever thoughts were going around in my head and feel immensely grateful for another day.

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My nephew and I made posh bird food recently - it involved coconut oil and organic pumpkin seeds. I won't link to the recipe, as it wasn't really a success (it didn't hold together when I cut it). We might try the recipe from Emma Mitchell's book Making Winter next. The bird balls we usually put in the feeders all come in plastic packaging (though admittedly I haven't done much research around it. There must be other options - we did spot fancy ones sold individually in a shop in Oughterard, but they wouldn't be feasible for the amount the birds in our garden get through in a week!), so I figured making our own would be a good idea.

We had looked into getting bees, but right now it feels like a lot to take on, so for now we are focusing on making our garden as bee-friendly as possible. My sister gave John this beautiful illustrated book on bees. A while ago I brought a dead bumblebee back to life on canvas and we hung the painting at a child-friendly height in our sitting room.

MITs and simple pleasures

 lemon-blueberry-cake

soaps

gardening

It is rather difficult to work from home when the weather is as good as it has been for the past week. In fact, I cannot remember the last time it rained, and this is the west of Ireland. I keep making excuses to get up and do something that involves fresh air and sunshine (such as finally peeling off the foil on the new door frames, which clearly states "Remove immediately after installation"... oops.).

In an attempt to tick off at least some of the items on my to-do list, I have dug out one of those productivity tips I had stored away in a corner of my brain, which is to set the three most important tasks (MITs) of the day first thing in the morning. While I always have a million things I ought to do swirling around in my head, determining and writing these three down - and, crucially, thinking of them as 'most important' - helps me to focus. I have two sets of threes, one for work (both the Uni work and my freelance work) and one for everything else (these days, at least two of that second set are house- or garden-related, and the other one tends to be something to do with correspondence or organising, for example meal planning or scheduling things). It is so simple and works so much better than my overfilled and overwhelming diary (which I still keep, but I now try not to stuff sheets of paper covered with more scribbles into it).

I know I always go on about aromatherapy, but there is such a strong link between smells and wellbeing, and, perhaps accentuated by the sun, I am noticing them much more, and 'stop to smell the roses' throughout the day. The soaps pictured above were housewarming gifts, including a cinnamon soap from Germany, and they smell and look amazing.

We had friends over for lunch on Friday and Sunday, and I ended up making the same cake twice. I used to make this lemon-blueberry cake a lot a few years ago, but this time I made it with coconut sugar, which gives it a darker, more wholesome appearance (even if the health benefits over white sugar may not be that considerable). I love using citrus peel in baking and cooking (grating lime peel onto stir fries is a favourite).

 The garden is bursting with activity. You can watch things grow; the neighbours' dogs and cats visit; and we have added a bird bath (another gift) to the bird feeder - a safe distance from the cats' reach. I spent a good chunk of my work-from-home Friday weeding, which has got to be one of the most therapeutic tasks there are. The specks of orange in the photo above are calendula, which is not a weed, but we have tons of it (I need to ask my mom for her recipe for calendula balm), and a couple fell victim to John's polytunnel tidy-up.

Four senses | November 2015

Sound  |  The debut album by John's friend, "one of the best fiddle players in the circuit" (Brian Rooney). This CD had been anxiously awaited. Having missed the Galway launch, we went to the Ennis launch, where the venue was so packed, we had to come back a bit later. It is a treat to hear Claire live - her playing is pure magic, so lyrical and light. The title track, her own composition, is one of my favourites on this stunning album.

Smell  |  Clary sage essential oil. I had run out of it, and it took me a while to get another bottle (I tend to transfer a lot of items on my shopping list from week to week. It can take me a year to buy batteries), and now I cannot believe I didn't miss it more. This is the oil that 'elevates' your mood, so whenever I feel lethargic or down I use this, and it works like an 'on' switch. My current go-to blend for the oil burner is clary sage, cypress and lemongrass.

Taste  |  Dried thyme on roast potatoes and as a tea (a strong brew, left to cool down, is also great as a facial toner).

See  |  I go months without seeing a single movie, and then I watch two within two days. 'Brooklyn' at the cinema and 'Mar Adentro' as a DVD, lent to me by a friend (watching foreign language films must be one of the best ways to keep the language alive when you don't get to speak it often). The former was heartbreaking in its depiction of emigration and heightened the guilt I feel for having chosen to leave my home, the latter beautifully shot and desperately sad, though with a life-affirming and even humorous element (I wouldn't go as far as the blurb, which calls it "a truly joyous experience").

Happy Home

 Bought pumpkin pie. Almost as good as the homemade pie my sister gave us (no photo evidence of the latter).

 The Nicholas Mosse ceramics were a housewarming gift.

 

Little visitor

Our favourite card, made by the most adorable (and  perceptive) girl.

 Love the details (my palette and brush, John's stubble)

After a bit of a hiatus (that began when I started teaching again and may have also been triggered by the lukewarm reception I got for one of my DIY jobs...only joking - that was pure coincidence) we are making progress with the house. I was going to post some before and after pictures, but realised that I seem to have the dubious ability to make the after pictures look worse than the before, mainly due to light: All the befores are drenched in sunlight and the afters are taken at the end of the day, in artificial light, and look gloomy as a result. But they are coming.

We are still living in two rooms, and everything takes longer than we thought, but we knew that would happen, and it makes sense to take it slowly and not end up with panic purchases and all the wrong colours. It is such an exciting project. In the meantime we are making this our home with what we have and somehow don't even see eyesores such as the gas boiler anymore. It is also very much possible to get used to a chocolate 1980s bathroom suite.

We have had a good few visitors, with a good few kiddies on what we call the kiddies' bench (that we use a lot ourselves. I never had a bench before; it is now one of my favourite things in our house). We are finishing a jigsaw that four smaller hand were working on this afternoon. In the years I lived on my own I never thought of getting a jgsaw, even though it was something I loved as a child. I am so grateful for the constant surprises and ties to the past that cohabitation brings.

Drinking the wild air

We were lucky dogsitters for the last four days, and I have come to the conclusion that the cure for everything must be salt water in combination with a furry friend. A day of the sun splitting the stones also helped. We went down to the beach this morning and sat on a wall looking out at the sea before getting into the water (the dog). I had no idea what the time was (I had left my phone at home on purpose; the photo above is from Friday), and there was a lovely sense of it not mattering. Spiddal was sun-drenched and sleepy, with a couple of other dogs trotting down the road and waiting in front of the shop and eldery people with their carers out on their walk, and I had this moment of transcendence.

As I was typing the above and thinking about all the needless worrying I did last weekend and how different this weekend was, a friend sent me this link. Perfect timing. I am sure some of these quotes will become mantras.

Abundance and self-sabotage

Fresh herbs and jam from our lovely neighbours

After a very wet summer the West of Ireland has been blessed with a beautiful autumn, and this corner of the world has been showing its most photogenic face. The raspberry bushes in the garden are still heavy with fruit. We make baked apples from the yield of our trees. The kitchen is well-stocked, and we have been building fires with wood and turf given to us as house-warming (thanks Adrian!) gifts. People have been so kind and welcoming and generous. The abundance of all these gifts and of having everything we need fills me with gratitude, and I feel settled and secure in a way I haven't felt since my childhood . It also brings into stark relief how my anxiety manages to wrestle me out of the moment and the process and plunge me into all kinds of imagined dramas and scenarios.

Life has been good, more than good, on so many levels lately. And yet I fret and worry and regularly get into a panic (though thankfully very few actual panic attacks these days). I never trust it when things go well and am an expert in self-sabotaging my own happiness. Being busy has been beneficial because I simply haven't had time to navel-gaze, but it doesn't require a lot of time to get worked up and anxious about things as they happen (or seem to be happening or about to happen). During the summer I was convinced something terrible was around the corner because the irrational part of my brain told me I didn't deserve all the good things that came my way.

I banned the word 'stress' from my vocabulary in the belief it would make me feel less stressed, but I obviously have been using synonyms instead, with the same result. It bothers me how busyness is worn as a badge of honour by so many, yet I have been going around telling everyone how incredibly busy I have been. I have created priorities when there was no need and turned enjoyable things into stressfests (the 's' word again...), all of my own making. So my prescription for myself for the remaining months of this year is less doing, more making (using my hands to 'make', be it gardening, cooking or painting, is my 'drug' of choice at the moment. I haven't been for a run in weeks, and have touched the yoga mat only once or twice), and less worrying, more letting go.

Four senses - October 2015

Sound  |  "All We Want is Love" by Ane Brun. I wish there were a word (because I am about to use a range of clichés) for that feeling when you hear a new song and it is so beautiful your heart hurts and you are reminded of the other times this has happened in the past with a song (for me, for example, with "Rising" by Lhasa de Sela), and there is that sense of coming home and recognition and enchantment. [Photo: the Burren under its duvet]

Smell  |  Smelling roses in the Botanic Gardens. The variety and the subtle differences and the imaginative names! One reason I use a rose moisturiser is for the scent.

Sight  |  Progress in the garden. Still a lot to do before the cold weather comes, but the doors of the shed  (some of the frame hanging loose) and various other things are painted and the grass is cut, and we are getting on top of the weeds and briars.

Taste  |  This non-dairy (bó is cow in Irish) ice cream. We are not off anything at the moment, though we attempted a sugar-free house (everything in moderation these days) and I do try to limit my intake of sugar and dairy in particular. We may have eaten this sandwiched between a meringue and whipped cream on one occasion.


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Friends' gardens and all the 'new'

Pink wall and a suited guest

Flower arrangement and willow wolfhound, both by James

Gardens have become a big theme, the backdrop to my summer, both as existing gardens and in daydreams for a future one. Large chunks of the last two weekends were spent in friends' gardens, and what marvellous gardens they are, full of surprises and quirks. Not pictured is garden number 3, where we were all treated to a one-person-at-a-time tour of all the plants (and the tadpoles) by Rab's two sons. And once again I am reminded why I want to add botanical illustrations to my subject matter, together with the interiors and houses that have crept into my work recently.

Summer used to be the time when everything calmed down and there was a sleepy quality to my days, but this year has got to be my busiest summer yet. The freelance side of my work is growing, and I am still figuring out how to live life as a part-time employee and part-time self-employed. The weekdays/weekend divide ceased to exist for me a long time ago, and now it is the same with the 'work seasons'. It is very freeing and has taught me to value every day equally, and of course it helps that I love all my work.

Having said that, I will have a break from teaching, and I am looking forward to that, as much as I enjoy it. Today was the last Wednesday lunchtime class until October, and I will miss that group, and all the others.  But teaching requires a lot of energy, and it will be good to conserve and pour that energy into everything that is coming up in the next few weeks and months, a whole lot of 'new' - an exhibition, two books, a move (more on that later), new online ventures, a new nephew...

Cake for calm

 

I would like to think that when I am quiet here it means life is just so full there is no time to document it, but the opposite is true: I find that when things are good, I have more energy and can do all the living and creating and blog about it all, and there is a nice flow to it. The more you do, the more you do.

At the moment I am so stressed about money, health, work, deadlines, problems with the car and the house that I haven't had the headspace for much else, apart from certain commissions and some passive planning and researching (i.e. listening to podcasts - this is a treasure trove for creative people). As a result of being stressed my energy levels dip even lower than usual, and I neglect my relationships with others and cancel or avoid social situations, which stresses me out more because I feel I cannot function and that I am a terrible friend/partner/daughter/sister/... I just about manage to pour energy into my relationship, but almost every other area of my life seems to be suffering.  And so goes the vicious cycle.

People close to me would point out that I have a tendency to catastrophise, and I am aware that in the grand scheme of things, my current situation is trivial, and I certainly don't want to turn into a hypochondriac, analysing each physical complaint when most likely the majority of my health issues are psychosomatic. But I am just so aches-and-pains-cannot-face-the-world tired.

As usual I am not doing an awful lot of the things that I know would make it all better (I am still convinced I would be a much better person if I meditated every day...), though I did get a run in this morning - as part of my attempt to make my working-from-home days more productive, I am implementing little tricks such as pretend-commutes, and it does help to get the exercise and fresh air and sunshine first thing. But somehow my 35-min jog (and some yoga) ended up taking up most of my morning, or so it seemed.

Our exhibition in August is suddenly panic-inducingly close, and I still can't get myself to work towards it.

Sometimes I try to have more compassion towards myself and remind myself that all the work stuff doesn't matter that much at the end of the day, and that I place too much value on doing, but the fact is that my sense of self is inextricably linked to my work as an artist and illustrator, and it is important to me. And that exhibition is a real deadline, one of many. And I love what I do and made this choice. And of course while I am working on something, I am in the zone and that begets energy.

So I am rereading Art and Fear, though I already know the reasons I am stuck.

And I am adding more of the things that help me calm my mind and feel energised (see photos):

|  I made another cake from this book - this one has butternut squash in it, and I used coconut sugar instead of caster sugar. It is so good.

|  Fresh flowers and finishing illustrations.

|  Being with dogs and cats and babies.

Scenttrack

Even though I am very much a visual person and have a good memory for faces, colours and scenes - I can recall a huge amount of detail from a room I have only been in for two minutes, though I admit it can be quite selective - scent seems to have a more visceral and immediate attachment to memories, a bit like music. A particular holiday when I was fifteen smells of the probably rather sickly kiwi fruit deodorant I was using then. On a recent road trip I ate a cookie from a petrol station, and the bakewell-like alchemy of the sugar and butter in it transported me to my late grandmother's biscuit tin and afternoon teas in her apartment.

There are scents I use so much they are a constant backdrop and therefore rarely connect to specific events in my mind; they are comforting in their familiarity - geranium, rose, jasmine, chamomile essential oils. And then of course I go through phases with particular teas and cosmetics, because I also like change and variety. Sometimes it follows the seasons, albeit not always consciously - I don't give up my spring and summer scent once autumn arrives; it's not suddenly all pumpkin spiced latte in my world, although I do like to mark the change of seasons in a lot of different ways. I just love when it's time for a new soap or when I pick up a tea I haven't had before or try a new recipe; it helps with getting out of a rut in other areas of my life. It's like that new-stationery feeling at the beginning of the academic year, a new start. And later those scents will be a big part of remembering certain occasions and events or simply that phase of my life.

The scenttrack of summer and late summer was made up of gifts mostly: the Cloon Keen Atelier lindenblossom handwash and hand lotion (and there is still enough left to last through the next six months. Also their Spiced Bark scented candle), the lime oolong tea from Le Palais des Thés and a tea tree and lemon soap from the Burren Perfumery (not pictured in the photo of the stack of soaps my sister had got). The illustrations I am working on are steeped and infused (metaphorically, though it's bound to happen that one day I will spill tea on my work) with those smells; I will remember drinking a lot of kuckicha tea in one of the driest Septembers on record, lying in the garden in my bikini (and just yesterday I had an impromptu picnic outside my house with a friend and her toddler); and of course I will remember all the time spent with the person behind some of these gifts, who has been drinking late-night cups of oolong with me and who is teaching me Irish by writing a new phrase on the blackboard in the kitchen every day (see second photo).

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Saturday morning, Craughwell

 

Branwell after his shower (he likes to stick his head under the running tap - he is more of a dog, really)

 Bog cotton

 

Sheep bookcase and cat

Spring laundry stripes

 His placemat

Excuse the disproportionate amount of cat pictures here. Like a pregnant or new-mom blogger whose blog content suddenly becomes 98% baby-related, my brain has seized upon a kitten named Branwell, and he's not even mine!

He went missing a couple of weeks ago, but came home after three nights, just in time for my sister's birthday (half an hour before midnight - Anke and Adrian were about to retire to bed when they heard a familiar meow!).

This is a special time for us, as our younger sister is visiting for three months. We have so many plans, but so far we have mostly been talking about our exciting plans, so it's high time for the doing, although this long weekend is reserved for fun and the recharging of batteries, after a hectic two months. Last night we all stayed at Anke and Adrian's house, and the weekend feels like a holiday already. Adrian made us amazing milky coffees from scratch - grinding the fancy coffee beans, foaming the milk. I rarely order coffee, as it makes me shaky and panicky, but prepared-at-home tends to be fine/milder, and Adrian's is perfection.

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Other little things that have been accompanying this month:

Listening to "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by The National (a slightly different live version, a bonus track on the album) on loop

Drinking fresh thyme tea, nettle tea and matcha tea and eating wild garlic (on top of brie on toast - the best combination!) and micro vegetables such as pea shoots grown as per James Wong's instructions - all the green things

Smelling kitty breath and kitten paws - I had to end this post with one more cat reference!

 

Jasmine and mint

Sunny morning, condensation on the window, mint and cologne

Someone very dear to me whom I have known most of my life gave me money with instructions to buy 'something luxurious', so I got the cologne pictured - because I love jasmine and it is an antidepressant and I want to smell it all the time. I used the essential oil on my wrists before, but the scent doesn't last very long.

This fragrance, together with this eye cream I have in my fridge, is my - material - motivator for the start of the year. I know a new scent and better moisture levels around my eyes won't make me a new person, but an outward change does help to get me out of a rut. And both involve rituals that are part of my morning routine, which sets the tone for the rest of the day (I am with Gretchen Rubin on the impact of making your bed).

As always I have returned from Christmas at home with a head full of ideas and renewed enthusiasm (travelling and being away rewires my brain), and as always I see it all disintegrate or take a back seat now that I am settling back in again. But I know it's there and I can access it. And the jasmine-mint cloud I spray on and the ice-cold eye cream remind me.

Tiny

My week included tiny feet (photo taken during a little rest from playing while babysitting) and a tiny kitten my sister found (or rather it found her, travelling in the engine space of her car unbeknownst to her after having made several appearances in her garden. Some of its whiskers seem to have been chopped off. The first weeks of its life must have been tough, but already it trusts people and purrs loudly and eats until its belly resembles a balloon. They think it's a male; if that proves true, he shall be named Branwell). 

Both these playtimes helped me get out of my head. Not that I have had a lot of time to wallow around in my head recently; October has been a very busy month so far. But it always strikes me how easy it is to switch off the endless chatter in your mind when you are forced to because a small being needs your attention or you get absorbed in how it navigates the world (or its sheer cuteness and life-affirming joy). Something I struggle to reach in meditation can be so simple. [My emotional wellbeing would only be one of many many reasons I would get a cat. Seriously thinking about it again. Especially now that my sister and brother-in-law live nearby and are available to cat-sit and also after reading this. I, too, seem to have become "an expert in future living" in some respects.]

Being and doing

I am trying to get out as much as I can when the weather is good - parallel to the autumnal chill there is still heat in the sun, and last week I spent hours sitting in sun-traps for al fresco lunches and reading -, but I also enjoy sunny days in my house, pottering about, painting, planning.

REAL peas my sister gave me (funny how accustomed we get to frozen produce)

a new project

quiet

Food preparation and drawing are my tonics of choice these days, and they have a lot in common. I'd been wanting to draw this boat for a while. The photograph it is based on has been my desktop background for months, and I always found myself staring at the loops and chains and ropes, knowing how much I would enjoy drawing them. Something about certain patterns - just looking at them makes me so happy, every time. And then, when drawing them, they are an instant gateway into flow. It's the same with shelling peas: the pleasing pattern and design, the acitivity of your fingers keeping you in this moment.

Stop and feed the horses (and pick the blackberries)

Last year almost every run I ventured out on was accompanied by my pedometer (it becomes addictive). Then I was getting pains in my knees and took a break from running. When I started again I did so according to the physio's instructions, alternating running and walking and taking it slowly. After a while I tried running with no walking breaks, and my knees were fine. So I thought I could get serious again, and I remembered the pedometer. But its battery had died, and I haven't replaced it yet.

I live in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. My neighbourhood is a Tolkienesque wonderland with horses, donkeys, cows and dogs, and I do appreciate it every single day, but you are able to take in so much more when you are not racing along the paths and bogroads at great speed. Running sans pedometer has made me slow down again, and instead of focusing on times and kilometers, I have been on long walks with a bit of running in between and vice versa.

This year the blackberries are in abundance, and we have been picking them everywhere we spot them.  Last week I picked some during one such run-walk. Some runners attach weights to their wrists; little bags full of blackberries aren't that different (and they didn't turn into jam from all the bouncing). I watched caterpillars cross the road and said hello to the horses. I got lost on purpose. The endless chatter in my mind was turned off.

The endorphins and the feeling of accomplishment after a long sweaty run are hard to beat, but at the moment I prefer the quieter contentment of my random approach to exercise.

Light and white

 

I am growing mint in a cup (fingers crossed) and looking forward to using these hand-printed napkins (thanks again for these beautiful gifts, Sabrina and Christoph!). Kitchen roll is banned from my kitchen - though I do use it when teaching painting -, and while I keep a packet of paper napkins in the drawer, especially for meals featuring ingredients likely to cause permanent stains, I use proper cloth napkins 90 per cent of the time.

My house has been painted white - badly needed it -, and I have added gladioli and lemon balm (both gifts as well; I am very lucky) to the potted plants outside my door. Everything feels fresh and light and adds to the lovely blank-canvas-feeling of this time of the year.

72 summers

"There are only 72 summers in one lifetime" - this sentence jumped out at me in a piece by Hilary Burden about her decision to move to rural Tasmania after years working in London (her book is called A Story of Seven Summers: Life in the Nuns' House). 72 - more perhaps or less, but even 100 seems a pretty small and precious number.

Previous summers in my life passed by almost unnoticed in a daze of personal problems, rain and unusual cold and staying indoors too much as a result, but this year we got a proper summer, both in Ireland and Germany.

A couple of years ago in the Avoca shop in Dublin I was leafing through a whimsical book about summer pursuits. It conjured up a picture book atmosphere of picnics and garden parties and walks in the countryside, summery foods and drinks, sun-drenched beach life - I remember a pang of regret at not having done the majority of the things it described in a long time, magnified into a panic of  "I am not living my life". This year I made a point of really noticing and drinking in summer's flora and light and general summerness. I was able to wear all my summer dresses, attended a wedding in a beautiful setting in Shropshire, had impromptu barbecues in the garden, swam in the sea for much longer at a time than the rest of the year allows and jumped through the water spray of the lawn sprinkler at my mom's with my younger sister, drank rosé (my sister wrote a beautiful post about the colours of her summer) and water with fresh mint and ate homegrown vegetables.

Now it feels like autumn is coming and summer was too short, but at the same time I am glad to be living somewhere with four distinct seasons.

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- I loved this interview with one of my favourite writers, Deirdre Madden. Just when I am pondering here how time goes by so relentlessly fast, it is reassuring to learn she thinks "one gets more cheerful as one gets older" (she attributes the melancholy of her earlier novels in part to the fact that "one tends to be quite gloomy when you're young".)

Surprises

In a week (a month?) full of surprises, two tangible ones: a surprise care package with petals, delivered in person by a surprise visitor, and going to a new page in the gorgeous personalised diary another friend made me to find St. Patrick's Day decorated with pressed shamrocks - somehow I had missed that page when I looked through the book to admire all the quirky illustrations.

And a third one, not pictured: a book delivery arrived surprisingly early - I now have my third Deirdre Madden book, Authenticity, a novel about art and love, apparently ideas-driven like Molly Fox's Birthday. I am thinking of saving Authenticity for Easter, but have a suspicion I might start reading it this evening.

Eat and sleep

 

Two things I hadn't been doing right for a while. Returning to proper food and proper sleep (I tried surviving on six hours - I am not one of those people) feels so good. Eating real food* at home without looking at the time (and yes, I do read while eating, at least with breakfast - my mother would always read the paper over breakfast and tell us we were not supposed to do that with other people present) and napping in the afternoon with the window open and the sun on my face are my two favourite things this week.
 

* Chocolate is real food.