Obsessions

How have you been? Are you pleased we've got to the end of January?

The sun is shining here as I write, thank goodness.

I wrote you a post this morning about my progress on the taking-myself-in-hand agenda but it was so dull I deleted it. I will just say that I'm still having the 30 second cold showers before the hot one; and that the next best thing on the list has been reading a poem before I get out of bed, because it resets my brain after reading the unremittingly awful news.

Enough of that  - my New Year apathy has gone and I've even got round to replacing the terrible pots that were on the doorstep with these.

Have you ever heard it said that an author will keep returning to the same topic over and over? That it's a thread running through all of their books?

Well, I've realised that there are three topics I return to in my novels: relationships, grief, and how to get published.

And I think I have a similar problem with painting. I am obsessed with grasses and with patchwork quilts.

I've done two large paintings of my latest quilt and I am considering one of all three, viz:

As for grasses, I've painted the following:

'and life slips by like a field mouse not shaking the grass'

Colorado colours

And for the last two weeks I've been working on a new large painting of grass. It's not finished yet, but I thought I'd show you anyway. It's hard, though, to decide which photo of it to show you. The light makes such a difference.

In real life the sky on the canvas is a sickly sweet blue and I intend to change it. I am also wondering whether or not to add some different flowers in the lower left hand section. They'd be these orange ones. Are they coltsfoot? Or something else? Does anyone know? They grow on the verges of the Trail.

I'll leave you with the concluding sentence of a piece in our village newspaper from a young farmer whose father died a month ago and who has been getting to grips with all the jobs on the farm without him:

'Nature is a great source of certainty and comfort.'