time for a siesta...

The best thing about this really hot weather we are having is that you can't do anything in the middle of the day.  We have slipped seamlessly into the summer pattern of busy morning, sit around all afternoon and then allotment after tea, once it's all a bit fresher.  That means that we have also all started going to bed with muddy feet too, but I think that is all part of getting back to nature and is perfectly ok.

As it only stopped raining and being freezing last week we are ploughing on with the winter digging, only now the ground has baked hard and the crust needs a serious implement to break through it.  Extreme gardening. We did have the first ripe strawberry of the year today though, although one between four doesn't go very well, or very far for that matter...

(I've just popped this print into my Folksy shop as well, by the way)

sunshine and oak leaves

I've been enjoying printing with the sun streaming in through the windows today, pictures of Bristol Suspension Bridge, with the slopes of Leigh Woods covered with big oak leaves and whitebeam leaves (a species of which is native only to the Avon Gorge, which the bridge spans) and a very serious peregrine falcon surveying the scene.

A new selection of my Bristol prints are about to go to The Framing Factory on Bristol docks to replenish the ones that are already there.  Have a look if you find yourself wandering along the docks anytime soon!!

parrots

Parrots are a feature here at the moment.  The Southbank Arts Trail is coming up this weekend in Bristol and the theme is Pirates and Parrots.   Paper Village, our local arts/craft/everything shop, has been running Parrot making workshops for the last few weeks so that we will all be fully kitted out ready.   

We had to have a go at parrot making, they are so colourful and fabulous.  The person in the family who has a summer birthday (and whose friends are always away on holiday) decided that parrot making would be a great way to spend an 'un-birthday', so we gathered together a group of parrot fans and off we went.  A large flock of multi-coloured parrots took shape.

The parrot who came home with us has spent the last week sitting on a glass egg and after much discussion on the length of sitting time required to hatch a parrots egg, we have discovered that it is only 7 days after all.

The parrots are breeding...

dancing monsters

I've had a frustrating printing week this week - wrong ink, wrong paper, gloomy skies, hurumph.

As there was no point in ploughing on until I sort out the ink and paper situation I have consoled myself with finally getting round to printing my two current favourite monsters...Bicorne and Chichevashe, medieval monsters and the eaters of patient wives and husbands (do you know that story already?)

They have appeared in my sketch books several times over the years so I thought they deserved to be printed at last and if they are lucky they may well find themselves in a frame for the upcoming Southbank Arts Trail here in Bristol.