Celebration time

The other day I sat at the back of a car with an artist. She makes beautiful paintings, but today the world around her absorbs her completely. ‘A painter’s block’ being the result of all the energy draining elsewhere. ‘A painter’s block?!’ , ‘Yes, like a writer’s block’. Maybe I was not precisely tuned in and asked innocently ‘Do you keep a painter’s blog?!’. No, this was not the case. I told her I had presented myself for art classes which were about to start on Saturday morning and would last until summer. Unfortunately the classes were cancelled as the number of people necessary had not been reached. With disgust the artist said: ‘Why paint?! Everybody paints these days …’ Well, because it is so much fun to do and besides I had made nice things in the past. With so much depreciation of somebody else’s artistically talents I decided it was pointless to tell her that one my of sisters makes wonderful still lives and that the youngest one runs her own gallery with her magnificent huge and colorful paintings.

We changed the subject and discussed the world passing by in the car, the full moon lighting up the lakes.

With painting in my mind I googled for daffodils the next day and placed a lovely daffodil painting as background on my laptop. After having seen this popping up a couple of times I realized that somewhere there should be a daffodil attempt by myself in watercolor. Looking at it now it seems unfinished, but it is fun to look at and certainly encourages me to take this up again once I am out of the rat race. They are just exercises, but I like them when I look at them because of their color.

In autumn I planted a variety of bulbs. At the moment I am watching anxiously what will become of them. The daffodils already present in the garden have been showing their faces abundantly: white, yellow, tête à têtes which I have collected from everyone who throws them out once they have finished blooming in a pot. They re-live in my garden.

Unfortunately I am experiencing huge problems with my laptop. All my photographs, texts, etc. have disappeared; the system keeps throwing me off the internet. I am heart broken and it is so frustrating, but there are worse things going on in the world right now than my pictures. Of course I hope we will be able to retrieve one or two things.

Talking about painter’s and writer’s blocks: I had a bit of blogger block. The huge amount of pornographic spam that kept streaming in at the post that I loved best myself - ‘A geisha teacup’ - forced me to delete this from the blog. I just do not understand the fun of spamming.

Spring is full of busy moments: the garden has to be done, the boat has to be brushed up before she plunges in the water on 4 April, my ancient dog needs a lot of attention, tremendous and fabulous things workwise happening, and last but not least: a nasty cold that would not disappear after the long and cold winter running me down and making it impossible to do as much as I want to.

The sun shines! My boat is waiting for the final touch today, many subjects in my head to write about!

It is celebration time today: it is now exactly one year ago since I started blogging. It was great fun to do and I have so enjoyed everyone’s creativity. New and unexpected followers recently and I thank you all for your wonderful comments!

The water colors I show you here were made 23 years ago and have been sitting on a shelf all this time. This is the nice thing of blogging: you can show things to the world that are normally hidden in drawers, on shelves, or just for the odd one to see at home.

Soon you will be reading my comments on your blogs, as I have not been around your blogs for a while. Happy weekend!