#tree seat

[adventuresofalgy]

The temperature in the wild west Highlands of Scotland was evidently determined to remain below freezing for the time being. The morning frost sparkled in the chilly sunlight, and when Algy tried striding across the ground, the grasses crackled crisply beneath his feet.

Although the shadows remained exceedingly long and cold, the low winter sun was bright and inviting, so Algy decided to indulge in a wee bit of reading out of doors, with his new Christmas scarf wrapped snugly around his neck to avoid the worst effects of the chilled air.

Leaning back on the tree seat, he opened his copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse at a random page, and found a poem concerning the human race with which – as a daft fluffy bird revelling in the glories of Nature despite the biting frost – he heartily agreed:

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

[Algy is reading the poem The world is too much with us by the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth.]

[shotgunhope]

Contemporary Landscape - Gravel An example of a large contemporary partial sun backyard gravel garden path.

[m-eltdown]

[huariqueje]

Christmas Tree in the Hall of Kilo Manor - Magnus Enckell , c. 1919.

Finnish, 1870-1925

Oil on canvas , 62.5 x 51 cm. 24.6 x 20 in. 

[guzekna]

[veiledren]

The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall (literally)

[talos-stims]

MAKING A DOOR LESS OPEN

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[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Thursday 2 January 2025

Providing great structure and autumn colour to this garden was Morus alba (white mulberry). It makes a small to medium sized deciduous tree, with a spreading habit. By mid- summer there are fruit that begin white and develop to near-black. Silkworms were traditionally fed on the leaves of this tree.

Jill Raggett

[toobusybeingdelulu]

Sometimes i sit and think about how Steve could have NOT handled billy and max as a duo, LIKE… NEVER.

This simply because of the fact that the only time he tried to manage them SEPARATELY he was almost killed by both of them THE SAME NIGHT: once while being beaten to a pulp by Billy and literally a few moments later he almost became victim of a car crash because of Max’s dubious driving skills.

Now imagine the Cali siblings both alive in s4???? And Steve having to be in charge of both of them?? He would have literally gone insane I fear.

[pinkblanc]

[adventuresofalgy]

After the storm had passed, the sky cleared for a while, so that at times it was even possible to see some welcome patches of blue. But massive clouds were still racing in from the Atlantic on a strong breeze, so that although the low January sunshine was pleasantly bright at times, it was soon obliterated by a fresh wave of grey, sometimes accompanied by a battering shower of hail, for the temperature had dropped back down again, and there was fresh snow on the hills.

Algy was feeling rather weary, for he had discovered that big storms were tiring and stressful, even for fluffy birds, so when the sun burst through and it looked as though it might last for longer than a few minutes, he flopped down on his assistants' tree seat and indulged in a wee bit of winter sunbathing – or, to be more accurate, light-bathing – trusting his fluffy feathers to keep him warm in the icy air.

He was suprised to see that although it certainly didn't feel like spring, the spring bulbs were far more advanced than usual for this time of year, with some of the daffodils which normally didn't flower until early March showing coloured buds already. And the sunlight, although still low enough to cast long, deep shadows, was a great deal brighter than it had been, which helped to create the illusion that spring had arrived well before its time.

As he rested comfortably in the sunshine, Algy thought of all his friends in the snow-bound areas of the northern hemisphere, for whom spring was still nothing but a chimera, and he hoped that a thaw would reach them soon. He wondered whether the birds in those areas could perhaps already detect what his human friends could not, for it was certain that no matter how cold it was at present, winter would inevitably pass, and spring would come again:

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass.

[Algy is quoting the short poem Thaw by the late 19th/early 20th century Welsh/English poet Edward Thomas.]

[on-a-lucky-tide]

It's true what they say, if the lift starts with the name of a European country, you're fucked...

[toyastales]

The fire pit is spectacular!

[galleryofart]

Woman Meditating

Artist: Copy after Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (French, 1796–1875)

Date: After 1868

Medium: Oil on fabric

Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Description

This painting, acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1949, as a work by Corot, proved to be a copy when the signed original reappeared at a public auction in New York in 1981. Although the original, Jeune Femme Pensive or La Méditation, is not in the Corot catalogue raisonné compiled by his friend Alfred Robaut, that painting does have an unquestionable origin. According to one source, Corot painted the original version in Paris in 1866–68 and allowed his pupil, Eugène Lavieille, to make a copy with permission.

[huariqueje]

Listener - Inari Krohn , 2024.

Finnish , b. 1945 -

Oil on board , 42.5 x 51.5 cm.

[portrait-paintings]

Mrs. Francis Brinley and Her Son Francis

Artist: John Smibert (Scottish born American, 1688–1751)

Date: 1729

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, United States

Description

Born Deborah Lyde, Mrs. Francis Brinley (1698–1761) was the daughter of Edward and Catherine Lyde and the granddaughter of Judge Nathaniel Byfield. When she married Francis Brinley in 1718, she was a woman of wealth and social prominence. An entry in Smibert's notebook dated May 1729 identifies the infant as the Brinley's son Francis (1729–1816). Mrs. Brinley holds a sprig of orange blossoms, a gesture which may have been taken from an eighteenth-century print by Sir Peter Lely. The white orange blossom symbolizes both marriage and purity, while the fruit, a sign of fertility, emphasizes Mrs. Brinley's role as a mother. Orange trees, although fashionable in Europe, were expensive rarities in the colonies. The presence of one here reinforces the sitter's wealth.