It's a cat blog....

 Just a cat blog...

...but what's not to love about a cat blog?

"What greater gift

than the love of ..two..cats"...almost Charles Dickens.

In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats...including your favourite chair!

Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods.Cats have never forgotten this.

The phrase domestic cat is an oxymoron.

...one cat just leads to another...Ernest Hemingway.

...oh ! happy christmas Erni..x

Eric and his slave.

Dogs come when they are called...

...cats take a message..and get back to you.

And there you have it...two besotted old adults...who really wanted a dog...and got two cats by mistake!

Algorithms?....A Poem for Thursday

I googled the word.....algorithms...I was fed up with being told by the younger set, that my life is now set because of all my choices on the internet going into some vast drum.....stirred around and then emerging on the iPad screen as something that I have always wanted.

Well guess what ...old Euclid knew about algorithms... and I don't think he had bought his iPad by the time he wrote it down.

Anyway...Algorithms...was my prompt today for The Bold Street Writers in Warrington. And the results were as usual amazing. From a carefully worded account of the inner doings of Amazon ...if you want to sell your detective novel....to a run down of the latest news and gardening programmes. Don't ask...just believe they were great.

Mine?....well all about why I now have two kittens living with me and the potter. It's a bit long but then it takes a while often for an algorithm to work out.

Algorithms

The sun shining

August in the garden

Dirty dishes in the sink

Soapy water on my hands

[ jobs to do, places to go]

Just August in the garden.

Dirty dishes in soapy water

Gazing mindlessly  window watching

Garden birds

Greedy squirrels

[ jobs to do. places to be]

Dirty dishes now piled up.

Gazing mindlessly at garden birds

A sudden movement

By the hedge   prickly hedge

[ jobs to do  places to be]

My eyes deceive me I'm 

Just gazing mindlessly at kittens.

A sudden movement 

Makes it real

In the garden by the hedge

An ice grey mother cat

With two small kittens

[I've jobs to do and places to be]

She dashes from our sudden movement.

So it's true and we're astonished 

One small tabby kitten lingers

Snapped a shot on

A mobile phone

Posted up on face books news

[what about my jobs and places?]

Makes it real.

One small tabby eyes wide open

Frozen in a garden snap

Put up on face book  local news

[forget the jobs forget the places]

Then a clamour

From the punters

Out on face book

"We can catch the one small tabby".

Frozen on the mobile phone

A tabby's image   tiny image

Next a plethora of messages

Demanding that they be consulted

"We will come and take the cats"

[thinking of my jobs and places]

Close down local face book page

Delete it from the mobile phone.

Tabby's image small and frightened

Enter Kat from  animal  rescue

Brings her cages

Traps the kittens two, now three

And the pretty mother cat

Takes them off to safer havens

[I'll get on with jobs and places]

Tabby's  image lingers on.

Message sent to animal rescue

Kept the contact

How's the family?

But I really want a greyhound

Want a whippet, or just a mongrel

[do the daily jobs as needed] still

Can't ignore the tabby's image

Message Kat from local rescue.

Glad now that I kept the contact

Can I have the kittens back?

[did some jobs of sorting rooms

Did some buying for the two]

September comes October goes

November's bleak, and Christmas shines.

Cats are coming early January

Glad I kept the rescue contact.

Now we have the kittens back

I forget about the whippet

Pretty female, dancing tomcat

And the potter is besotted

Who'd have thought it

He's the daddy, playmate, teaser

[I get on with jobs, go places]

Happy that the cats are back.

A Poem for Thursday

Thumbelina

This is the cat

with the exta toes.

With bites on her ears

and a bite on her nose.

Who suddenly comes

and suddenly goes.

And nobody knows where she's from.

This is the cat

who winds round your feet,

And sits on your lap

'til the crossword's complete.

Who lies in the grass

to escape from the heat.

Then swishes her tail....and she's gone!



Extra Special Workshop

It's that time of year again when the local school takes over the studio and garden for an end of term workshop with the "little ones".
Hand-in-hand a class of four and five year olds come marching up the alleyway and into the garden accompanied by excited mums, grandmums and their teachers. We love it! What an age to be!
They split into two lots and half go into the studio with the potter and helpers, and the rest go off with their art folders looking for interesting things to draw.
The potter always has some fun questions for them...."Name 10 garden birds?"...Answer..."sparrow, robin, thrush and George!"...."George?" ..."yes one of the baby ducklings is called George"..."Well that makes sense doesn't it."


"Let's make some fish".

They'll be fired and glazed and returned to be "oohed" and "aahed" over by parents and grandparents in September.

How clever is that!

Meawhile out in the garden....

there are butterflies to look for... and draw...

...a cat to be drawn and stroked ....[or avoided, depending on how you do it!]

...a labyrinth to walk...
...as one little boy said, "We found a maze"...and I said, "Amazing!"

...while another informed me that he had.....
" found a wood with a secret seat in it!"

Then after squash and biscuits and a spot of picnic lunch on the grass....
...and many trips to the loo....
....off they go 'til next year and another lot come laughing down the alleyway.

A Monastery Garden.

Hyning monastery is near Warton village in the north of Lancashire.
It's a monastery run by Bernardine Cistercian Nuns.
We've been a few times before to conduct art workshops.
There is a really good studio suitable for quite a big group of people,
 with accomodation available in the monastery.

With a bit of free time in between teaching the classes, we explored the gardens around the house.
These were laid out many years earlier by the Peel family living there at the time.
Now Sister Mary Stella and her helpers are attempting to bring them back to the glory that they were and in fact add to it.

I love this moon gate.

I think that the idea is originallyChinese.

Any gardening bloggers can put me right.

Aconites and crocuses have multiplied as they grow together under the trees.

The grounds stretch away into the distance

 with wonderful views of the Lancashire countryside.

Old stone walls are clad with ferns and mosses,

a sign of the pure air of this northern land.

An old bridge has been rebuilt over the stream that winds it's way through the garden.

And the pond has been dug out and replanted around the edges with early flowering Daphne.

This was once the summer house for the Peel family,

facing south catching the morning sun.

Ancient doors lead on to secret gardens,

and old doors wait for a thicket of undergrowth to be cleared away and use made of the rooms discovered.

It makes me think of The Sleeping Beauty!

Every thing will have it's purpose one day.

Swathes of these delicate lilac coloured crocuses have naturalised along the paths.

I've no idea what these fungi are, but they were about the size of a thumb nail
and every where on the dead tree roots.

No self respecting monastery would survive without a cat or two!
This glossy black and white moggy sunned himself each day in the early spring sunshine,
against the door of the studio.
Plump and purring and well fed by friendly nuns.

Any one interested in the art of icons might like to know that Sister Mary Stella is an icon writer.
[The correct term for the painting I believe].
An exhibition will be held at Hyning from 10th -12th April.    2.00p.m. - 5.15p.m. each day.
There will be viewing in the studio and the chapel 2.00 p.m.- 3.15 p.m.
A talk at 3.15 p.m.
Refreshments from 4.00p.m. onwards.
Donation £5
01524 732684