Bringing the colours of nature into my home

The last few weeks have seemed very grey and dreary and I wondered how I could bring some colour into my home. I love to wear bright coloured clothes but am unable to get these colours for winter wear ending up with black and grey and the occasional wine or green colour. So colour is definitely needed in soft furnishings.

I had looked outside at the trees and their changing colours so decided to weave myself a small rug on my peg loom. I can manage this if I take my time and have plenty of rests in between working. So this is what I did with greens, oranges, reds and purples. The result is the photo at the end of this blog.

Now I have to decide what else to make. Colour is so important in our lives as many of you will know. If everywhere is grey and black and you wear those colours then you can get depressed easily. Too much blue has the same effect!. I do keep acorns and dried leaves in a dish on my windowsill but I needed something much brighter. The sunrise this morning has given me some ideas. It was a beautiful red and orange sunrise so maybe another rug in these colours.

Nature is so inspiring! What inspires you?

Approaching the darkness

It is very noticeable now that the mornings are darker and the evenings start to get dark  earlier. Some trees are already bare while others are still green. But the flowers are nearly all gone and there is a noticeable lack of insects around. The birds still come to the feeders though and the starlings are coming back looking for peanuts and fat balls.

I am not yet sure how I feel about the coming winter, the period of darkness. I find it hard enough to have to stay inside now so what will the shorter days be like? This week though I saw one of the first spontaneous offers of help I have received for some time. Someone offered to pick me up and take me to a meeting even though she was not going herself and also lived the other side of town. Genuine offers like this are few and far between. What does this tell us about people in our world?

Earlier this week I was reading about slavery in America and also how convicts were sent to America before the Civil War. Looking at their stories brings a feeling of shame. How can we treat others this way? And yet slavery in some form is still apparent in our world. The days of darkness should be over yet looking at the world news, I feel that the darkness is approaching again as we do not seem to learn from our past mistakes.Should we make more effort to learn from these mistakes so our world changes for the better? Or do we want to destroy our world?

 

 

The element of water

We use water in ceremonies for blessings (as do the Christians for baptisms) but have you ever thought about water and our need for it. Water is something we take for granted much of the time until we find we have none. This happened to me yesterday. After breakfast I decided to do other things which included the use of water. There was only a trickle from the tap and the toilet tank would not fill up. Then the trickle disappeared. Talking to neighbours I got the same story then one neighbour returned from visiting the shops down in the village. He said there was a huge puddle of water down there on the main road and there had been a burst water main.

This is the point when we all realised just how much we needed water. I was lucky enough to have some water in the kettle with which I could make a drink. Like some others I went to the nearest shop and bought a large bottle of water. But think about all the things we do each day which need water; washing ourselves, washing clothes, flushing the toilet, preparing food, making hot drinks and many other things. At one point it started to rain and I though of putting a bucket outside to catch the rain but by the time I had thought this, the rain had stopped.

Taking things for granted applies to many other things besides water. In the west, we take many things for granted that people elsewhere in the world do not even have . There are many who have to walk to collect water, many who do not have running water on tap in their homes and so on. Should we be more careful about what we take for granted? After all, it is only when it is not there that we realise just how much we use it. I could write more about this but I feel I have made my point. Here is a spring in Cold Ashby village.

 

Life’s lessons

I have always felt that life is full of lessons to learn. When we are born we have to learn to walk and speak and then learn to do things for ourselves. Every decision we make brings us a new lesson. When we look back at some of the decisions we made we think that they were wrong. But at the time we made those decisions it was the right one as that gave us another lesson to learn.

I look back at many decisions I made in the past and can see how much I learned from them whether they seemed right or wrong at the time. These lessons can also be seen as challenges and at the moment I am wondering what the current lesson is for me. I have got to the stage in life where certain things are more important than others, good health for one. I have the other important things, important for me at least, a roof over my head, enough food and clothing and heat and light. What I don’t have is mobility and this is getting to be a very big challenge. I am going to have to rethink how I live my life as I cannot walk more than a couple of yards without excruciating pain and that is walking on crutches as well. Does this mean a wheelchair now and if so how do I deal with this challenge? I love the outdoors and always have. I loved the freedom of being outside and always pushed myself to my limits in order to be outdoors.

I am also very dependent on others now and this brings me to something else which I wrote about last week, friendship. People are so busy nowadays that they often cannot find the time to be with others especially those who need not necessarily help but companionship. Conversation is important for us all and having a good conversation is part of my life, but good conversations are infrequent. A ‘friend’ once said to me a few years back that she did not call very often because she was sure I had others coming in to visit every day. She was far from the truth and I wonder how many others feel that way. Is this another lesson for me, to learn to be alone?

What are your lessons in life?