Vibrant wanderings

I enjoyed painting this especially as it brings brings sunshine and freedom into my house.

Vibrant wanderings. M'reen

As you can see I like clear vibrant colours; or do I need pure vibrant colours?

I live in a tiny little house which is two minutes to north and so if I want sunshine I have to sit

next to an upstairs window and look out.

Or like others who are thus orientated, I leave the front door open and sit on the step with a cup

of tea and a book. In ‘the good old days’ when people lived in the same house for many years

or generations the front door step was the social hub for the women and children.

I remember donkey stoning my mamam’s (my mam’s mam – or grandmom) front door step.

Your front doorstep was a symbol of pride unlike the slovenly people of today who leave their wheeli bins on the front street or in their front garden. The front door step was scrubbed and outlined 

with a donkey stone which was a soft  bar of stone that left a creamy edge to the step.

I had to look it up, a donkey stone was a type of scouring block, used mostly in the mill towns

of the North of England to clean stone steps;  I found the short history to be interesting.

When they demolished the old terrace houses and replaced them with tower blocks or houses with out front door steps communities broke down and depression and associated social ills escalated.

Yesterday saw me sat on my doorstep in this unseasonable March weather  and a dog walking lady stopped to talk about my happy gardens and life in general – how nice.

But we English are a strange lot, but I don’t know about other people. We are often wary about conversing with strangers unless we are protected by a dog, child or front door step.  However

I don’t speak Spanish or have a word of, presumably Arabic, but I have been clearly propositioned

in both languages when I lived in Marbella.

Ah, Marbella, I used to wake up to the sunshine ricocheting off the pure white walls, walk for half

an hour down into town 2 or 3 times a day with a three –quarter of an hour walk back. I used to take 

a book into the mountains on weekends and read once to be silently surrounded by a flock of goats.

But the home of my heart is Colorado Springs, CO. USA where we had 35? days of sunshine, where on Christmas day my youngest daughter was out in shorts and a T-shirt and her new roller boots. Where you could go for a barbecue and note that the fence posts were wearing white frost socks.

At certain times of the year you’d watch the sun creep towards the mountains because once the sun vanished behind these magnificent curtains it was as if someone had switched out a light and

you knew that you had ten minutes to pack up and go home before the cold became really cold.

If you were indoors at this time you’d glance up wondering who had switched off the light.

Artist wax wonderfully about the light of the sea, but I will pitch for the light of mountains. Even a lifelong resident once held up a postcard to the sky and found that the blue sky really was that blue.

And on an 80 mile journey To Denver airport, my eldest daughter was torn between wanting to return while wanting to stay and she watched the sky finding one small cloud as we reached the airport. English clouds form castles in the air, weave dreams, challenge artists and express moods and dictate the urgency of those dependent upon the weather. In Colorado they are to be noticed and gain that notice in intriguing ways. I saw a single small cloud that was hosting its own lightening storm as the bolts shot out of its confines only to dive back again into the fray. In the dead of night when the stars shine silver white and close by sometimes there would be a black hole that allowed you 

to go straight to heaven; it took me ages to figure out that a cloud was blocking the stars.

Prior to this when the sky was a royal blue lack ink that washed the sky, the mountains the sides

of which were bristles with pine looked like black blotting paper that had been torn into silhouettes that had been pasted onto the sky. Even earlier in the evening, during summer when it was more comfortable to walk in the early evening, the sky would be a gentle green and at this time of year 

the rainbows put on a spectacular show, with really broad almost oblong blocks of colour 

and there were many double rainbows of varying intensity but the most memorable was 

standing under a double arched rainbow with one arching N to S and the other E to W

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.ourmindminds.blogspot.com               which takes advantage of the experience and expertise of others.

www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com      describes the steps to reading in the way your mind prefers.

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”