Another dull day weather-wise, but at least it wasn’t raining this afternoon so I went out for a wander around one of the local recreation grounds. Lots of lovely textures, but I thought I’d counter the greyness of the day with this shot of bright yellow.
day 8/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
It well and truly is April. If we don’t start getting some spring sunshine to go with the April showers soon then I may well have to rethink the challenge. The idea was to give me a reason to get out of the house, if only for a short time, each day. But it is almost making it harder: now it’s not just “leave the house”, it’s “leave the house and find something that isn’t going to look miserable in this horrid grey light”.
Now, I happen to like today’s photo. I love textures and details and decay and there’s a lot of that in this image, along with those tiny sprigs of green poking out. But the only other photo I took was this:
It’s not just grey, it’s uniformly grey. Solid cloud cover. No texture. No variation. The only reason I included the top of the tree was to prove that I hadn’t just photographed a sheet of grey card. And the forecast for the next week seems to be filled with more of the same: “mostly cloudy” and “overcast”.
So I’m pondering how I can change this into something I will enjoy doing every day. I’m definitely happy to have picked up a camera again for something other than photographing my cards and art for my other blog. And it’s good to have woken this blog up again (and yes, I will do ratty updates). But I need to stop this challenge becoming just another thing on the todo list…
day 7/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
And it’s raining again. And I’m feeling run down. And I have a thousand and one things on my todo list*. So long walks are simply not happening today. I’ve had a couple of goes at getting photos of the neighbour’s magnolia blossom; took one I was almost happy with, but not quite, maybe it’ll be third time lucky… We’ll have to make do with a small carpet (a rug?) of very wet flowers that might be violets instead.
*This may be a slight exaggeration, but that’s what it feels like.
day 6/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
I did go out for a walk this afternoon and I did take a few photos while I was out, but my favourite picture of the day was taken in our garden this morning. It wasn’t raining — for a change — so I tidied up the planters before the weeds got too enthused by the recent sunshine and warm weather, and that’s when I noticed how nicely weathered our owl was becoming.
day 5/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
This photo makes me happy. I was starting to worry that my fuchsia wasn’t going to recover after the miserable winter it has been through, but when I checked it today I spotted these tiny green leaves appearing.
day 4/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
We had sunshine! It’s been so grey, cold and wet this year that “sunshine” was even trending on Twitter in the UK. I wasn’t sure I’d get out much past the front door today as I was stuck in waiting for deliveries; luckily they all turned up while it was still light so I got to appreciate these colourful flower boxes that someone had hung on the railings by the river Wandle.
day 3/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
I didn’t give up immediately and I wasn’t even put off by the weather. I did try to time going out to avoid the worst of the showers, but the nature of April weather in England meant it was almost inevitable that I would get caught in one. Which I did. I can’t really complain though — I wouldn’t have caught these raindrops in a puddle otherwise.
day 2/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
While idly catching up with my blog feeds the other day I came across a mention of the 100 day project. It’s now in its fifth year, but somehow it has completely passed me by.
I did think about joining in, but, with only a couple of days to go before the start date, I was hard pushed to come up with a project that fitted the brief. I am very eclectic when it comes to my art: I love to try different things and different styles and the idea of committing to one thing every day for one hundred days seemed like a losing prospect. The 30 day colouring challenges are enough of a commitment.
So, nice idea I thought, but no, I’ll give it a pass this time. And anyway, I don’t need another excuse to not leave the house…
Brain: Why not make it one hundred days of leaving the house?
Me: That’s not an art project.
Brain: It could be.
Me: …
Brain: It could be if you took your camera out with you.
Me: …
Brain: You know, the actual camera, not the one on your phone.
Me: …
Brain: You’d only have to take one photo.
Me: But…
Brain: And if you’re feeling ill or the weather’s awful, you could just step outside the door, that would count.
Me: Hmm…
And that’s how I seem to have decided to do #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera in the almost certain knowledge that it will not happen every day, but I’ll give it a go. At least I did manage to get out on day one 🙂
day 1/100 — #100daysofleavingthehousewithacamera – #the100dayproject
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
At the start of this week we had to make the decision to say goodbye to Quorra. She’d been slowing down over the last few months — losing weight and starting to look like an old rat — but when she went off her food over the weekend we knew it was time.
When I found a small lump on her ribs at the start of last year we never thought that we would have anywhere near this long left with her. The Galastop kept that lump under control the whole time and, while there may well have been some secondary internal tumours affecting her health at the end, it was old age that caught up with her. She made it to the very respectable age of two and a half; outliving her sister Yori by nine months.
When she joined us she didn’t have any really distinctive personality traits. She wasn’t a jumper or a climber or a biter or a hider; she was just a sweet little ratty (who roaned out her grey and black baby colouring in just a couple of weeks!). And then she got the ear infection which left her with an adorable head tilt and the ability to go round corners like no other rat. Suddenly she was the rat who could escape onto the top of the cage in the blink of an eye, and did so at every opportunity. She took a liking to spiralling her way down my t-shirt, from which vantage point she would often lick my face (going through a phase of sticking her tongue up my nose which was just a bit disturbing) and if she wasn’t licking, she’d be chewing on the neck of the t-shirt.
She grew old gracefully, tolerating the newcomers and putting them in their place with a good power grooming when needed. I will miss that sweet, tilty face.
