Tag: sunshine

Stained Glass

It was sunny yesterday, but I spent most of it inside, making the beginnings of a stained glass panel, using the appliqué technique. This entails cutting and sticking glass to a clear piece of glass and then grouting it, much like the grouting on a mosaic, rather that edging with lead.

I arrived with a rough sketch and then made the sketch into the working diagram…

Continue reading “Stained Glass”

What’s the weather like? Photo competition 29

I have been away, in the sun. How wonderful. But back in the UK last night I’m had to put on long trousers, a jumper and my socks plus slippers, while I browsed the holiday photos.
It was actually dry as we landed at Heathrow yesterday afternoon, but we’d only been home half an hour when the drizzle started. Then the drizzle turned heavier and the possibility of cutting the rather lush grass turned into an impossibility.

Hey ho.

We stayed in the mountains up behind Nice, high up, in a small village. It was so beautiful. This was the view, on the first morning, which was a little cloudy. After the second day the clouds cleared.

Continue reading “What’s the weather like? Photo competition 29”

April in Oxfordshire

The weather here has been true old-fashioned ‘sunshine and showers’…. real April weather.
I have been trying to dodge it over the weekend, attempting to plant a box hedge without being battered by the sting of hail.

I took this through the rain, as it fell, lit up by sunshine.

It gave the garden a surreal, scattered with diamonds look. At the back of the house, the sky was a deep purple – grey, like a mulberry stain, lit up by a faint rainbow.

March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers.

Magnificent morning

Good Friday and no work. No need to get up early. So why did I wake at 6:30 and find it impossible to get back to sleep? Typical.

Anyhoo because of the early morning and the lack of anyone else being up I had an hour of two of solitude and saw the sun side-lighting the magnolia against the backdrop of new silver birch leaves which was something special.

I nipped out in my slippers to snap it and noticed a few degrees of frost… the top of my car was white, across the driveway. However the magnolia seems to have been spared, perhaps in part due to the place I planted it, fairly close to the house, in the more sheltered front garden, rather than in the wind exposed back garden. I noticed several creamy white magnolias with browned flowers as we travelled about the county today.

The early promise of a beautiful day faded to grey skies and a cold wind. Who knows what tomorrow brings?

Frost and sunshine

Today was beautifully lit by Spring sunlight which quickly melted through the sharp frost which had whitened the grass.

This afternoon I went into Oxford, stopping on the way to pick some pussy-willow on an impulse as they caught my eye, back-lit in the lane.

I parked in St Giles and walked into town which looked wonderful.

Here the forsythia simply glows with the light. I wonder if the cyclist realised the colour match when parking? Continue reading “Frost and sunshine”