Autumnal accessories

Every Autumn or Fall as some of you prefer to call it (presumably because you slip over on the icy pavements a lot...), there's an ever present accessory we are often seen sporting. Yes, you probably guessed from the photo above - it's a spider web - with or without accompanying arachnid.

Spiders just love to dress us up during these chillier months. They thoughtfully spin their webs directly where we will walk through them - preferably at face height right outside our front doors or across footpaths. This way it's easy for them to wrap our features in a fine gauze with their egg legged selves perching thoughtfully somewhere in our hair.

There's a ritual I've also observed as we get dressed up in this delicate gossamer. It requires much arm flapping, face swiping and head itching - plus often a whole body shiver. Rarely does putting on clothing and dance go so entirely hand in hand!

The sharp end of autumn

At this time of year, when you wake up after a day of drizzle and drear to a bold blue sky, it would indeed be a sacrilege not to get yourself out in it.

I always forget how long autumn's colours can last. Don't we normally expect all the leaves to have fallen by now? Is Mother Earth giving us an extra treat this season?

After a quick workout this morning in front of the TV, while watching last night's recorded X-Factor (Rough Copy and Sam Bailey for the finals #justsaying), me and the boy donned our new wellies and scampered out into the sunshine. It was definitely a day to check out some woodland talent...

We scrunched through leaves and very carefully gathered sweet chestnuts. Some were quite shy and hid behind a prickly personality!

Whereas others were just natural show-offs.

A few passing buzzards treated us to an aerobatic display soaring high above the trees while calling out their presence. Unfortunately I was so entranced by the performance that I forgot I was carrying a camera and so we missed the photo opportunity - there's no rewind on this particular live show. As judges though we rated them incredibly highly though. Best group of the day!

I was much better at capturing nature's bounty that doesn't move... like these solo performers.

The outfits amazed, the leaves danced in perfect autumnal choreography and even the audience added their own style!

A grand performance from Mother Earth - she has my vote!

To love beauty

This week I've been enjoying walks in the fresh air sucking up the autumnal beauty before it threatens to all blow away this evening when gales and rain are set to sweep the country.

Is it my imagination, or has this season been more beautiful than falls of the past? The leaves seem to have hung around for longer and really shown off their colours. Maybe it was the opportunity to spend a week away exploring ancient Britain and showing it off to those who were mainly not so familiar with these shores (the majority of the sisters I travelled with were from the US).

I've been back from my pilgrimage a couple of weeks but its memories cling on and I feel the friendships reaching out and little legacies taking a hold.

For example, this week I'm taking a course with Latisha, the Herb Mother and fellow pilgrim. We are learning the medicinal powers of herbs, or 'erbs as those from across the pond insist on pronouncing them... I am planning to brew up all manner of tinctures and salves, lotions and potions. Latisha is helping to connect us with the power of nature's offerings - a reminder that this stuff doesn't have to come ready packaged, that the skills of our ancestors are still relevant today. By actually touching the plants, getting their scent and oils on our fingers and building experience we are connecting. It feels good.

October Girl

It felt like proper Autumn today - like the leaves were hanging on just to be sure it was October. As the temperature dipped and the dew rose there was the scent of ripeness in the air and a shift in the wind.

It's a day to wrap up in warm scarves and dance with the leaves under the trees.

This is the first piece of art I've created since returning from retreat which seems strange. I've written plenty and played in PhotoShop but the pressures of the week squeezed my painting time. I wanted hours... not just a few minutes here and there! I wrote elsewhere this week about Time being voracious for it does seem to gobble up the days - and when it gets together with its buddy Procrastination then we're in serious trouble...

This is just a quick page in my journal where I was inspired by the crackle and colour of the season and a sudden desire to create a face.

More painting over the weekend methinks...

Sharing for Paint Party Friday where I've been absent for a few weeks. September was strange for me... I wasn't really in a 'party' mood for much of it. October though is a new month and I return from retreat rejuvenated and refreshed!

Painting Autumn

I was going to paint acorns, but you know what happens when you plant those little seeds don't you? Yes, that's right - the squirrels dig 'em up and eat them.

Then I thought about conkers, but I got my consonants muddled up and went for what comes before c and found myself in all sorts of mischief.

Perhaps I should just post and have done with it. It's for the Inspiration Avenue Art Challenge. But you know me. I can't just put up a picture can I? I have to put on my hiking boots and go for a ramble. Tonight though my tongue is tangled in my laces which I have to say is rather uncomfortable and that damn squirrel just nipped my ankle.

Perhaps I should just quit while I'm in the middle of the pack and can sneak out un-noticed...

Here's my entry anyway. A fae of the autumn woods who quite literally did pull herself through a hedge backwards to achieve that look.

Oops, it's no good... can't be serious.... off to bed....

Topsy Turvey

Season of mists and fellow fruitfulness.... that'll be Summer then.

Autumn dawns with unbroken blue skies and temperatures reaching the 20s for the first time in weeks. What's occuring?

I feel a bit topsy turvy myself at the moment.

There are so many things I want to achieve right now: courses to take, assignments to finish, work to complete, adventures with my family, words to write and painting itching to see the light of day. I'm so excited. I just can't get enough. I am a growing, learning and creative wild woman! Then sometimes it all gets too much to contemplate and I just go to bed.

Goddess Leonie says that "The energy is a bit of a bucking bronco at the moment. Everything will be okay, we are just going through a shift". It certainly feels like the Universe is playing funny games with me. Is it behaving for you?

This painting attemped to capture the topsy turvey weather. Those moments of mystical light when the storm clouds gather, brooding and heavy but the sun still sneaks through a gap and illuminates almost from beneath. That was the general idea anyway and I thought sunflowers were just perfect! Posting for Paint Party Friday (on Thursday - see, told you I was all at sixes and sevens!).

Now, what shall I do next? Art or go to bed?

If you go down in the woods today

... you wouldn't be able to see these for the fog truth be told.

A little digital fun with one of my photographs. Are these toadstools or mushrooms? Delicacy or deadly? I'm not about to risk finding out! Anyway, the fairies would get miffed if I took their umbrellas for they are not fond of the damp drizzle of November, so nature kindly provided these umbrella stands scattered around the woodlands for their use.

I'm sure I saw one perched on top of one just before I hit the shutter button, but with a twinkle of fairy dust she was gone.

Do you believe in fairies? Or am I just away with them?

And Summer's lease...

We've reached that delicate patch of Autumn where beauty hangs in the balance. Trees hold grimly onto their colourful palettes but the wind and chill conspire to bring these lofty artists down to earth to make instead a mush of soggy leaf carpet. It's a rich, lush and fruitful time. I adore the smells and crunchy sounds as much as the sights of all those russets, greens and chestnuts.

It was fairly inevitable then that this week my hands have been pulling crimsons and ochres out of the paint box. I'm also rather enamoured of being inspired by the words of others and Mr Shakespeare came to mind.

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date"

Indeed William it does; yet there is something quite special about Autumn too - all that 'mist and mellow fruitfulness' as Mr Keats had a habit of saying.

This piece is my Queen of Samhain. I confess to being a little behind the times (or possibly in front) when it comes to my knowledge of this ancient festival, so did a spot of research and it turns out that 'something to do with Halloween' did indeed just about cover it! Here's what I found on Wikipedia

Samhain marked the end of the harvest, the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half".... It has some elements of a festival of the dead. The Gaels believed that the border between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain; because some animals and plants were dying, it thus allowed the dead to reach back through the veil that separated them from the living. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. People and their livestock would often walk between two bonfires as a cleansing ritual, and the bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.

This piece came from the burning embers of the bonfire, the melting of leaves into earth and the turning of the season. The Queen of Samhain watches from the fire's edge and reclaims that which is hers ready to bring back to life come Spring...

She is for a new art challenge on a new creative community which I am only too pleased to share. Why not pop along and meet another regal figure - The Queen of Creativity herself at her Castle. She has raised the drawbridge and all artists are welcome.

Ahh...inspired

Coton Manor c.2010

Last night I dreamt* I went to Coton Manor again...

Yesterday I posted a picture of this splendid abode whilst dreaming of living in a wisteria covered cottage. Today I went back there.

Of course, you can probably tell from the picture that it's rather more than a yokel's residence! However, it wasn't the building itself that took me there today, but the gardens which are rich with sumptuous colour and texture from Spring through to Autumn. May in particular is the most magical time to visit when the bluebell woods filled with colour and fairy folk weave their magic spell on you. (It's true! There's a sign that says that if you pick the flowers, the pixies will set the imps on you!)

Today was the last day before they shut up shop for winter and the sun was shining its brilliant best, turning the brown leaves of yesterday's rain filled sky to amber beads glinting in the light.

I dragged a reluctant six-year-old with me but knew once he got there he'd enjoy running around and getting lost in the tangles and his imagination. Secret pathways lead you to the hidden nooks where the fairies make their homes. We crossed bridges on tiptoes for fear of waking trolls and met Pan and friends in verdant glades who played enchanting tunes before bobbing for pears at the bottom of still ponds.

Could it be magic? Yes, I think it probably could!

Certainly a few spells were applied in Photoshop on our return home...

Oh and did I mention just how much I love Photoshop. There were three people in the top photo including two sat on a bench right in the foreground. I was too polite to ask them to move for my photograph so removed them later. Yes, definitely magic!

* I actually dreamt about cake - more specifically fruit scones with cream and strawberry jam and sticky pastries. This diet I am on is clearly having a detrimental affect on my sleeptime adventures... I want caaaaake I want caaaaake....

Metamorphosis

Ode to Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring?

Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies

I adore this poem. I wish he'd written a poem Ode to having more time in the day to spend reading romantic poetry... but he didn't. He was too busy writing one called Ode to Indolence then contracting TB poor man. Why were great artists so tortured?

This photograph was taken last Autumn (and played with in Photoshop this very morning); a moment in time captured by camera as the Spring flowers and Summer berries metamorphosis once again and return to the earth to begin life again next Spring. My entry for the Inspiration Avenue weekly challenge.

Where have my degrees gone?

October sneaked in last week like a mean bully, pushing our balmy September into memory and stealing those lovely degrees of extra warmth she had caressed us with all month.

This morning my son trotted off to school in his new winter coat (by afternoon, the hood had mysteriously 'fallen' off). Tonight I huddled over radiators gurgling back into life after their summer hibernation and noticed more leaves changing into their golden outfits ready for a quickstep in the wind.

This year I seem to have noticed Autumn far more than ever before. I am in touch with her senses - hearing the crackle of leaves, pop of seeds, sniffing the sweet decay and dancing with her thoughtfully provided partners in the piles of leaves gathered so carefully by the chill wind.

Perhaps it is my new-found creativity that awakened me to the season's beauty - or maybe we just forget, taken in by each season, captivated by the moment.

My son has been given an Autumn project for homework. He produced pockets full of crushed and crumpled leaves for his 'collection'. We went hunting for conkers and acorns and talked colour.

In my project I experimented with a spot of art journaling - my own homework from my Art Journaling Supernova class.

PS: Excuse the dancing superlatives - been watching Strictly...

Orange you lucky!

Roll up, roll up.Two oranges for the price of one. Come on ladies, pick up a bargain why don't ya. Lovely juicy oranges...

I do like a bit of Inspiration to set my creative cogs a-whirring. When I stumbled upon Inspiration Avenue's blog a wee while ago it was indeed a day most fortunate as it has already led me to make some lovely new friends as well given me opportunities for more tasty creative outpouring. Now they are hosting a weekly challenge.. Well, you know me and a challenge... Why don't you come along and join in!

This week they suggest 'orange' as their theme. Very autumnal. My garden is slowly turning orange as the leaves begin to curl and wrinkle in the sunlight that finally decides to show its face now summer is over. As an aside - why is it that at this time of year spiders insist on spinning their webs at face height across pathways so you end up wearing them like some kind of halloween bridal veil?

I was in the mood for getting sticky this week in my creativity, so made some collage & acrylics boxes. It's a most restful exercise - until you view the mess strewn in a 5 mile radius around the work table. Even the cats have little bits of paper sticking out of their fur which they carry round the house to deposit in their favourite sleep spots.

Then I also couldn't resist a bit of spooky digital fun. I was actually going to save this for a forthcoming Halloween project, but have a sneak preview.

Watch out Mr Spider... or I'll set my pumpkins on ya!

Season of mist

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Spider webs are carefully spun;

Laden with conkers and acorns we bless

With fruit the vines that provide such fun;

To crunch the fall among the golden trees

And fill the heart with pleasure to the core;

To carry pumpkin, rich with earthy smell

becoming sweet soup; we all desire more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees

Until they think warm days will never cease

For Summer's songs will always tell

Lisa Wright (with a little quite a bit of help from a certain Mr John Keats)

This morning was beautifully autumnal. I admit no mist, but that special crispness in the air alight with sparkling colour and charm. It was wonderful to be out soaking it all in, feet sniffing through the leaves looking for conkers, wiping the sticky webs out of your face and dusting the very same web-makers from your hair. I felt most lyrical upon my return, so poor Mr Keats was subjected to a little 'tampering'. He's probably turning in his grave poor fellow.

I've realised that early Autumn really is a special time of year that is too soon forgotten. Today reminded me of how September hangs onto Summer's beauty - rich and ripe before October's damp and the icy claws of November reach out and drag away all the colour and warmth. I so love the crunch of dried leaves underfoot and watching them swirl down around me dancing in the muted light. If you're not familiar with the (unmessed with) version of Keats' Ode to Autumn, you should google it. A stunningly evocative piece of poetry.

I feel the need to paint acorns now and partake a little of the fruit of the vine... (though reading this, you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd already enjoyed a little Bacchus nectar!