Light on Salford Quays

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to join a trip to the L S Lowry complex.  The five of us arrived in good time and entered the gallery just in time for the midday guided tour.  After lunch we went down to the waterside, to observe Salford's post-industrial architecture and people.  T, at my request, captured a shot with a seagull behind me over the Quays. The sun shone in a clear blue sky which could have been Mediterranean were it not for the cold wind.  We got home resolving to make this the first of many trips.  

This afternoon it is snowing out of what used to be called a leaden sky.  L S Lowry's sky, I learned, is a dull white to highlight his hurrying and lonely figures, which I also saw for the first time have no shadows.  Most of his landscapes are a composite of his industrial surroundings and have been described as dreamlike, bounded by a wall or feature in the foreground to separate them from the viewer.

The landscapes we drove through on the journey south were familiar and beloved.  There was Winter Hill with the television transmission masts and Lord Leverhulme's dovecote.  Bolton Wanderers football stadium came into view (Lowry painted the old one at Burnden), then the hills towards Ramsbottom with another monument and as we turned left for Salford before the descent to the Quays there were the hills of my childhood along the border with the Peak District.  On the return journey as the ground rose, there to our right were Longridge, Pendle beyond, and the fells of the Forest of Bowland to the north.  Y's satnav marked each twist and turn and gave us the diagrammatic view - over there, though invisible to us was Leeds.

When I sleep I dream of these hills - symbolic places that I do not always know how to interpret.  When I am awake I am glad of light, landscape, and companions on the road.

Garden and Garage Gym

Some weeks before the New Year my family introduced the topic of exercising for a healthy heart.  Challenged, I managed 50 skips in the dining room with a borrowed rope.  I stopped because I was out of breath.  We used to love skipping as children, I was reminded.  I also loved stilts, roller skating and reaching 100 on a pogo stick even though this latter activity gave me blisters on the palms of my hands.  

And now I have turned 64.  I came home with the skipping rope on loan and chose two places to skip.  The first is the patio where I face the blackcurrant bushes by the wall and the snowdrops that are emerging at their bases.  Every day that I skip I can see that the snowdrops have grown by small amounts.  And every day I aim to add five or more to each set.  I started with three sets of 50 interspersed with some simple stretching exercises and this seems to be progressing well.  

On cold and rainy days I skip in the garage in a space kindly cleared by my husband.  This does not afford quite as inspiring a view as the patio.  In the foreground to the right are four bins -glass and tins, paper and cardboard, non-recyclables and garden waste and to my left various garden ladders, old painting garments and some of the stuff that finds a resting place in the garage on the way to the council tip.

As I count I focus my attention down the garden along the line of fruit bushes, or look in detail at a fallen leaf on our garage floor and keep the rope turning.  I have never wanted to jog, a long-legged cousin took me and once was enough, but as I keep skipping I wonder if this is what runners sense challenging the reluctant muscles, feeling the slow improvement, observing the ever changing view. 

Bird Feeder Observations

Last week I was scattering crumbs for the blackbirds from the kitchen steps and my husband was whistling to call them closer.  This week after I saw frost covering the lawn and ice hardening the flowerbeds there is a newly reinstated bird feeder.  The blackbirds soon began to fly up and perch, flapped to balance, pecked at the contents to dislodge fat and seeds. They have remembered this strategy from last year, but are still optimistic whenever I open the back door and they eye me, head tipped to one side, from the fence. 

The next birds at the feeder were the robins.  This surprised me as I would have expected them to be in first.  Third in line were the sparrows, popping out of the hedge one or two at a time.  No problems with balance there.  The woodpigeon watched from the shed roof but was unable to land on it so contented itself with waddling on the grass picking up bits.  One starling appeared, but the rest of the flock were right over the field whistling in the poplars and so far they have not come to investigate.  The squirrel bobbed past, but responding to gesticulations from my husband disappeared into the park.  The doves were shy, but will return.  The bluetits, coaltits and long-tailed tits are keeping themselves high in the birch trees, but may come down in time.  The wren is hidden in the shrubs, the magpies and jackdaws cackle from the chimney pots, and as seagulls circle over the turf,  the predatory kestrel is a distant memory.

Four seasons in one vase

Following my Christmas post I start the New Year with a decoration that has outlasted the festive season.  Last year we did a small gardening task at church.  The rose hips we also took for free were bright globes of orange.  I had seen hips used like this in a craft fair we visited.  I had an almost identical glazed jug rescued from a collection of pots and pans put out for takers back on our old avenue. (Not a custom I have observed on this one.)  I added eucalyptus, with holly and ivy to represent autumn and winter.  Our Golden Showers rose was still blooming up to Christmas so a bud went in for summer.  Lastly I noted that the shrubs and trees on one of our January walks had received their usual 'haircut' from the flailing machine.  So I salvaged hazel catkins and willow buds which are just showing a touch of white in readiness for the spring which seems to arrive earlier each year.

My best moment was when our rosebud opened and a token of summer fragrance to come entered the place where we sit.