Yesterday's walk yielded this mass of I think marigolds. It fills most of the ground floor width of the house.
And I've been reading material other than Elin Hilderbrand, the ultimate fluffy beach read.
At least I've been trying. I embarked on Piranesi, after a wait for my turn at the library. It came faster than I expected, and I think I can guess why.
Reportedly a tour de force of fantasy writing, not my usual choice, but I loved Ladies of Grace Adieu and as far as I've got in the massive Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell.
So I started Piranesi, and I can report that if you've just been through two major flooding and damaging storms in nine days, with dozens of drowning deaths, danger to your son and cleanup still under way, this might not be a happy choice of leisure reading.
It opens in a maze like structure subject to flooding, where the main characters climbs ever higher to escape the water until it recedes, and notes human remains he's found in various rooms.
It's an allegory, not a documentary, but after a couple of waves of panic and virtual claustrophobia, I set it gently down for a more settled time in my own life. I wonder if other borrowers did likewise, hence the rapid arrival at the top of what had been a long waiting list.
And instead I watched the latest Last Homely. House on YouTube, Kate baking scones, and found hey, she's got the Be-Ro book!
My Mom had that when I was very young, though by then she probably knew it well enough not to need the recipes. So I tracked it down online and I think this was the edition she used.
The flour company used to give them away with their self raising flour, probably why it's so tall and narrow, to go with the bag of flour. The first one came out in 1923, with many editions since.
I'm pretty sure this was her vintage, because it was that sepia colored ink. So here's some of what she baked out of it in the 1940s.
The book itself had the usual wear and tear from flour and fats and being handled. It's from an era where it was intended to train girls to be good home bakers, and their inevitable goal was supposed to be that of housewife.
About reading negative space: it's the space around the solid objects. It's what a natural artist draws rather than the object itself. It's what creates the composition.
You can learn to see it, and I've taught it to adults, but to an artist it's just how you see. In fact I was amazed as an adult, when I discovered everybody didn't. It's how you create composition. It's how you crop photos.
You can see it in the way I cropped the marigold picture at the head of this post, those bits of background and the shadowed areas creating the composition. This may just need to flow over you if the concept is a new one in your thinking. But it's a permanent presence in an artist's way of life.
And it's clearly a great byway for some of us to travel on no excuse at all.
