Nature's Bounty - Preparing for winter

I like this time of year – although, in this part of the world, it does presage grim months ahead - last winter, my old neighbours had difficulty opening their door at one point because of the packed snow lying against it – and temperatures fell to minus 30 in the area for a week or so.  Spring, obviously, is a more optimistic time of year – despite TS Eliot’s line about “April is the cruellest month”. But my vivid memories are of late Septembers, as a child, of the long table between my father’s pulpit and the congregation groaning with vegetables and fruits as the Presbyterian Church in Scotland celebrated HarvestThanksgiving.

The weather is still balmy here in the mountains but, from my balcony overlooking the village road, I can see the village prepare for winter – tractors towing carriers full of cut wood for the stoves; livestock changing their pasture; work on the houses stepping up a pace to ensure it’s finished before the snow strikes - and stays (for several months). And patterns in my own work reflect this – arranging at last for the cracked boiler of the (wood-fired) central heating to be repaired and the system tested for the winter; today shifting the summer shirts to another section of the wardrobe, bringing out the winter shirts, washing some and exposing all of them to the warm, strong wind which sweeps along the balcony.  

The link I’ve given to TS Eliot above is a great reading by three very good British actors (interposed with Eliot himself - very dry) of The Waste Land – not a favourite of mine. I am, however, very fond of his FourQuartets - giving an excerpt of my favourite section this time last year. Here is a useful commentary

I'm very happy to show, at the top of the post, my Yassen Golev aquarelle. He is a friend, the owner of Konus gallery in Sofia and helped me a lot with my booklet on Bulgarian realist painters. He does great surrealist oils - and these highly detailed still-life aquarelles.