Spam, Notifications and Nonsuchstuff

Hello friends!

No one else has mentioned issues with Blogger so I'm wondering if it's my computer. Here's what's been happening. 

When any of you kindly leaves a comment on my blog, at the moment it's coming through just fine. However, when I reply to your comments, my comments seem to end up in spam. Of course, then I have to move them to where they are meant to be. This is hot on the heels of the last problem I had when my comments were showing up as anonymous for weeks. That seems to have self righted I hope I'm not speaking too soon!

The other thing that's been happening recently is I'm hearing from a lot of you that you are no longer getting notifications when I post a blog. Well, I'm sorry I can't shed any light on that at all. I have checked with friends who get notifications and some of them are saying yes. They're getting notifications, whereas others are saying no. Sorry but I do not know why this is, or what to do to rectify.

I wish I knew what to suggest to those of you who are experiencing mild angst over not getting your notifications but I really don't know what to say. I really don't.

If I'm perfectly honest, I don't know how half of you follow me anymore Whether you're getting email notifications, blogger notifications or some other sorts of notifications. There've been so many changes since I started writing a blog. I haven't been able to keep up with them. 

The weather has been frightful I know many of you can relate to this in whatever part of the world you live in. We have had an unprecedentedly early named storm of the season. Storm Anthoni Lashed us last weekend with winds of in excess of 70 miles an hour and torrential rain. The man who comes to mow my lawn for me will have his work cut out. No pun intended. fFor the grass which a few short weeks ago was brown and very dead looking has done what the grass does best: respond to the rain and shot up like nobody's business.

I have not seen anything of the couple who were coming to volunteer to help me with the garden for months now. The last time I saw them, they said they'd be in touch within two or three weeks and outlined what they'd hoped to achieve. That was the last I saw or heard from them. So my garden has been left to get on with it itself.

The lands on which my cottage is built used to be a field. It was well known for its blackberries. It took my father many months of working in his spare time to clear the land from the vines. For several years. everything was turned over to growing our own food. However, since my decline in health, I have not been able to keep on top of clearing anything and gradually the blackberry vines are starting to take over the land again.  What was once my beautiful raspberry and blackcurrant patch is once more chock full of blackberry vines. Due to having Parkinson's my balance isn't great, consequently I don't think I'll be able to pick them myself and I'll have to offer them up to somebody who wants to come in and pick for themselves.

I actually offered the land up free to anybody. if they want to clear it, to grow their own vegetables. I was surprised I didn't get any takers on it. When the local allotments came up for grabs, they flew out the window, so to speak. I really expected to have a few people say they were interested. But no.

Unable to garden now and grow things I have to content myself with painting flowers instead. Here is a sunflower I painted from another online class in the Anna Mason Nature Studio.  If I don't tell you that I didn't have the correct paints and consequently have lost the luminosity that only watercolour can deliver, you would not think any different, would you? It's a perfectly acceptable painting of a sunflower, except it's not as it's supposed to be. but only I know that. And now, of course, you do.  

So to occupy my time, I have got involved in yet another online art challenge. This one is only for 10 days.  It's a Twinchie/Inchie challenge.  I have been eager to do something with the new Kuratake paints that I got. This will do nicely to play with them.  They come up very well on black paper, much more colour than on white. So I took some black card stock and cut it into 2 inch squares. 2 inches is the maximum size permitted for this challenge but you can use any substrate. that you choose. so paper, card, wood,  fabric, I suppose you could use glass, metal, slate, whatever, it's your choice as long as it isn't bigger than two inches. Here's what I've done so far. The first 4 days.  As they are quick to complete some days I've done more than one.

Prompt FROTH

A Froth of Impressionistic flowers

Frothy Clouds

Prompt BARK

Three interpretations

Prompt WEAVE

one 2d and one 3d

Prompt MAGNOLIA

They're quite quickly done. They probably take longer to dry than they take to paint. I hope you enjoy them as much as I'm having fun from them.

Until next time

Stay safe, stay well

Debbie xo