Thursday 1st February

 Today, 1st February, is Imbolc, the first day of Spring in the ild Celtic calendar. 

The sun shone, the birds were singing...

I even went for a tiny teeny walk along our road, my first of the year, looking at all the front gardens. Some crocuses, even a couple of primulas were flowering.

In the garden I tidied up the chard, removing dead stalks and leaves, and had a little look around. There's a little bit of chard to pick for a green vegetable medley in the next few days.

Green vegetable medley;

Sweat some finely chopped shallot and onion in oil or butter. Add a little garlic if you like. Then add whatever green veg you have handy; some green beans cut into very short pieces, bits of broccoli, a handful of (frozen) peas, broad beans, etc. Add a little water and seasoning; I like to use Marigold vegetable stock granules name up with boiling water. Simmer until done, letting the water evaporate a bit. Then add the stems of your green leaves; chard, kale, spinach, and after a minute the shredded leaves.

When all seems cooked, serve!

At home I taught three piano lessons and did a bit of drawing, but not in any particularly wonderful way.

My blog yesterday was short; the day had been exhausting. There were a few family 'curve balls' flying around that needing catching, and friends are also having 'trying times' so what with one thing and another Two sentences were all that I could reasonably manage to construct! Today has been very different. Most of the curved balls have been caught and the 'trying times' calmed down somewhat.

These are my two best drawings of the day - a diagram which I held up to the screen for one piano student to help her get her head round the counting in her piece; (I don't really think this counts as a drawing!)

and another go at the overlapping spheres - Lesson 2 of  'You can learn to draw in 30 days' book. I didn't do any drawing yesterday, so this picture shows Tuesday's and then today's below. 

My other achievement, if you can call it that, was to find the needle that I lost a couple of days ago and couldn't find anywhere. I was in my left shoe which I had been wearing without ill-effect all day for the first time since I lost the needle. It was only when I took it off... but no harm done, no visible blood...!