Skip to main content

Balls, roses, motivation and procrasti-writing

Why is it always so much easier to motivate others than yourself?

Other than struggling to find the right words to encourage piano practice and homework and bedroom tidying and putting your plates in the dishwasher, I can usually find the right words to motivate others. But although I know what I should be doing,  and know what I want to be doing and why, I find it almost impossible to get down to the elusive it that I need to be doing. The self-directed motivational words blur and disappear. Perhaps because I don't believe them. I stray into a life of procrasti-tidying, procrasti-gardening, procrasti-ironing and procrasti-writing. Today was a fine example -

Procrasti-gardening = ball topiary, admiring a wall and pruning climbing roses

My 'balls' - 'very satisfying even if part of me is thinking tennis balls, yellow shorts and goggles: minion topiary ... ?




I'm not sure if Bertie Baggins agrees with the minion idea




The minions/balls sit atop a ruggedly handsome if somewhat decrepit wall




Which is covered in mosses and lichens




Which I procrasti-photographed, of course




Before moving on to a job I didn't do last year - so I had two summers' worth of rose pruning to do




While Bertie Baggins sat and guarded me from ... well, from nothing actually. Unless he counted the pheasant that far from presenting a threat to me, appeared determined to threaten his own survival by landing in a garden patrolled by two pheasant-hating dogs. It survived. But came back later. And survived again. Pheasants have very small heads.




Unfortunately I couldn't finish - fingers full of thorns and secateurs not man enough for the bigger branches. Cue more procrasti-gardening next weekend.




And more guarding. And watching for stupid pheasants.




Procrasti-baking = apricot and white-chocolate bread loaf.
Pretty yummy




Procrasti-writing = well ... obvious really. But what I really need to do is write a list, several lists, relating to several different things that I have to do soon and 'the lists won't get done unless I write them.'

So, I'll be procrasti-listing next.






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn&#

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten!

Tut, Tut, soggy feet again

"Tut, Tut, looks like rain." Tut, Tut probably isn't the first thing that springs to mind when viewing this picture. And faced with bleak weather and a sad-looking symbol of national pride it is unlikely that many would consider a small bear  a personage of sufficient gravitas to quote. However, Walking the Dog was in Scotland ( was rather than is, because was there last week without internet). And Walking the Dog likes Pooh. That sort of Pooh - the sort with an 'h' at the end. A. A. Milne had a lot to say about the weather. He gave Eeyore my favourite weather-related observation , "The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually." And last Thursday, it did stop. Long enough for Littlest and I to walk to our pooh-sticks bridge. Long enough for us to get half way there, along the grassy path. Long enough for us to chat to the cows (we had to shout as they stubbornly stayed at the distant end of the fie