Hot Earth

On my run this morning there was little colour to be seen. Heavy cloud cover and rain threatening and falling. Worse as the day wore on.

Spent the major part of the day working with a Geek on Wheels, who was here to upgrade the systems in MacBook and iMac. My ability to manage these things is minimal due to low tolerance of frustration with machines that don't instantly do as I want them. But as I had to enter the passwords repeatedly, I had to be here. The systems were backed up, saved, stored and all that. Then new operating system loaded, and everything did work a bit more quickly.

Just as it was all being tidied up, I found that the new version of iPhoto does things differently. Strangled cries of "Why?", followed by high tension before I discovered that the change had nor deleted my comments and labels for my pictures,; merely changed (not for the better in my early opinion) the presentation.

So S has arrived back before I got around to blipping a grey shot from this morning, and after I said the challenge for this week is colours, she suggested this painting done by her mother a little less than 10 years ago. It is above a cabinet in the apartment, and has artificial poppies in front, and a photograph of the artist with a number of her paintings by one corner.

The title she gave this work is Hot Earth. The technique she used was of her own devising, and she started painting in this way when well into her 70s. Unfortunately she is now too weak, and too often breathless to be able to continue painting. Instead she reads science articles, which she still enjoys discussing with children and grandchildren, albeit in much shorter bursts.

Today she was better than yesterday, but still needing lots of care. A very private and somewhat solitary person, she finds this dependency very difficult. I will take pleasure in showing her this blip; she was very pleased with this blip and the comments made back in May. Thank you to those who have wished her well.