Art and Abart

Happy New Year from Sydney. Its a lovely day at last after all the rain but the city is awash with Covid and people are staying at home if ...

  The little gum tree I planted when I arrived here two years ago has burst into flower just in time for Christmas.  May you have a year of ...

My morning walk takes me down a set of  stairs to the bottom of the hill, then around the corner and up the hill again along parallel street...

Spring has sprung and the garden is a riot of flowers, at least as much as a garden can be that is on slowly-improving soil. Thankful...

Today I went out for the first time (apart for my two vaccine shots) since May, to the post office and chemist. I have been so isolated that...

 Lots of dawn activity in the trees with two sulphur crested cockatoos chasing a little bird. Sulphur crested cockatoo with little bird disa...

We are in lock-down again in Sydney and the online sketch group I joined in 2020 has started to organise  online exercises again. On Saturda...

It's been so windy here in Sydney that the tops blew off a neighbourhood cactus. 

https://youtu.be/yAG0kPovQe8    Covid lockdown bears all sorts of fruits. Music by a talented young mate of mine Girl Platoon.

When I arrived in Germany in 1973 I had no idea I would spend the next couple of years collecting oral histories but that is what happened. ...

Can it be June already? It is!  The 4th June is almost over as I write, the 4th day of winter, although the past two weeks in Sydney have be...

On my way to Bayreuth (pre-Covid) to hear Wagner's operas Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal I stayed with friends in Hamburg. Sitting on ...

I hang my work around the house in an ever changing art show. Some paintings I never tire of, others are favourites for a while then take a ...

Is it April already? The self sown tomato plant in my garden (last post) produced lots of tiny tomatoes, many of which were green when I pul...

My skills at growing vegetables seems to be rather less than growing catnip and yellow lantana. I bught a tomato plant in spring and another...

We are told repeatedly that exercise is good for us but the problem with exercise is that it is so boring. Keeping up an exercise routine i...

I have lived here over a year now. When I arrived the garden was lawn and the patch of ground between fence and path was weeds.  Early very...

It is 28 December, a Monday but the streets hereabouts are quiet as it is a public holiday. At 8am it is already warm, over 25C but it is...

It's a couple of days until Christmas, but really, who would know? One of the effects of the pandemic is that it has messed with our int...

 I planted Sweetpeas last autumn so I had something to watch grow through the winter. They have been flowering since September and the more ...