I continue with my description of mediocrity.

We have somehow lost a season. Where has spring gone? Instead of a gradual warming of the earth, winter has been replaced by summer. We�ve put our fur-lined parkas away and taken out our shorts and tank tops. It seems to me that we used to pass through a transitional period once-upon-a-time, but that appears to have changed. After posting last night�s entry I retired to bed, but found it very warm. The flannel pyjamas have to go. The down comforter has to go too. We had a window open. This reminds me of the weather when we returned home from Greece five years ago. On May 1 we were sleeping with all the windows open. But a week later it got cold for another fortnight. Perhaps that�s what will happen this time too. Curiouser and curiouser.

I just reread last night�s entry, and apart from some typos which I corrected, it wasn�t as incoherent as I thought it would be. The paintings in the concert hall/gallery are worth mentioning. They were extreme close-ups of flowers, � la Georgia O�Keeffe, mostly cala lilies, birds of paradise, orchids, and other warm-climate vegetation. The artist works in acrylic paint because she has an allergy to oils (we spoke with her, that�s how I got this information), although she loves oil paint because one can slow down the process. Acrylics dry extremely quickly, whereas oils take time and allow the artist to work at his leisure. She focused on petals, stamens and pistils, bringing out the brilliant colours of these blooms. Two paintings in particular were quite impressive: a cala lily which seemed to come out of the canvas at the observer and which had truly luminous qualities, and a bird of paradise broken up onto two different sized panels that was brilliantly coloured. One painting I really liked was done on tree bark, reminiscent of the Mexican bark paintings you buy at craft fairs. We actually own a couple. The artist said she had a difficult time finding tree bark to paint on. Even though it is ubiquitous as touristica, she could not buy it in art-supply stores and had to wheedle it out of the painters themselves. She ended up with a good-sized sheet and proceeded to paint a cala lily on it in acrylic paint. The native painters use oil paints. She found that the bark absorbed her paint like a sponge, and ended up laying down around seven layers to get the opacity she needed. Amazingly, she managed to maintain the texture of the bark. The stamen of the lily was decorated with flecks of mica or pyrite, something golden and light reflecting. It was a nice effect.

Otherwise, her extreme close-ups of flowers were nothing special. So many in one place just served to cheapen them. The ones I mentioned above were good, but the rest were just �okay�. I certainly wouldn�t want one on my wall at home. She did have some photographs of flowers in the same vein which were quite intriguing, but again they weren�t special enough to really capture my imagination. I found a link which actually has both the concert and the art show on it. Unfortunately there�s only one example of her work shown, but it�s pretty representational.

One nice thing about the change in weather is that the birds are back. This morning for the first time I�ll be hanging out the wash (I could have done it before, but there has been a constant threat of rain), and it�s one of my favourite quiet times, just me, the wet clothes and the backyard birds. Ah�

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