Not sure if it is a particularly beautiful day today, but it occurred to me as I drove home, enjoying all I saw, that I always have something beautiful to feast my eyes on in this place.
A friend and I have started jogging, choosing a different path each day. Sometimes we are down by the river, other times in the hills, or the valley and have been thus treated to an exhilarating variety of beautiful country homes and churches, winter rivers and end of winter scenery with its green green wheat popping up optimistically everywhere, first trees starting to bloom white and the faintest mauve, soft white wild flowers in all the fallow fields with their more tempered sage greens, the temperamental sky which can never decide which face to wear but which never once wears the same one twice, the every day drama of changing light, the details like wild grass next to a porous beige stone, or fat black crows resting in the top branches of bare trees, the changing moods of the Consolazione church in different moments of the day, the dutiful rows of plump winter vegetables, the soft variety of colours in a stone wall, the sturdy old woman with a jewel-toned scarf over her head- it is enough to make one short circuit! So much to absorb, all of which I want to paint, photograph, write about or use in a wood project, because that is how I get to know and embed in my memory things I love.