Weather flip flop

Wow the weather is dramatic here at times. Last night the cool air, wind, rain and hail was joined by  thunderstorms. I don't know what time of night (or morning) in all ended but I woke to clear skies and the warmest day yet. I sat on the balcony, for the first time, in shorts and a tank top and was too hot!

I ate half a Pomelo for breakfast. The one on the left, with some sugar sprinkled on it. It is grapefruitlike but not as sharply sour. Still needed some sugar though.

On Thursday, after grocery shopping, I saw a woman, in the Papas parking lot, selling wild asparagus. I had seen her before, with her plastic bag of bundles of green, and this time I bought a bundle. 4 Euro seemed like quite a lot but then I thought about the search for it and know that it is far more labour intensive then the harvesting of asparagus from the fields at home.

It is thinner than the thinnest cultivated asparagus I have ever seen and the stalks vary from pale green through to a purplish green. I snapped off the tough bottom and then steamed them. 80% of them were delicious but a few were bitter and a few were stringy. Still a lovely taste of spring.

I did  a wash and put it out to dry. Did a little reading in the sun. Made an Orange cake to take to the Green Day event tomorrow and messed a little with two of the paintings that I had done before.

This is how it looked and Ros, the painting teacher had suggested I get a little more courageous with the darker paint.

I added dark to the mortar to the right, put some more shading in the stones, added more dark under the leaves and more dark to the flower. It's difficult to compare the two photos as they must have been taken in different light as even the parts I didn't change, are different. But I am happier with the stone wall, it doesn't look as flat.

How it looked before

Now, with more shadowing between the stones and shadows under the sparkles on the sea. I am happier with the pebbles, less so with the sea. The sea really needed to be darker, as it was darker with that cloudy sky, but as it was a wash I couldn't see how to darken it after the fact.

I am really enjoying this learning process and the main challenge seems to be to know when to stop messing with it.