Jupiter and its moons

We saw Jupiter and its four moons tonight through my telescope. It looked rather like this picture, though I think the moons were in a horizontal line and there were two stripes on Jupiter.

The Lot has the clearest skies in Europe and is an ideal place for observing the night skies, especially now in August when meteor showers are easier to see.

I love looking up at the skies, but tonight I was talking to a friend who is completely unsettled by the night sky and its stars...and the concept of infinity.

GREAT NEWS: Sam (alias Tofu)'s owner called me today. He has a home after all. Sad for us though; even the cats were beginning to warm to him.

Bumper crop of tomatoes

This is one day's haul of tomatoes. We have been eating so many tomatoes in so many ways that I swear I am beginning to turn into a tomato. I am giving them away to anyone who will take them. Mucella, a mining engineer from Turkey who came to take some private painting lessons last week told me that her mother, an excellent cook, halves them and places them in a five inch deep pan (I have used plastic tubs), salts them, and leaves them in the hot sun for about a week. Twice a day she stirs them. At the end of this period, one strains them to remove the skins, bottles them covered with a small layer of olive oil and the tomato sauce is not only delicious but lasts the winter. Apparently the acid in the tomatoes preserves them. I don't know about this. Mine are fermenting wildly...

A bouquet for you

Completed two weeks of the watercolour workshop on Friday and am recuperating. It's a lot of work- not just the teaching but also the shopping for and preparing of lunches, sorting out transport, lost cameras, passports, wallets, credit cards and bathing suits that inevitably occur when people are traveling. This year a Eugene tantrum was thrown into the mix which spiced things up when he suddenly decided three days in advance to let other people have his gite that my students had booked in January.

But the group was great and coped with all the above (to say nothing of the hordes of heatwave flies) with equanimity and humour and everyone left with a full portfolio and few extra inches from good rural French cuisine.

The painting is one of my demonstrations from the day we attacked flowers, which are all about edges.

More shots of student work to follow...

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.