An indoor project

Petrichor. I had to look it up. That wonderful smell you get after a long spell of dry and then it buckets down with rain.

Here’s the description: The word comes from the Greek words ‘petra‘ meaning stone and ‘ichor‘ which in Greek mythology refers to the golden fluid that was said to flow through the veins of the gods and the immortals.

The phrase was coined by two researchers at the Australian CSIRO science agency in a 1964 article for the journal Nature. In their research, rocks that had been exposed to warm, dry conditions were steam distilled to reveal a yellow coloured oil that had become trapped in the rocks and soil, a substance they discovered was responsible for the smell.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/precipitation/rain/petrichor

And with a delicious morning of rain (our first in ages and ages)  I resorted to this:

I squelched out and dragged my chaise longue from the potting shed and set it up right next to the giant window in the living room.

I couldn’t stay up under the tin roof of the shed owing to the lightning zapping about the mountain. And I must confess that now Artur is no longer alive, the potting shed just isn’t that much fun anymore.

It’s a now just a place for plants. But I would much prefer it as the place for a languishing cat and a plant person.

Even when he would leap up onto my lap before I was quite settled into the chaise longue, sending my cup of tea flying.

Pause for a deep breath of lament and grief. Small lament, small grief. He was only a cat…. But still.

I have taken a quick ten second video of the heavy rain. It might not work. Our bandwidth on the mountain doesn’t quite run to videos. And it’s a feature on this blog I’ve never pressed before.

I have had more luck by clicking on the little IMG 0821 line below the video.

IMG_0821

I could have done with a snoozing cat to keep me anchored. Being stuck indoors makes me antsy.

Luckily the latest Olivier and Clara Filippi book was in the letterbox. So I gorged on the images while looking out at the rain.

But even I got restless after a quick flip through the pages. So I went into the frighteningly tidy office and had a play with my new wallpaper rolls.

New to me. Very ancient French paper scooped up for a tenner at the junk shop last week.

Here was my first go at using that fabulous old wallpaper. I had one sheet that was tatty and battered. So I pinned it up on the noticeboard and then placed my jam recipes strategically over the worst bits.

I wasn’t daring enough to use that orange one. It’s alarming and alluring and I am torn about where I will see it in the house.  Framed? Panelled? Covering the inside of cupboards?

For now they are all sitting in a woven basket that has lost its handle. It makes me feel creative even without resorting to scissors. And with the rain gauge reading 50mm of blissful rain, I know that I can bound out tomorrow and get working.

That soil will be soft. And I have some radical digging in mind. (Now there’s a surprise.)