We awake to a rare cold morning of light falling snow. Mornings such as this are busy in the coffee-scented kitchen and the garden just outside it. Best bird-watching time; everybody’s storing up.

By the next day, snow is still falling through part sun; rare for the Cape. It is point on real January weather and feeling. Best ways to spend a Saturday afternoon- drawing, working on projects, listening to the opera or jazz- maybe some cooking. And- now- we’re adding the writing part of all this. What should this post focus on? I need to report on the owl house installation, but as right now I’m sitting, as I love to do, staring and staring at bird’s markings in motion out on the feeders, I think we’ll look at that. I wrote the other day, what do these marks and colours mean in Nature, really? Not in their sense (the bird’s)- I’d guess we know something about what they mean for species communication- but ours. Because, in a way, it’s a version of the tree falling in the woods. These little Mondrians flitting around- that’s so what they make me think of- but only to us (me). Over and over I find myself drawing the different shapes- thinking I’ve exhausted all possibles but always feeling I must catch another form of the same mark. Even when I’ve finished a piece I want to do another take on it. One sits and sits watching these patterns and the way they change, according to angle. It’s the thing I can’t stop being fascinated by in drawing these little guys- and that’s what’s seen in this new log and the all along in the Folio that’s become one of my biggest projects. It documents the important thing I came to realise when drawing from life and nature- how the angle creates the shape- and that moment’s reality. And it’s a good principle to keep in mind as one operates in life. The way something is presented to oneself is everything. Yes I meant that sentence that way.

That’s what all these sketch notes are about.

It’s a little cold in here despite the sun- but I won’t do a fire till later- don’t want the smoke to keep them away….Time to make soup!

I promise to do the owl house next.