full Thursday post

 such a Dandy Lion in our front garden, we have many a wild flower in our garden, seems the way for us: they feel at home here, self seed, are well adapted to this environment, don't need watering or feeding, they mingle with the seeds and plants that were either planted by the previous owner and/or ourselves, many can be eaten and/or used for dyeing I have come to discover, plus I am a lazy gardener and not very organised plant-wise (maybe it's true of other things as well, but I'll leave that for now)
I am part of the human race and as we as an industrious species cannot seem to stay still and be quiet in our room, I too am prone to action and am known to friends and self as the proverbial busy bee, so the gardening laziness ends with the design part, there's always lots to do in a garden I find: from mowing the lawn (well we call it a lawn as it is green, more green ground cover than actual grass) weeding i.e. removing nettles by hand, clipping hedgerows, cutting wood, sweeping the tiles, sowing seeds, making stakes, harvesting dyeplants, harvesting salad ingredients, reading in the one reclining garden chair we own, feeding the birds, especially the woodpecker who loves the peanuts! he always manages to brighten my day; watch the seasons...collect plums and apples and pears, eat these fruits, move stuff about.....how did I end up here, I was going to write about my walk this morning, here are the photo's: looking back towards the village of Arkel where I left my car for a check up this morning

on the photo above you can see a sign Linge (right) which is for the boats pointing in the direction of the river the Linge to the left, in the pic below is the Linge:
if you go straight ahead you follow along the canal leading into Gorinchem town and eventually to the large river Waal; I walked along the canal

one might wonder at the sight of these lamp posts in the middle of a field, that is until you realise you're in the Netherlands and we Dutch love skating, preferably in the open air; so come Winter a field like this is flooded and once it's frozen over we can skate on the ice and continue to do so in the dark evenings thanks to the lights shining down upon us.

 the canal:

in the back ground the concrete factory situated along the canal; until quite recently, let's say 50 years ago, people didn't want to live alongside the rivers and canals, it was for the poor and industry, how time's have changed, you have to pay a small fortune for anything on the riverbanks these days; below a beautiful gate with a sign that says 'no dogs allowed, cow pasture' (no cows in sight)

 we're now past the concrete factory, have crossed a bridge and are now on the dike, that runs along the Linge (not quite sure how that works out, checked it out on the map, there are curves and such) anyway I ended up on the dike with the Linge on my left, heading home once more

back home these prints awaited me, the prints I made last evening with the latest version of the lino cut, the hare has become slimmer, I felt he was too big in relation to the dog, although the dog is still a young dog, curious and slightly foolish, the hare is older and wiser and so he can be big, just not that big I decided.
In the print below there was way too much ink on the lino and all the lines that should have stayed white were stained, so I washed out as much of the paint as I could until I quite liked the effect of the darker outlines and then fixed it with ironing; it has an etch-like quality now:

 friends M & J came visiting and whilst they were happily cutting away at their lino's I did some more printing experiments on the linen patchworks I'd made a while back, all I have to do now is make a stretcher, ugh; also a small figure for the bare square above

after our hard work we went for a stroll in the woods, but soon hurried back as we could hear thunder in the distance coming ever closer, the sky darkened ominously; shortly after they had left the heavens opened and I was lured onto the verandah by the enormous din: hail stones