birds, insects and dogs

 

sooo much to share, not just the images above, which as Liz suggested over on Instagram are not so much book-destruction as they are a book-make-over.....But which book? After the sudden outpouring of collages the pages are left to rest on workbench as my mind was led astray. 

The weather is both sunny and cool enough to really get going in the garden, hence I'm outdoors most of the time, truly enjoying the physical work there, whilst observing the many seedlings that are slowly but surely growing into flowers in the almost completely dug up back garden. The mature front garden already attracts countless insects and birds, f.e. Black bird, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Songthrush, Sparrow, Wood pigeon, Turtle dove, Wren and Robin. In the crepuscule 'our' housebats swoop all over. 

The pages kept lurking at the back of my mind: what on earth was I going to do with them? Today as the husband and I were walking the dogs* it hit me: these pages could be/are the illustrations to The Dwelling stories, the recurring blue bird is of course a young OBK! Finally things are falling into place, as if all along I had a plan in mind.

The book pages btw are from French novels from my grandparents' home on my dad's side. They were proper francophiles. They visited Paris numerous times and frequented all the cafés where the chansonniers sang and got to know several of the artists, or so we were told. Back home in The Hague they founded* the Vrienden van het Franse Chanson club, whose members would gather in their house to listen to the latest records. Over time they managed to build a huge French Chanson record collection. The entire collection moved to our parents' house in the late eighties where it stood gathering dust in a guest bedroom. Fortunately a few years ago our parents were able to donate almost all records plus the specially-designed-piece of furniture it sat in to the son of friends of theirs who happened to be an ardent chanson lover too. One thing we did not have to deal with when clearing out the big house in 2021. The couple of records my dad kept for himself ended up with me (I spent a year in Paris when I was 18 so it made sense for me to have them). I recently had my record player restored so I now listen to vinyl once again, which is a lot of fun. Hmmmm, I have wandered off from what I thought I was going to post about..... I hadn't even planned to write a lot as this post is already full to the brim with images.

An actual plan coming to fruition is the aforementioned backgarden, I had dreams of it turning into a flower meadow, so it would attract even more insects and wildlife. Lo and behold this morning as I went to inspect the flowers (which ones could I tick off on my long list in my gardening notebook?)  I was treated to these beauties 

Dragonfly, Damselfly and grasshopper

there were other insects but they flew off too fast for me to capture them on camera.

I think one was a Six-spot Burnet...

Finally, a glimpse of what is to come, or rather who is going to join our pack very very soon, a Springer Spaniel called Digger (yes I know, let's hope he does not live up to his name, in the garden at least) TaDa, that's him on the left with his paws stretching up, he has a black spot on top of his head between his black ears, and several spots along his back which you can't see here, cute right;-) 

*addendum:

Le Plateau

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Plateau

I stand corrected! my cousin N. sent me a very friendly email with this link, all in Dutch, the long and the short of it is: my grandparents did not found the magazine nor the club; but impressario Jo van Doveren, cabaretperformer Alex de Haas (aka Alexander Nederveen) and accountant Ben Levi did.

What my cousin and the grandparents díd do was listen to the records and on occasion would write the lyrics down, type them on granddad's heavy typewriter, make 5 copies and mail them with official clubstamp on the envelope to fans who had requested them! 

Thank you N!

*walking is a sure way of solving whatever conundrum one is trying to get to the bottom of, which is why a dog in one's life is such a Big Help