Day 312

Patterns: pine needles, rainwater and four little yellow leaves, in the wheelbarrow.

Rain Rain Rain!  Wind Wind Hurricane!  We woke to branches breaking and crazy wind roaring through the trees, whistling through the screens which are still up on the windows, in the vain hope that we will still have some warm enough days to open them up and let the breeze blow through!

Later Molly and I ran through the much calmer landscape, jumping over the detritus of the storm, and generally plodding over the sodden leaf-litter.  A run that took us a few times around the bottom circuit, then a leap over the fallen ash tree, and into the meadow.  I felt tired, and Molly just panted along behind me, but we must have been quite quiet, because suddenly, halfway up Heartbreak Hill, two white-tailed deer suddenly broke from their cover in the field right next to us, bounding away in a not too concerned way, showing us their dun-brown winter coats, and their snowy tails. 

Molly utterly ignores them, as well as squirrels and most other forms of animal life.  The yellow ball is her god and everything else is not even worthy of notice.  She runs behind me for 3 or 5 or 6 km, holding the ball in her mouth, content, just jogging along, knowing that eventually I will stop, whenever, when I will throw the ball several times for her before we make our weary way home.

Although I thought I was jogging really slowly, I must have caught up some time with the last few circuits, because I ran 3.6 km, at a rate of 7.40 minutes per km.  I had been sure it would be more than 8 minutes each. 

I worked some more on the painting today, and the face is now beginning to look much better, and I remember why I love painting so much, it is so lovely to paint over an undercoat, the basic gist of your painting, and refine it, leaving some of the underneath showing, which adds to the overall effect.