At times like these........

...... it is difficult to stay up beat and at the moment I am failing miserably.  The sad events of the last two weeks in Manchester and London and afew private issues are sending me into hiobernation mode and the weather isn't helping. 
Bank holiday weekend we had strong winds and heavy rain which brought down the tree at the end of the garden and the rose it supportd .  My fault to a cetain extent as I have been talking about thinning the rose for some time now.  Well we thinned it on Monday alright,   You may remember a couple of weeks ago it looked like this.

 

Then this happened

 and now it looks like this. 

All I can say is thank goodness for the artificial lawn because in the wet we would have trashed any real grass.
I now have to think of something to fill the gap, it faces north and I would like some winter interest so an ideas would be welcome.This is the gap I need to fill, as you can see we have left the stumps  of the tree and the rose to give them a chance of regenerating.

I am still playing with paper and have nearly finished another junk journal, in the meantime I made a small field notes sized notebook

 

. Some tuck spots but mainly pages for writing and drawing.

 I wish I could claim to have painted the thrush but alas it was just a scrap I found.

So

 can we just get the election over so that we can switch on tv, computer or ipad without being bombarded with this opinion and that harangue?

Can we all try just to get along, life is so short.

Off to cut, fold and paste.