I took a break in January, I think I must have been hibernating.
Here is the December snow chez nous.
February is a bit of a weird month, the only one with less than 30 days.
February comes from the Latin word februa, which means “to cleanse.” The month was named after the Roman Februalia, which was a month-long festival of purification and atonement.
Now that is a mistake, shouldn't we be doing that in January? Also, why does January drag on for 31 days, I would be happy if it ended sooner; maybe it could lead a day to February?
Why would the second month of the year be so much shorter; how did someone know they were going to run out of days in the year by February and know to shorten the month?
So that little mystery is solved by knowing that January and February were the last two months to be added to the Roman Calendar (about 700 BC); apparently before that time their were ten months and then just an indeterminate, unnamed amount of winter. Originally February was the last month of the year but around 450 BC February moved to its current place as the second month of the year.
February trivia:
- February is the only month that can pass without a full moon since the lunar cycle is about 29.5 days long and of course poor February is either 28 or 29 days.
- February is the most often misspelled word in the English language. I hope I haven't spell it wrong, wouldn't that be embarrassing!
-----------------------------------------------------
A few assorted Morocco images:
becoming raisins in Skoura
Todra Gorge
Well enough of that and on to art.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Finally finished a botanical series I have been working on. Started with a leaf skeleton that I had saved in a box because it was so delicate and then every time I went out for a walk I looked for other ideas. Lots of dead bits of vegetation came home with me.
I initially thought I would do just three, but the old watercolour block I was using had four pieces of paper left, so it ended up being four. A bit of spring cleanup in the art drawer too!
This is done in pen, an assortment of coloured and some gel glitter pens and watercolour shadows. So here they are my Skeletons Series:
Clematis leaf and seed
Linden leaf and Seed
