Cultivating a Hobby

I've just started sharing quotes from a book I enjoyed reading a year ago: God and Churchill written by Churchill's great-grandson, Jonathan Sandys. Here's another excerpt that caught my eye - even though I then had no idea I would be picking up painting just months later.

Did you know that Winston Churchill "lived to the ripe old age of ninety"?

"One of his secrets was understanding the importance of rest. ...Mary Soames describes her father resting during a 1942 visit to President Franklin Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park, New York.

"'Papa presented a charming sight... flat on his back in a patch of sun. ... I lay near him and we gazed up at the very blue sky & the green leaves dancing against it - flecked with sun.'

Begonias

"Such relaxation eased Churchill's much-burdened mind, and he began to muse about the colors he would use if he were painting the scene: '[He] commented on the wisdom of God in having made the sky blue and the trees green. "It wouldn't have been nearly so good the other way round."'

Pansies

"Churchill believed that cultivating 'a hobby and new forms of interest is ... a policy of first importance to a public man.' He discovered such a hobby at the age of forty in his love for painting. 'Painting came to my rescue in a most trying time.' he said."

Trying wax-resist for hydrangeas