Paintings that evoked some fond memories

Today I came across my old oil painting pad which I used to use during my school holidays. Actually I thought I had lost it but oh I was so thrilled to find it hiding amongst my other things and was very pleasantly surprised to see these two paintings which I had started but never finished in the pad.
The first one is a painting of the place where I grew up, a hill station nestling amongst the Sathpura ranges known as Pachmarhi. It brought back so many memories. I remember I wanted to paint this picture of the lake and that particular spot was my favourite spot from the road which used to skirt the lake because of the view. All the views were lovely but this one was my favourite. I think I had grand ideas of painting this picture. I thought I could paint like Constable or Turner LOL! I remember being quite disappointed when it didn't turn out the way I had pictured it so I left it unfinished.
Anyway let me give you a small tour of the painting. On the far right hand side there was a little hillock on which was my Dad's office. You can't see it as it was hidden amongst the trees. It was a lovely old Colonial type building. By the way most of the area that you see in the picture belongs to the Army. So as you move along towards the left far beyond you see a clump of trees those are supposed to be Eucalyptus trees and there was a big Banyan tree under which the Indian Army Bands used to practice. As you move along again still further to the left you see the bridge. Oh what fun we used to have as kids there. During our summer holidays my friends and I would tag along behind our brothers and come fishing here. Not that we caught anything but it was fun. Since my dad was in the army and being such a small place everyone knew everyone else so we kids were sort of tolerated by the army camp people.
The bridge that you see is a concret bridge which replaced an old wooden bridge as some of the planks had disappeared. It used to be very exciting for us as kids to cross this bridge. Now moving again towards the left you see some tents and some buildings. Well there were rows and rows of them still further left which is not in the picture. Those were the tents for the soilders. If you look closely you will see very close to the lake couple of pens. They were not used but I guess during the time of British Raj they would have been used. Those used to fasinate us but we were not allowed to go near them. That big hill straight ahead was known as Club Hill at first because there was a club at the foothills. Later on it came to be known as Pachmarhi hill. Although this hill was not the highest point but the panoramic view of the whole town was fantastic. We used to often climb it during our holidays. You see that house on the hillock on the opposite side. One of my friend used to live there. We would often walk back together from school and her dog would spot us from far and come running to meet us. It would then take the bag from my friend and take her home. A pity our house couldn't be seen from any part of the lake otherwise I would surely have painted it. It was just past my dad's office. All the mountains you see in the background are supposed to be the Sathpura ranges.

I tried to copy this horse from a card and found that I ran out of space for its tail so thats where I left it.




After all that nostalagia I come to the present. Some pictures of the flowers in my garden. Today was a lovely day and I did a bit of gardening. That's it for today.