One Mile From Home is Back!

As I went out for a walk this miserable rainy New Year's day I was reminded of my 2006-2007 year long One mile From Home art project, and how good it was to make myself get outside once a day, create a piece of art, and write a blog post every day for a year. And I thought why not restart the project again. A lot has happened since 2007. In 2008 the Woodland Trust bought 850 acres of the farmland that I walked in most days. Trees have been planted, a unique arboretum containing all 60 of the UK's native trees has been created, so many of the scenes I saw in 2006-2007 are transformed. The children who featured frequently in 2007 have all grown up and left home (including Robin). Daughter Flo is a teacher, has married and now has a beautiful one year old daughter, who I am lucky enough to help look after. Hugo lives in Leeds with his fiancée and works with bikes. Tom lives with his boyfriend in London and is currently working in a homelessness shelter. And Xavier also lives in London and is pursuing the life of a musician. I'm now in receipt of the state pension, but stll don't consider myself to be retired. I have had two knee replacements, so I'm not going to be too strict about walking a mile and back this time. Nor am I going to be particularly strict about creating art in situ. It'll be enough to have some kind of walk outside, and to create some kind of art related to the walk. I realise that almost nobody will be looking at this blog – i mean that was a thing of the 2000s wasn't it? But I do so like creating specifically for a blog. There'll probably also be some cross-posting to Instagram and FaceBook. If any of you still follow blogs do please comment. But I'll probably approve comments first to block spam. If you prefer Instagram I can be found at @julieoakleydesign. So this first picture is one of my favourite trees. It's featured many times in my blogs over the years.