I spend a lot of time in my apartment. It faces south—filled with warm light in winter, when the sun is low, and bright but comfortable in the heat of summer. 
My cat and my plants enjoy the sun as much as I do.
I use the second bedroom as my studio. Because I rent and don’t own my place, I have to be very careful about paint casualties.
I have since moved my flute-practicing zone to another place in my apartment as I added a large easel/storage piece of furniture to this room, which is now solely devoted to painting. On the window sill are amaryllis I nurture in the summer to obtain their voluptuous flowers yearly. Beyond, you can see the university buildings.
Out the southwestern window is a view over the neighbourhood homes. Not being a native Provençale painter, I have difficulty drawing the overlapping tuiles, and used this view as practice.
I attempted to capture the Magritte-like mood of a winter night back there.
I love my balcony. It is too narrow to accommodate me comfortably (plus there’s a hotel opposite—I can and do spy on the guests all the time, but it’s not a very attractive view) but it functions as a space for plants. Summers here are brutally dry and hot, so it’s difficult to find species that don’t suffer, but in the other months, it is provides a mini eco system I delight in.
Recently, I rescued and then lost, a desperate grasshopper (I thought of Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper & the ant) trying to survive the winter:
I was really heartbroken, and mad at myself for trying to mess with nature (he/she probably would have survived fine under the flower pot it had crawled under initially).
I interfere (I hope in a positive way) with the unfolding of Nature’s design through my feeding of the chickadee-like (they’re in the same family) mésanges, who come to the balcony, especially early morning and late afternoon) eager for the sunflower seeds out there:
These scenes from my peaceful life are what keep me happy.
