MY PALM TREE IS FLOWERING AGAIN!

Big fat buds about to open! Unbelievable that it should flower two years running.

I"ve been doing a lot of gardening, digging up more of my lawn, moving plants from the bottom of the garden to the top, I even mowed the little bit of lawn that is left yesterday evening (wonders never cease, it's been two years since it saw a mower!). I've planted my potatoes, garlic, sown more radishes, salad, calendula. I've cut down a few dead bamboo poles and have made teepees around which to plant runner beans. My broad beans have come up, but thanks to all the cats that frequent my garden, that dig and roll in freshly dug soil, there are holes in the line, and some seeds which have been pushed out of alignment. Never mind. I'm so pleased to see it all growing.

Crab apple in flower on the terrace

Rhododendron "Jack"

New trough for my pine tree on my front terrace

Apple tree in flower in the garden below the terrace

Progress in the veg garden

 
 

Grama, 94th birthday

 



I went to England for a long weekend at the beginning of April for my Mum's 94th birthday. Nicholas came down from London, which was lovely, we managed to have a couple of pub lunches and a good chat. He's in Thailand on holiday now. The weather wasn't very good, but Mum's garden looked lovely. We had a celebration seafood lunch for her birthday on Sunday.

Grama's 94th birthday

I've finished another couple of pieces of pottery, a little serving dish for hors d'oeuvres, or amuse-gueule, in the shape of a Breton triskell, and a lopsided (on purpose!) jug with a snake handle and glaze that I wanted to look like the waves of a certain famous Japanese artist. Not bad, I'm quite pleased with it.





Waves on the Wave jug



Snake handle of Wave jug



I organized a "sortie" for my Quimper ovs (on va sortir) group. Four people came to lunch last Sunday to learn to make Chinese chicken noodle soup. It was lovely weather, we ate on the terrace and they went away with the recipe. I've just organized for next Saturday an exchange of plants: each person brings from 1 to 5 plants, and can take away the same number of someone else's. I may have cut the timing a bit fine, I'm wondering whether people will have time to prepare plants in three days... we'll see. And I'm going to a wine tasting on Thursday. Very busy, you can see!



Triskell bowl






Triskell bowl (close up)








Seafood lunch for Grama's birthday

Can't get the photos in the right order. Never mind, you get the gist?

I went to see The King's Speech the day before yesterday. I found a cinema in Quimper where it was playing in English. Wonderful film, fantastic actors, but quite stressful. One found oneself completely rigid with the effort of trying to help the poor man out.

I have photographed my two latest pieces of pottery. One is a simple shell shaped bowl, the other a large rather lopsided plant pot with the front and back sculpted in a sort of seaside rocks theme. Difficult to describe the inspiration, rocks at low tide, with seaweed, crevices, water, etc. (P.S. Lopsided with me is entirely intentional!)

I have been putting the power hose over my back terrace. It was filthy with moss, grime, mud, and lots of bits of plant pots that fell apart during last winter's cold weather. It's such hard work, but at least the result is immediate. I have to do the front as well, but am not quite sure how, since it slopes down towards the house and front door and all the water will run down and maybe not drain away fast enough before inundating me! I think very small doses will do it, stopping and starting so that the water has time to disappear. I've got lots of pretty flowers on my front terrace, hyacinths (which are starting to fall over but which are a lovely colour), daffodils,  and various shrubs with sweet smelling flowers.  (The "boards" behind the daffodils are the old door of the vegetable cellar in Le Mée!).

My back garden is also progressing, but more slowly now that the pressure of planting is off. I've sown a few seeds, cleared a bit more turf, and transplanted various things which were not in the right place.

A BIT MORE POTTERY

Good Lord! I've managed to upload all the photos I wanted in one go.

This is an artichoke sculpture I have been working on for ages, couldn't get the colour right. But now it's finished, and looks good and I'm inordinately proud of it, as you can guess by the number of pictures!

It's about the size of... a large artichoke! What's it good for? Not much really. Just an object of beauty.

And here is Ellie showing off the size of our big beach...

She was one year old a couple of weeks ago. Oslo has been gone for a whole year. How time flies... And here is a sun-worshipping dachshund:

Well, we get little enough of it (sun) nowadays.

Nothing else to report really.

ALL TRAVELLING DONE

I'm back from my visit to the States to see Cécile, Aziz and the children. I had a good trip, and warm weather for the first week. Then it went rainy and colder. I liked their new house, which reminds me of illustrations one sees in children's story books of the "Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" 's house, that is, quirky, slightly crooked and up a lot of stairs. It's an old house, especially for the States, and there's a lot to do, but it has character and history.

Leif had his first birthday while I was there, and Marius prepared for halloween, choosing which costume he was going to dress up in. And I had the dubious pleasure of keeping them for a day and a half while their parents took a breather in New York.

I had an American lady housesitting while I was away, everything went well, the dog loved her and got walked about three times as much as with me. Here is a picture in front of a crab dinner and margaritas...

Now everything is back to normal, no more travelling for this year (or next, probably, with the state of my finances), but Nicholas' visit at Christmas to look forward to. I must get on with painting the sitting room and finishing the upstairs bathroom.

I finished a pottery doorstop in the shape of a spineless hedgehog before leaving. Here is a picture of it, I'm really pleased with the result, and it's nice and heavy and holds the door more than adequately. I shall be picking up my finished artichoke sculpture tomorrow, after innumerable coats of enamel trying to get the right colours. If it's not right this time, I'll give up. I'll show you a picture next post.

I went last night to a feng shui workshop the other side of Quimper. Last minute decision, I only actually found out about it a couple of hours before it took place. I really enjoyed it, and think I shall attend future workshops (about one a month). I've been interested in feng shui and geobiology for ages, but it's really complicated to learn out of books. The lady holding the workshop was very nice, and explained things slowly and very understandably. It'll get more complicated of course, but I'm quite hopeful that I shall get a better idea of it this way. And I'll meet a few more people!

ART

Here are a some photographs of  paintings I've done recently. There are others I'm still fiddling with.

This is a riverside village, not all that good, I couldn't get the green right.

This is called Dimanche au bord de la mer, and I'm very pleased with it. I don't know if you can make it out in the picture, I've scratched plates, knives and forks and glasses into the wet paint. It really gets the atmosphere I wanted and I think I'm making progress.

This is Girl with green hair, it looks better in the close up version on the right, but the composition is slightly off so I've put the other full version on the left. I've noticed that the best paintings are done on old canvases that I've painted over to use again. It gives an interesting twist to backgrounds that you would never get otherwise.

My pottery has proved unphotographable, it just doesn't come out right, so I'm not going to show it to anyone. I did lots of pots, rather nice ones, at the end of the pottery year, and a sort of art nouveau lady without arms who is going to become a lamp when I've found or made a shade for her. Maybe then I can get a good photograph. And I've got an artichoke sculpture coming up (last coat, I hope, of enamel being fired this week) which looks quite good. Maybe I can get a decent photo of that...

BACK TO ROUTINE

I have been home from my travels for three weeks. I collected Ellie who had been back at the breeder's for five weeks. She had grown to almost adult size. She's now nearly 6 months old. She's a very good quiet puppy, quite clean and has done no damage in the house (touch wood). She's trouble free as I hoped she would be and leaves no hair all over, but I have to say I do miss not having a labrador. I have to remind myself daily why I took such a small dog!

Ellie at the beach before I left for India

Today is the first day it has rained since I've been back! Quite something for Brittany. It's been really hot, just like summer in fact, with people sunbathing and even swimming at the beach. But today it's grey and wet, my plants will love it. I've been replacing some of the pots that cracked into a thousand pieces with last winter's frosts and I bought a few herbs yesterday, just two varieties of mint, some parsley, basil, a couple of tomato plants and a tiny flat rosemary plant, hope the slugs don't get it all.

I went to my pottery class yesterday too for the first time in two months, when I got back from India, the class had broken up for the Easter holidays. I finished a sort of hollow sitting chicken shape to keep salt in in my kitchen (it's called a main de sel in French), and another of my weird shapeless plant pots.

A BIT MORE POTTERY

I had to cancel the carpenter last week, the weather was so awful. He sets up his workbench outside on my front terrace, so unless it is fine, it just can't be done. Now he can't come before mid July...

I've been in sandwich mode the last few days, warmer weather I suppose, not hungry for much more. So on Saturday I took a Picard Surgelés baguette out of the freezer, and while it was cooking I mashed up an avocado with tabasco, salt and pepper, and fried up some streaky bacon. When the baguette had cooled a bit, I spread the avocado, slapped the bacon on top, and it was simply delicious. Yesterday, Sunday, I did some organic chutes (how do you say that in English? bits and pieces, ends of slices, I don't know...) of smoked salmon with a large handful of watercress blended with a little butter, and shishimi togarashi (japanese 7 spice pepper). Delicious again, except that I overcooked the baguette and the crust was so... crusty that it took the skin off and even made a fair sized hole in my palate. So today it's slops for me, while it heals! But classy slops! I just had a large bowl of chicken and noodle soup with fresh shiitake mushrooms and ciboulette from the garden.

Here are the pottery photos I took last week.

A little soliflore in the shape of a pomegranate, of which I'm quite proud, hence the three photos!

A sort of touareg woman sculpture, which I don't quite know what to do with. In fact the number of bits and pieces of pottery I don't quite know what to do with is mounting up!

A flower pot or two

and a beach sculpture that is not quite this colour, but for some reason my camera just won't get it right, which is going to be a kitchen clock. The mechanism, hands and battery, are in a desk drawer that is blocked by the pile of wood the carpenter left, so putting it together will have to wait until July.

AUTHENTIC PORRIDGE

This morning I found that the little milk I had left in the fridge had gone off, so I mixed up a small quantity of organic powdered ewe's milk that I keep as an ingredient for making milk bath. It was very good, and eating it on my porridge, I reflected that this was probably the combination that crofters of old probably used, since they would have been far more likely to keep sheep than cows. There, my authentic Sunday morning moment...

I brought back dozens of tiny champignons de Paris that I had made in pottery this week. Why make mushrooms, you may wonder? Well, I'm blatantly copying an idea I saw on etsy.com, but not for sale, of course. I'm making a moss garden for my old Mum for her birthday at the end of the month. Difficult to know what to give a mum of her age, and I thought she'd appreciate the "I made it all by myself" feel. In fact I've made several. I bought glass containers of all shapes and sizes on ebay in January, some with lids, some without. I made the mushrooms (an essential ingredient: one tiny mushroom) in February. And the other day I raided my local nursery for attractive moss I'd seen growing on the earth around repotted saplings. And the result is rather fetching, I think! Very "I made it all by myself", in any case.

I also crocheted a cotton oven cloth yesterday, to replace the one I've been using these twenty years and which, although I was very sad to put it in the bin, really had to go. This one is nice and bright and springlike, but the photo is a little pale.

My camelias have suffered a little from the frost these last two weeks, but I managed to get a couple of photos before they did. Camelias are lovely, their fallen blooms, which go squishy and stick to everything, are not. I'm being very careful to pick them up as they fall this year.

The first early cherry has started to flower at the bottom of the garden. Its flowers are so very small that you have to be within a couple of metres to see them at all, but they are another sign of Spring and it's all very heartening.

Oslo has been very ill but is better. She looks quite normal again except for lumps and bumps all over. I may even, weather permitting, try taking her to the beach this week.