Sunday, April 29, 2018

Spring Color

Blooming Everywhere

Some are wild and some are cultivated.


Vinca Minor/Periwinkle/SingrĂ¼eni


Forget-Me-Not









Our first year with Wisteria blooms!


And some God provides, free and abundantly


Friday, April 27, 2018

Watercolor 128

Little Goat




Glass Fusing

Plate Projects

I forgot to post yesterday. Must have been a busy day...
Lindsey and I went to town to the glass studio to design with colors.
This was a new experience for her, which she said she liked and would like to do again. That equates to success.
This is hers, in unfired form. Check back at the end of next week to see how they turn out.





I needed to make a couple items for end-of-education-time gifts for a son to give to people.
One is a company logo





The other is for an organ teacher






Monday, April 23, 2018

Watercolour 123

Flowers



And Spring

These are at the community gardens




One of our pear trees



Just before the rain. We will see how many blossoms are left tomorrow.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Watercolor 122

The Colors of White





(The in-between numbers are coming up. Some are getting additional elements.)

Friday, April 20, 2018

Watercolor 119

The Ford 

At the place where we saw this pony gat a bath....




...Was a ford close to the pretty stone bridge.




Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Pleasant Thoughts

On Dismal Days

When ones day is very hard - think dental surgery, for instance - it becomes necessary to recite a quantity of Psalms and think happy thoughts of pleasant places.












Perhaps tomorrow will include some therapeutic painting.

Monday, April 16, 2018

Six Rings

SechselaĂ¼ten 

This weekend is ZĂ¼rich‘s end of winter festival. It is based on the custom of historic guilds to burn a symbol of Winter at precisely six o’ clock (thus the name). It involves a very long, very large parade of many people in period costumes, hundreds of horses, thousands of flowers, various wagons representing things from the respective guilds, and marching bands. It even has its own March song. You can check the internet for the SechselaĂ¼ten Marsch.



The main character is a giant snowman made out of a metal skeleton, stuffing, explosives and a pipe. He is the last wagon in the Children’s Parade on Sunday. Then he goes up on huge pile of wood for Monday.
The painting above is one I did many years ago.









On the SechselaĂ¼ten Platz in front of the opera house.


The point of the event is to see how long it takes for his head to explode off. The shorter the time, the sooner and better is summer. The longer the time, the later and less pleasant the summer to come. This year it took twenty minutes and thirty one seconds, rather long.

As the fire rises, each guild has a riders group gallop around the Böögg to music.








 But we are enjoying a lovely spring right now, so all is well.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Nest Centerpieces for Easter

Inspired by the Swiss garden show photos that Sarah posted, I made some "nests" for Easter table decorations.

My grape vines needed their spring pruning so I took the cuttings with intentions of making the nests. I have made many grape vine wreath decorations in the past so I thought it would be an easy project. Ha!

I started by soaking the vine cuttings in warm water for a couple of hours.
It turns out that there is a big difference in the pliability of grape vines in the spring after a long dry winter, compared to cutting them in the fall for Christmas wreaths. No amount of soaking would soften them or make them pliable. I had a lot of trouble shaping them into nests.


No matter what I tried I could only get wreath shapes. I tried a few basket techniques but nothing was working as I imagined.

Finally I gave up on the grape vines and went outside to trim a wild and crazy clematis vine. The viable vines were much more pliable and worked a bit better.

I still had trouble shaping a "nest" with a bottom to it. I ended up making two wreaths, one slightly smaller than the other and linking them together.



  
 Or criscrossing some bits for structure.
Not at all as easy as I thought it would be. I need to examine the centerpieces at the garden show more closely.


 
The next phase of my nest building (birds have my undying admiration) was to walk along my favorite woodsy path looking for spring moss.

Though it was only March it was beginning to spread abundantly.


I gathered small sheets of moss from the ground, which was moist with spring rain. I also stripped sections from a log. These were completely dry and I expected them to stay green in my nests without watering.


Along my woodsy path is this amazing fairy house! I left it undisturbed.



The fairy house has an awning over the door.


I used the moss to line my nests. These nests were then filled with the decorated eggs done by the school children at our church. They were the centerpieces for the Easter breakfast tables at church.







For my home dining table centerpiece I added a primrose, disguising the soil of the plant (contained in a plastic bag) with moss. I then added some of my collection of our home decorated psanky eggs and painted eggs from European countries.





I used some of the spring moss to cover the soil around my seasonal plantings in the porch pots.





These porch planting have been snowed upon several times since they were first put out. Our weather has lately been dreary and rainy every day. Orchards are blooming and spring has arrived but the sun only appears for half a day at most and temperatures are chilly. We are longing for warm sun.