Blossom Report

Yes, I know, the internet has been sprinkled with images of blossoms for weeks, if not months.  In our little frost pocket of a valley, things are later here than for many of the rest of you.  But the Siberian cherries finally did their thing a couple of weeks ago:  presumably the cherries in Siberia were blooming at that moment too.

And I like this promising early stage of the lilac blossom season:  no fragrance yet, but I love the stage where the buds that will become flowers are apparent, and yet one can remember the moment just a few weeks ago when only the tiniest colour at the tip of the branch suggested that anything was about to happen.  

Since we lost the map we made of where we planted our little trees twelve years ago, I'm not certain what this pretty white one is:  perhaps later on we'll be able to tell from the fruit.

The apple blossom is in full show, but the crabapple blossoms are starting to show signs of fatigue.

Out in the bush, the story continues. The larches have needled out, and are at their most intense green of the year.

All the Saskatoons are in bloom.

As is the Oregon grape, the kinnikinnick, the pussy toes, the wild strawberries and, my favourite, the tiny and retiring wood violets.

I found one lady slipper to show you but when I went back with the camera days later I couldn't find it.  Perhaps next year.

The dh and I spent one day at the start of the month dashing to Oliver with a jeep-load of paintings:  as I said in my last post, he is the featured artist for May at the Oliver Art Gallery.  Since the gallery is a co-op, the artists are generally responsible for hanging their own work, and we've found that this is a two-person job:  often more than one pair of hands is required for an awkwardly-placed painting, and two pairs of eyes are always better than one for deciding which paintings to hang together and whether paintings are hanging straight.  The gallery space is small and it's difficult to get photographs that don't distort the dimensions of the paintings, but I did my best to record the moment faithfully, not least because the lighting at the gallery is so much better than what we can contrive at home.  This first one is the "featured artist" wall beside the window.

This is the Bowen Island ferry leaving Snug Cove on Bowen.

And this one is the lilac outside the porch at home:  in a few weeks, this will be exactly what that bush looks like.  I love this painting and hope it never sells.

One of the two palette knife paintings of fishermen:  lots of gorgeous texture in this one.

 

Looking across the harbour at Tofino.

A miscellany of east coast (Middle Cove near St. John's in Newfoundland), west coast (Tofino), and home.

I've always liked this one of horses along the skyline.

This trio of paintings (plus one by someone else) hangs right beside the front door of the gallery.  In the upper left is another fisherman, this one spotted at Waterton Falls during a road trip a couple of years ago.  And the team in the upper right is Monte and Reno, a team of bay crossbreds who've long since gone to their hay pasture in the sky.

It was a lot of work to get all of this organized and hung, but I think my dh has reason to be proud to see his work gathered together like this.  I'll give him another plug and invite you to visit his online gallery on the OAG website.

May is always an extremely busy time of year for us:  the harrowing and the usual garden work; the summer haircuts for the dogs; the hoof trimming, worming, and turning out onto pasture of the horses; the checking and mending of fences both here at home and on the rented pasture; and--for dh--the start of fishing season!  This year, what with art shows and quilt shows and studio makeovers, it's been busier than ever.  I feel as if I haven't sewed a stitch in ages and it will take a bit of time to get back into the rhythm of my studio life whenever I get some time for it.

This weekend, I did get time for it.  I'd thought I was done with streamlining and reorganizing the studio, but it turns out that I was wrong.  After getting myself wound into knots by spending an afternoon pulling out bins, looking at the contents, putting them back again, making piles of fabric and pushing them aside in favour of other piles of fabric, I realized that I needed to be a bit more purposeful with my studio time.  I had the brainwave to grab some index cards and use them to itemize the projects that are underway but not finished.  I added notes to each card about what stage the project has reached, problems that are keeping me from finishing them, and possible solutions to those problems.  It took three days to remember and/or unearth all these projects, and I decided to expand the scope of the list a bit and include projects that as yet exist as little more than ideas and intentions.  I ended up with twenty cards.  I know, TWENTY!  But one of them wasn't a quilt and it turned out to be so easily done that an hour of my time today and a bit of dh's help and it was finished and the index card had been tossed in the kindling box near the wood stove.

For a year or more I've had an old bulletin board leaning up against the studio wall, its cork surface so buckled and bubbled that dh urged me to toss it out.  But I was convinced I could reclaim it somehow, and I was right.  I've been lamenting for a month or so that I would dearly love to have a larger design wall, but until I have a different and bigger studio, I'm going to have to make do with what I have.  Having cleaned up so much else in the studio, however,  I was able to see today that my design wall real estate has gradually shrunk over the years as I've used the edges as catchall space for bits of paper and fabric:  reminders about sewing machine settings for various tasks, images and drawings I might use to spark a quilt, little collections of fabric scraps that might spark a new quilt's fabric palette, scribblings of books and music I hear on the radio (CBC, of course) as I'm working.  I had a brainwave:  the bulletin board!  I had a newly-empty bit of wall next to the design wall and the bulletin board fit there perfectly.  So I carefully eased out the staples on one corner of the bulletin board's frame and removed the board itself.  I chose some cheery Kaffe Fassett fabric and tore off a piece large enough to cover the board, with extra to wrap around the back.  (Lest you be aghast that I would use some of my precious Fassett stash for such a thing, I'll mention that I found this fabric on sale for $5 a meter a couple of years ago and bought the whole remainder of the bolt, ten metres' worth.  So I feel that I can be a bit lavish with it.)  I pressed the fabric, laid it right side down on my arborite table and placed the bulletin board, smooth backside down, on top.  I pulled the fabric taut, stapled it into place, and slotted the board back into its frame.  Then I pulled closed the open corner of the frame, tapped the original staples back into place, and voila!  Done.  Dh helped me get it up on the wall, where it looked just fine.  And that nasty buckled side is now face to the wall and need never be seen again.

This kind of a fixit is so satisfying.  I felt both brilliant and thrifty.

Next I subjected all the minutiae on the design wall to strict scrutiny, and was able to toss half of it into the kindling box and glue some into my studio journal.  The rest went up on the bulletin board.  The vibrant orange paisley fabric is now almost entirely hidden, but I know it's there and as I complete projects more and more of it will again come to light.  I'm feeling quite a bit more hopeful that I'll be able to be more focussed and productive with my studio time, now that I can see at a glance what's waiting and what needs to be done.

And lest you worry that the dogs looked rather overheated in my last post as they accompanied horses and people back and forth across the field during harrowing, I thought I'd show off their new haircuts.   It took three separate sessions with each dog to get to this point:  they are just as good as they can stand to be for as long as they can stand it, but eventually the biscuits are gone and so is their ability to tolerate being clipped.  So we do it in stages.  I'm by no means expert at this but I'm pretty patient, and the net result--that the dogs are cooler in hot weather--is all we're really concerned about.

Here's what Django looked like a week or so ago, watching a duck on the pond.

And here he is on one of our walks this past weekend.

Sass wasn't quite such a mop, but she's feeling and looking more comfortable too.

Ah, spring!

Lastly, a teaser.  Next week I'll be proudly displaying a brand new, just-finished quilt.  

Comments

[Hildred Finch]

I do enjoy your blogs, and set aside a time to read the length of them at one sitting - photos of the blossoms are lovely, and your husband's paintings very admirable. I particularly like the fisherman. Although I don't highway drive any more I might get over to Oliver to see the showing.

You might be interested in Jill Salter's pictures which have been hung at Tree to Me here in Keremeos by the Tumbleweed Gallery (also a co-op) - until the end of June.

Will look forward to the new quilt. I have warped my loom for some fingertip linen towels, - trying to use up my stash!

[Anne at Shintangle Studio]

Thanks very much, Hildred, for your comment, your praise, and for the time you invest in reading my blog posts. I'll make a note of Jill Salter's work at the gallery in Keremeos and hope we'll get there to see it. I love to think of you weaving with linen, which I think of as a magical fibre. I'm looking forward to seeing photos of your finished towels.