Easter cascarones
March 29, 2013
Wishing you all a Very Happy Easter Weekend !
Last week, I received those “cascarones” decorated for me by Mariana, a dear friend in Texas. What a surprise and a pleasure to open a long box of 12 colourful eggshells ! Only one of them had not coped with the long travel over the pond. You can see it in the basket : half broken and filled with paper confetti. More information about this Latin American, Mexican tradition here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascar%C3%B3n
I wish I could have sent you Springful images of my surroundings. No way. As I write to you, it is snowing again and the rare flowers that I spotted a few days ago like snowdrops, crocuses, primroses, are now covered by a layer of snow that keeps growing. So, why not stay in tune with the “cascarones” and share pictures of a beautiful trip I did in May/June 2008 in South Texas. The vegetation was in full bloom and my friends’ gardens were enchanting. And cool to sit in.
Fina’s bougainvillea right outside my window.
Dora’s artistic tree in her magic garden.
Blue birdhouses and Sweet Dreams in Carmen’s lovely garden. There was so much to look at!
The Canelas Bakery is “Serving Crystal City for three generations“. I imagine those tasty pastries are on my friends’ table on Easter Day, with a lot more delicious homemade food.
This is a painting created by Juan for his sister Mariana. For me it symbolizes the warm welcome I received in my friends’ home. The generosity of their kind heart. The creativity and variety of their tasty cuisine. The strong family links between all generations. Their luxuriant and inviting gardens. The unbelievable heat around midday when only a foreigner could be on the streets taking pictures…
Can you feel the heat under this clear and blue sky ?
This is probably one of my favourite pictures taken during my Texas journey. A wide, straight and endless road. A flat landscape (particularly in this area) and a big, huge sky. And, last but not least for a Swiss person, no mountains on the horizon. Thank you Juan, thank you to your dear family for making me feel at home in your hometown.
Feliz Pascua !
Photography assignment in B/W
March 15, 2013
This is my contribution to a new photography assignment proposed by Scott Thomas: black-white photography. I find it always interesting to join in, visit other participants’ blogs, learning more about photography and seeing each one’s perception of a similar theme. March 20th, 2013, is the deadline to share your pictures.
All details are given here : http://viewsinfinitum.com/2013/03/06/assignment-24-black-white-photography/
Ninio, my Beagle, in one of his patient looks, waiting for the photography session to end and go for a walk. I converted this picture to see how my colourful dog (black, white and tawny) would look in B/W. I like his somewhat softer look and particularly the expression in his hazel eyes.
Early morning in a park of Houston, a flower of magnolia that looked so fresh and brilliant. I felt like heightening this contrast in converting the picture in B/W.
Lyon, France, on the deck on a barge. The colours of the boat were a bit dull and I was surprised to see the difference in shades as I converted the picture.
It’s all about colors !
November 17, 2012
If you read this…
you will know that Scott Thomas’ new photography assignment is about
“Color Composition”.
Please visit Scott Thomas’ blog here : http://viewsinfinitum.com/2012/11/07/assignment-22-color-composition/ for more information. Deadline to send your pictures is : November 21st, 2012; this challenge is the last one Scott is presenting to us this year. Come and join us ! Thank you Scott, it is always so interesting to share our pictures from all over the world and learn more about photography.
Here are a few pictures I would like to share with you for this assignment :
On a dull Winter day in the South of France, the overall colour in this small alley was beige but for this man’s striking red scarf and the bright blue gate.
My favourite time for taking pictures is at sunset. I think it brings out depth and brilliance in any colour.
Autumn offers so many possibilities for displaying colours.
An opening to the light in an ancient church. I particularly like the contrast between architecture and nature.
Images and thoughts
August 9, 2012
Summer is well on its way. We are having such a heatwave over here ! Unusual canicular days are followed by violent storms, heavy rains and coolness. Temperatures going up and down at brief intervals. Our landscape is especially luxuriant this Season, gardens and fields are grateful : flowers, cereals and vegetables abound.
An orange-red rose, my favourite, with as many petals that open every day as the pages of a scented book you would read with delight.
Some of our fresh vegetables picked early in the morning and served for lunch. On the menu that day for our visitors: leeks with vinaigrette, grilled zuchinis and chards au gratin with cheese. We will have to wait a few more weeks to taste our purple potatoes, something new this year.
It has been a rather busy Summer with little time for blogging and visiting you, my friends, I feel sorry about this; there were several birthday celebrations, family and friends’ visits, excursions and picnics in the mountains but also quiet times along a river near our home. Days are longer and as the sun sets on the water, I sometimes meet a family of swans catching its rays as they glide gently towards the shore, hoping for some pieces of bread I don’t always have.
Summer also brought its days of sadness and loss. Two dear friends passed unexpectedly leaving family and friends deeply shocked. The sun shone brightly though as we all gathered in a small mountain village graveyard to pay homage to both friends, at a two weeks’ interval. Sadness for the great loss.
Sadness for all that remained to be shared and said. Sadness when the realization of their absence became more tangible every day. Why so soon ? Unanswered question. At about the same time, I began reading a book about Celtic Wisdom by the Irish writer and philosopher, John O’Donohue: “Anam Cara” or “Soul Friend” in Gaelic. Thank you to Lumens Borealis http://lumensborealis.com/about/ for having introduced me to John O’Donohue’s writings.
Serendipity, happy coincidence in a moment of distress ? I don’t know but here are a few lines, comforting thoughts, that J. O’Donohue wrote about death in his inspiring book :
The Dead Bless Us
I believe that our friends among the dead really mind us and look out for us…One of the exciting developments that may happen in evolution and in human consciousness in the next several hundred years is a whole new relationship with the invisible, eternal world… We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them ? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation or pain. They are home. They are with God from whom they came. They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle of God…the largest embrace in the universe, which holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal, as one.”
So much gratefulness for these lines and deep reflections about death, and about much more I read in this wonderful book. Hardly a day passes without thinking of those two close friends although now sadness is mixed with the serene and happy feeling of having known them both.
For R. and J.-J. I chose this Vivaldi Cello Concerto, largo. I know they loved it.
The circle of life. As days go by, sorrow is followed by joy as a new life has brought happiness in my family. A baby girl, Alima, is sharing her irresistible and peaceful smile with us all. A sweet messenger of Peace as shown on the card her parents sent us :
“Jàmm rekk ! Kayra dorong ! La paix seulement”
Good wishes in Wolof, Mandinka and French. Alima’s papa comes from Senegal, her maman is my niece. The words chosen by her parents to announce their daughter’s birth mean : “Peace only or Peace be with you”.
Welcome sweet little Alima !
Over the past month, I have been asked if I was working on a new quilting project. Yes, indeed I was and still am. A quilt is finished and has been offered to my sister for her Birthday. Two others are in progress (WIP) ! But that is another story that I will tell you about later. Just a few shots to give you an idea.
Part of my sister’s quilt sewed with so much love.
Detail of a quilt I started after the devastating tsunami in Japan.
Choosing some materials for a new quilt. A small monthly quilt project.
summertime
August 7, 2011
Summer is a bouquet of wild violets catching the late afternoon sunrays
Summer is the scent and sweet taste of fresh raspberries just picked in the garden.
Summer is also the colourful sight and sound of laundry drying in a warm breeze. 
Summer is the Season when straw hats bloom under the heat.
Summer is another beautiful opportunity to play “cache-cache” (hide and seek) in the meadows with your friend.
Summer is a time for many celebrations.
In Summer roses of all shades and shapes love to blossom.
 For me, Summer is also a time for living at a different pace, a slower and more relaxed one. This is not always possible, alas. When things become too hectic around me, I remember this view and moment : an old barge anchored along a large river crossing a big French city, Lyon. Its owners had transformed it into a floating house. Its terrace looked inviting and I loved its “hanging gardens”. This is also my idea of Summertime. |
What is yours ?
Mother’s Day
May 8, 2011
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day in Switzerland. My own mother is no longer here but she will be lovingly remembered indeed. This flower is for her; her love of nature and flowers, her pleasure to sit in the garden, inhale scents and let her eyes wander quietly over the greenery. She sometimes started telling of her younger years in the mountains she loved so much, a life of hard work that taught her a lot about nature, its beauty and dangers. I am happy to have written down much of all she shared although her words are in my heart forever.
The weeks preceding Mother’s Day are even more busy at school over here… My sons always brought me lovely surprises on the second Sunday of May. They still do but at that time there was mystery and secrecy, something they could hardly keep for themselves…”I have a surprise for you but you are not allowed to see it !”
The D-Day finally came and the suspense was relieved. Both would wait till I woke and then present their gifts, nicely wrapped in a paper they sometimes had created themselves. What an excitement and impatience for me to open those treasures ! I received many, many wonderful drawings and gifts of all sorts, made with love and care; I cherished them all. One of them is still in our kitchen : it is a small decorative wooden panel made for me in primary school. There was an original handmade notebook on the right hand side that has been replaced countless times since then. Very handy. What still brings a smile whenever I write a note on my “to do list” is the poem one of my sons had composed for Mother’s Day on that particular year.
He had to find rhymes. For example : Isabelle/belle – bruns/lapins – noir/loir – maman/tendrement. In English though it may sound a bit strange to your ears but so lovely to your heart 
“Dear Isabelle,
How beautiful you are
With your eyes
As brown as rabbits
And your hair as black
As a dormouse
This is just to tell you, Mama
That I love you tenderly “
The French spelling is as creative as the images/rhymes he found and I just love the fact that his teacher left it untouched
To all mothers, mamans, mamas here and there and elsewhere I wish a Very Happy Day filled with love, sharing, joy and gratitude.
With love
This is quilt I sewed several years ago for a Mexican mama of many children who happens to be also a dear friend of mine, Fina.
Happy Easter
April 24, 2011
Wishing you all a Happy Easter weekend, sunny Spring days !
Easter and eggs seem to be closely related.
Earlier on, the egg was a symbol of the earth because of its shape. Also associated with the beginning of life, it has been a symbol of fertility, rebirth and the cycle of life.
For Christians in Europe, eggs became a symbol of Easter and the resurrection of Jesus. In the past, Christians gave up eggs for Lent (the 40 days before Easter when it’s customary to give up different types of food). But even though people didn’t eat them, the hens kept laying them! So people would hard boil and decorate them. This would help preserve them longer and serve as part of the holiday festivities.
At the Jewish Passover holiday (in Spring) the egg is placed on the Seder plate and is a symbol of sacrifice and loss. For some though it also symbolizes the full cycle of life, and therefore hope and rebirth.
In China, red eggs are given out at the one month birthday of a new baby. It’s customary to hold a Red Egg and Ginger Party at this time. Once again, the source seems to be the egg’s role as a symbol of fertility and the beginning of life.
The egg is a wonderful symbol of birth, renewal and rebirth. This is something wonderful to consider as Springtime has arrived in the Northern hemisphere, where the Earth is coming back to life !
Thank you to “Mama Lisa” on http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/ for sharing such great information and much more on her wonderful blog.
Here is a poem about Easter eggs that I enjoyed reading in this blog : http://www.tastearts.com/egg-poem-easter-eggs-by-addison-erwin-sheldon/ I hope you will too
A REMINISCENCE
Seems to me like yesterday:—
Walkin’ down the beaten path,
Where the autumn aftermath
Glistened with the April wet,
Tryin’ to look green and yet
Kind of limp and lonesome lay.
Gettin’ long toward Easter time;
Days the city folks calls Lent,—
Little that we cared or spent
What they called it, prose or rhyme,
More than twenty years ago,—
Me and my old playmate Joe;
Back in dear old Yucatan
Township, where Root River ran.
What we cared fur was the wood
Filled with flowing maple sap,
And the bluff above the gap
Where the Mississippi’s flood,—
Floating many a steamboat craft,
Many a Chippewa forest raft,—
Met our boyish gaze and curled
Round the bend into the world.
Then the mill-pond and the dam;—
Spearing red horse in the race;
And below our swimming-place
Was a cave where Turkey Sam
Shot and killed a hungry bear—
Oftentimes we’d go and peer
In about the rocks and stones
Looking for dead Injuns’ bones
While our hearts felt awful queer.
But about them Easter eggs—
We had fixed it—Joe and I,—
Talked it over on the sly,
Makin’ tops and mumble-pegs;
Playin’ marble and high spy;—
Next time Easter day come round
We would know where eggs was found;
Many a jocund, boyish boast,
‘Bout the eggs we’d have to roast
Over in the poplar grove
Just this side of Knox’s cove—
Then there’d be a big surprise:—
When we’d from our hidden store
Bring our Easter eggs galore
How the folks would bug their eyes!
I remember ‘long in March,
Mild and early was the spring.
Say, how them old hens did sing!
How the folks for eggs would search.
Mother couldn’t understand—
Fed ‘em table scraps and meat —
Combs was red and slick and neat,
Cackle, and they’d kick the sand
Through their feathers with their feet.
Joe and I — we understood, —
Playin’ ’round the old barnyard,
Watched them old hens weasel hard
Tryin’ to hide away and brood;
Every secret cleft and nook, —
Underneath the horses’ stall,
High up on the smoke house wall,
Knowed ‘em better than a book; —
Out beside the pile o’ rails,
In the tool house by the nails, —
Where a hen could crawl or fly,
We went after, — Joe and I.
Then to make a hiding place,
In the corner of a stack,
Lay a weatherbeaten rack —
Crawled beneath it on our face
With a forked, crooked pole
Worked and twisted through the straw,
Roughest work I ever saw;
Made a long and narrow hole,
Then by twisting round and round,
Dug a nest close to the ground.
In it went our Easter eggs:
Many a time I hurt my back
Skoochin’ under that old rack,
Rusty nails would scratch my legs—
Still, as Easter time drew nigh,
Poked ‘em in there on the sly;—
One thing troubled us—old Nig
Our old Spanish topknot hen,
Disappeared, we couldn’t find,
Not a feather left behind
Just to show where she had been.
Last our Easter Sunday came—
Seems to me like yesterday,
In that old familiar path
With the autumn aftermath
Lying ’round like locks of hay:—
All the east was clouds of flame
Like that early Easter morn
When the Son, of woman born,
Rose and rolled the stone away.—
Bright and early did we creep
Underneath that beaten rack,
Scratched our legs and punched our back,
Reached in for them eggs, when “cheep,”
“Cheep, cheep, cheep” and “cluck, cluck, cluck”
And Joe says “Dog on our luck,
“Ef it haint that old black hen,
‘Ef she ain’t a’gone and ben
”Just a settin’ with her legs
“Straddled on our Easter eggs,
“An’ what’s more—it beats the dickens
“Half them Easter eggs is chickens.”
From “Poems And Sketches Of Nebraska” By Addison Erwin Sheldon.
This is an addition to my reply to Linda, http://shoreacres.wordpress.com
Linda, you may enjoy reading this post http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-ancient-ukrainian-tradition-of-pysanka/
about the painted Ukrainian eggs, since you like them so much.
“My Ántonia” is a favourite book of mine in the American litterature. It was written by Willa Cather. Its unforgettable story takes place in Nebraska. I can well imagine that the scenes suggested in Addison Erwin Sheldon’s lovely poem “Reminiscence” could have been part of W. Cather’s wonderful work.
Spring connection
April 15, 2011
For the past month the internet connection in our home has been less than satisfactory. I will spare you the technical details but in short it has become more difficult to get a reliable and lasting internet connection. It has also something to do with the age of my PC 
If I add that my camera (not the youngest one either) has been acting strange lately, you may understand my distress about these technologies I was never an expert in anyway. This is to explain my unwanted silence on this blog. I regret it but little by little I will visit you again and look forward to these moments indeed.
In the meantime… Spring has arrived here too. Rapidly, beautifully and unexpectedly warm. In the 20-23°C over the past few days although in the past days the North wind has lowered the temperature by ten degrees. Brrrr…
Not sitting much in front of my stubbornly silent and empty screen, I spent more time in the garden; I read or finished reading several books. I also spent more time in the room that used to be a playroom and now is a music and sewing room.
Do I see you smiling ? 
Don’t worry, I am not trying to compete with the drums when my son is practising “Ska music” with his group. The sewing machine remains silent on those occasions… but when the room is quiet my sewing machine is playing its own tune, music and inspiration are in the air !
This is a wonderful and inspiring book by Janet Bolton (Patchwork in an orchard) about “appliqué” in patchwork. My friend Marie, in http://ancientcloth.blogspot.com/ mentioned it a while back in her blog and I was delighted to find a copy of this book in a second hand bookstore in town.
La Pléiade is also the name if a well-known collection of books from authors of all horizons . Precious books with soft leather binding and thin pages (onionskin) that one turns slowly and with care. I was telling about it to Janice, another friend and multi-faceted artist, http://postcardsfromwildwood.wordpress.com/ as I replied to her comment in my post about it. I chose Tolstoi and his “Carnets”; he is an author I like to read and re-read now and then. Classical and insightful works that fascinate me.
And of course, another favourite books of mine, Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is one I read slowly, month after month. There is so much to learn about living more simply, eating locally, being responsible for one’s own decisions and acts regarding our environment.
Regular walking through my colourful garden brought much pleasure. This constant renewal of Nature in the Spring is always such a wonder and pleasant discovery.
Poppies, wild primroses, cherry trees blossoming or anemones, all are so welcome after the cold and not so bright Winter. I really hope you are enjoying the same wonderful feeling.
.
Happy, happy Spring to each of you !
A closer look
March 18, 2011
This is my contribution to Scott Thomas Photography´s Assignment on close-up photography :
http://stphoto.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/assignment-12-close-up-photography/#comments
It is so worthwhile and amazing to take a closer look at things around us. Walking along a mountain path during the week, I tried to look more closely at nature and man-made environment. Here are a few images I felt like sharing.
A knurl like a spiral in a wooden fence.
A natural sculpture and inspiring patterns on a birch tree trunk.
Spring is not here yet in the Alps. Those are the first buds I could spot on a bush.
Barely out of the snow, a tiny velvety flower was creeping on a rock.
Spiky-looking needles that are as soft as wool when you touch them : a thick and soft carpet under my favourite tree, the larch.
In a dry-stone wall along a stream, a colourful stone stood out: white, grey, black, rust shades and rough textures under your fingers.
All pictures above have been taken in the macro mode of my camera, a Sony DSC-W5.
Once again, thank you Scott for this opportunity of looking differently, more closely at our environment.
Close-up photography
March 10, 2011
Scott’s new photography assignment at Views Infinitum
http://stphoto.wordpress.com/ is about Close-Up Photography. Feel free to partipate in this month assignment. You will find all related information under this link :
http://stphoto.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/assignment-12-close-up-photography/#comments
Furthermore, tomorrow Friday, March 11, Scott will be discussing the many ways that can be achieved for close up photography. Don’t miss it and enjoy participating if you feel so.
I took this picture some years ago at the pond in our botanical garden. New pictures are requested for the assignment so I will try to do my best with my Point and Shoot camera
More pictures taken on the same day around the garden, one of my favourite places in town at any Season.
Time for a rest in the vegetation. Softness of shades and textures. Some plants still add a subdued colour in a Winter garden. Soon, it will be highlighted by the sparks of Spring. 
