after the cherry blossoms

Each year I remind myself that the Asian vine called wisteria blooms the week after all the cherry blossoms fall while the trees leaf out to fresh green. It's a wonderful sight and can surprise you.  I was out for a walk near Dupont Circle a few years ago, walking along Q. Street NW by the Argentine Embassy when I was overwhelmed the most amazing perfume. I remember looking around and wondering who was wearing such a strong perfume. Sniffing and walking then I passed by a very tall southern magnolia tree and smelled the perfume much stronger. I paused and took a a spin around looking to see if I was missing someone or something and there it was above me a the tree covered in the blooms of a giant wisteria! It was so sweet and fine but only showed on the west face of the tree then. Now you can see it on both sides. So the other day when Melinda and I were walking and she exclaimed how lovely! "What's that called" she asked, "we can't grow those in Wisconsin..." I told her about this wisteria on Q. St. and the equally amazing vines that grow on the long low walls of the National Gallery of Art's West Building down on the mall.

 After that discussion with Melinda, I realized I had to go back and see this display we didn't get time to visit Friday. I also found a second smaller vine growing high over a narrow entrance to a row house on R. Street in the same block between 19th St. and NH Ave. NW It makes such a lovely display and even these tiny row house gardens have room for a big flowering vine if you just make a place for it to grow up to the light.

This is just one of the many moments this week that were a joy for me. I also had the honor to meet two Gee's Bend, Alabama quilters and see and touch their amazing quilts. I went to Manassas for a night with Mom and together we took in a spectacular display garden of tulips in Haymarket, Virginia. I hot linked my photo sets to the quilts and tulips if you want to go see them on my flickr page. I hope your spring is not all gloomy after so many terrifically tragic events in the news I realize each day it is important to live life in the moment.

a few things

double orange tulips Keith brought me this morning opened right away

This week I have been feeling out of sync with the world. Trying to keep getting along with my daily routines to get to the next day waiting to feel excited about something. Next week the annual Manassas Quilt show is coming. I am looking forward to going to see the show with my partner and Mom, this is our 5th year going. To me it is always an inspiration.  In the mean time I have been working on a quilt project in greens and tested a couple blocks. Quilting patterns by hand versus machine quilting in a right angle zig zag design. Below is a peek at the greens... and my hand with thimbles using a green pearl thread to hand quilt the block.

A new pair of rubber finger tipped gloves to make machine quilting easier arrived in the mail. Machingers (see gloves here) is the brand a friend from the DC Modern Quilt Guild showed me at one of the meetings last year. Linda blogs at I Finally Have Time and she does a great variety projects and says she uses them all the time. I tried hers on  so I finally bought my own pair to use when I begin machine quilting a full sized bed quilt in the not too distant future. Thanks again Linda!

Friday to get a chore done transmitting some medical records to my doctor's office I just drove them over in person. Afterwards I stopped into Miss Pixie's second hand shop across the street and found two things I brought home that always lift my spirits a little. Crystals to hang in my east facing windows to fill the room with spectral color early in the day and a little Japanese box to add to my small box collection.

this crystal is about 3 inches long 

Japanese wooden box with enamel painted and wood burnt decorations 

showing the sides that are textured with burnt wood marks. 

flowers at home

winter's early morning sunlight rakes across the flowers 

 This past week or two there have been some flowers in the house, just left overs and a few tulips that I picked up at Whole Foods last week for Keith to use to make an arrangement. Wednesday evening I went to dinner with my pal Dan Murray to a lovely restaurant and talking with him about his winter break time and his plans for drawing and painting projects got me thinking. Maybe it was time to end my break and sketch some of the flowers by my desk. I have to say it felt good to have something to share and a memory on paper. Maybe I don't have to draw them everyday.

first day's sketch was freely laid down using just fountain pen and color very loose

second day with pencil before pen/ink plus color tends to be more accurate or tight

 

oranges and blues

This week I have been working on my rose star quilt blocks but doing the part that isn't ready to show yet which is selecting fabrics cutting them and basting & wrapping them on the paper pieces to get them ready to hand sew together. I got new fabrics last week and finally a nice selection of oranges to make a real red orange rose-star! That is going to be fun to assemble in the coming week. I was delighted when Keith came home on Tuesday from shopping for his floral creations with a bouquet of real orange parrot tulips from the Whole Food's market. Wow they are so spectacular they really lifted my mood every day since they arrived.  I got right to work sketching them Wednesday morning before my trip to the clinic for my quarterly check up. Good news everything is fine says my groovy guitar playing lesbian doctor and so I was again lifted and with the sun shine and warm weather, I went out on 14th Street and decided to take a look in our favorite second hand store across the street. Miss Pixie's is mostly cool furniture but they have lots of little ceramics and glass things as well as art on the walls. I saw this blue vase first thing in the door. It felt so good when I picked it up and handled the textured surface. The shape is pleasing and unusual and the decoration is a line ornamentation that is much like I used to draw on my journal pages. It totally appealed to me and I thought to myself, "do I have money for this today?" I walked around and continued to look to see what else might catch my eye and eventually pulled out my clip of money and found about $30 in my pocket so I could afford an $8 vase if it still was the best thing in the shop. There was a hand sewn Dresden plate quilt in the back for $85 dollars much like the one at home Mom has from her grandmother. It was in pretty good shape on the front but the back had some strange brown stains on it that were a bit hard like varnish or something that doesn't belong on fine quilts. I decided I wasn't in the market for a quilt like that and then thought about cedar chests which they always have a few of in this shop. I would love to have one to put my fine pieces of quilting and blankets in for storage. I do not have money for one now and there isn't any room for one unless I give up some other furniture in our little apartment so that goes on the someday wish list for now. In the end, I decided the little blue vase would bring me much joy for this week. I celebrated my good news and the good weather with the purchase. Got it home and soon it became part of the daily ikebana project Keith is doing so I know it was a good thing to bring home. Meanwhile the responses to my orange tulips were strong and enthusiastic. Can't beat a good tulip for a winter day's mood lift.  

The other fun thing that I began this week, besides cutting out more rose star blocks, was reading the new Vincent Van Gogh biography. Vincent Van Gogh The Life It is the first ever complete story of his life that fills over 800 pages in a big volume that has one of his self portraits on the cover. I wasn't sure it was going to be a good read but on the first night I began I was hooked wow these guys know how to tell a story. I know Vincent is one of the worlds most favorite artists. I like that he was so productive and drew and wrote tons of letters and sent illustrations he drew of his paintings in the letters. I wonder how excited he would be to live in today's world with the Internet and the quick and easy sharing we get to do with photos and blogs and emails? His story is one I am delighted to get to know better I can relate so well to his love of flowers and landscapes and portraits that look a little funky cause I think mine do too. I just wish I had a orange beard and blue/green eyes like he did otherwise I don't have much envy for Vincent's life of misery he was a real outsider if ever there was one. 

spring = nature on steroids

 This weekend was pretty great even without the car. I went for a walk on Friday in the sunshine and found amazing floral displays in Brookland gardens and in the wild woodland Fort Bunker Hill park. Saturday I watched as the heavy rains dumped buckets of rain on the 60 volunteers who showed up across the street to plant 18 new trees on the Turkey Thicket Playground. Then today I learned there was a talk by the national park service rangers at Ft. Bunker Hill park so I went up for the talk again in a perfectly sunny Sunday. Hope that the car will get it's new throttle position sensor installed tomorrow and come home.  Here are just a few of my photos from the weekend in the hood.

late cherry blossoms

white violets 

monastery tulips 

monastery tulips

monastery tulips and sanctuary 

woodland lichen on a fallen log

may apples 

 a patch of trout or dog tooth lily in Ft. Bunker Hill Park

trout lilies blooming 

Norway maple flowers 

red azaleas 

pink and white dogwood blossoms

neighbors in the rain planting new trees near the sand box

more volunteers planting trees in the rain

new service berry trees at Turkey Thicket  Playground 

majestic white dogwood tree 

 native dogwood tree 

orange tulips

Two bunches of orange tulips by my desk this weekend. I got them on sale Friday where they had tons to choose from and I have a third bunch that is purple. I couldn't fit them all in one vase so decided to divide by colors. I chose the greenest buds I could find knowing they last longer if you get them green... Spring is here and that means hydroponic forced green house tulips from Virginia may soon be missing from my grocery store. That makes me sad but the garden is waking up so I will have my own flowers blooming very soon after the last snow Sunday.