Can you believe it? The little plum tree has so far yielded 70 plums and there are anywhere from 8 to 10 more ripening out there. What an amazing production from such a small tree. Perhaps it was making up for last year when there were only 2 plums. (Actually, this is a typical pattern the locals tell me.)
Ruthellen and Russell gave us the gorgeous blue bowl last week. I had admired it when we were at the Crail Pottery so they bought it and led us to believe it was for themselves. The blue glaze is much deeper and more saturated than it shows up in this photo. When I tried to adjust its colour, the plums turned hot pink so I put it back the way it was.
Donald did well at golf yesterday morning. He's out there again this morning playing with Craig. While he was gone yesterday I took my basket and walked to the shops, stopping at the post office to post a few items including Molly's birthday card (Can my little girl really be 37?), the hairdressers to drop off a Tuscany cookery book Lesley loaned me and to pay her for the styling mousse she bought at the wholesalers on Monday, to the grocer's to buy milk, and of course, I had to stop to blether with several folks along the way.
One of the people I had a blether with was Morag Aitken who said she had just dropped by our house and slipped something through our letter box. It was a book of photos from a Japanese quilt show which a Japanese friend of hers had sent her. She thought I'd like to look through it. So when I got home, I made myself a cup of coffee and settled down with it. The Japanese quilters make such exquisite creations. Their designs and their quilting (whether by hand or machine) are intricate and detailed. Their use of colour is interesting to me, particularly the quilts pictured in Morag's book. In addition to the sorts of colour combinations that one is used to seeing in books of this type, perhaps a fourth to a third of the quilts were in shades of muted greys or muddy beiges with very low contrast. It was an interesting difference from the typical American or European range of colours. Still, they were all very beautiful.
A number of quilts sparked ideas for techniques I'd like to dry or design elements that would be fun to play with. Before long I had jotted down a list of these and was in the studio putting together a small piece to try out one of the techniques. When I finish typing this blog, I'll go into the studio to do the quilting.
In the afternoon Don and I went to Crieff to run some errands. Among a couple of other stops, we called in at a few places that sell gardening supplies to look for trellises. At the third place, we saw some 6-ft tall outdoor screening made of thin bamboo poles lashed together. I was quite taken with this because screening would give us instant privacy without waiting for next spring to plant the climbers on a trelllis and then waiting for late summer for the climbers to reach far enough up the trellis to cover up the fairly wide holes that you get with a trellis. Don prefers the trellis idea. We are talking about the options and will do some further research on the Web.
It's another glorious day here. Yesterday it got up to 71 or so. Today it's to get up to 68 or 69 and the highs will range from 71 to 65 for the next several days. Ideal weather with cool mornings and evenings and, of course, great for sleeping.
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