Day 29:

1.
It seems so long ago that I collected avocados 🥑,
cabbage 🥬,
flowers 🌺,
hibiscus tea☕️,
red onions 🧅,
blueberries,
and bright yellow turmeric
        for dyeing papers.

It was so much fun to see the colors on those pages after dipping them in dye baths, then baking them in the oven for a couple of minutes.  When I made more than I had pans for baking, I let the sun cook some of them.

Today I'm arranging stacks of pinks and purples and yellow, cutting them into small rectangles, and folding them to make little books to be bound with twigs and twine.


2.

Here's a picture of my beautiful mama, Carlene, taken by Bob and Jocelyn who filled her freezer with two weeks of homemade meals and groceries. Jocelyn loves cooking and is an excellent cook, so Miss Carlene is bound to be happy every time she opens that freezer.

She's doing so well--happy and active and staying inside (except for walking a little bit outside).

3.

Bonnie and Elena doing pilates together on the porch, both making the most of home-schooling.

4.

Day spent an entire day of Spring Break yesterday making masks for hers and Tom's extended family--68 of them in all!

5.

Last year, I recommended a memoir by my friend Gerlinde Pyron, Shadows and Joys of a Life in Bavaria.   This morning she sent me a photo of the cover of one of her favorite magazines along with her childhood memories of Easter:

          "Here is my Easter Greeting from one of my beloved magazines  (Beautiful Bavarian Forest) that I have saved – they go back all the way to the 1990’s. Each time I visited my aunt I would take along one of these magazines and read some articles that might be relevant depending on what time of the year it was. But of course now she is in isolation at the nursing home and I am unable to cheer her up though her youngest daughter,  who works as a dietician in a hospital in Austin, is able to “suit up” to visit her and send videos which is nice...."

          "The baked Easter Lamb was traditionally taken to Easter Sunday Service to be blessed along with eggs – ours were not as elaborate as those on the cover. The two bunches of flowers are what we picked and brought home for Easter. The one on the left were called Dotter Blumen (egg yolk flowers) that grew in soggy meadows, the bunch on the right were Schluessel Blumen (key flowers) with an absolutely exhilarating fragrance which I can still vividly smell even now when I put my mind to it.  I find it fascinating that not only can we recall memories but also that smells are stored in one’s brain."

6.

I got bored with The Heart Guy midway and moved on to Masterpiece's  World on Fire, Helen Hunt playing an American journalist during WW2.  The characters are complex, the screenplay and cinematography excellent--highly recommended.