I just finished a new design…the Mothers Angel! This angel celebrates mothers and motherhood. The first love we experience is the sweetest and most tender love from our mothers. I designed this angel to return this first love back to bless and thank our mothers for their faithful loving kindness. This little angel Is carrying the message, “Mother I love you!”

This 4″ design is the first in a new Family Collection. Our connection to our families is the glue that holds us together. This collection of angels celebrates these relationships. Two more angels will follow later this year, a 3” Daughters Angel and a 3″ Sisters Angel. The context of family is vital to our happiness so sometimes our families are not biological but consist of those whose love is reciprocated and we call them family too and they truly are!

I love the blooms of spring and I love to bring the springtime inside with bouquets of these early blooms.

These branches of white blossoms are from wild plum trees that grow along the Willamette River; lovely souvenirs from my after lunch walk.

I am happy to be all finished with my 2014 angels. Two of my designs were influenced by my recent trip to France. I found such an interesting variety of the Fleur-de-lis in the tile and walls of a little side chapel of a church in a small town of France. There were little spheres tucked inside the top petals of the lily image. I researched this to find out that they represented the stamens of the lily blossom. My 4” angel holds this Fleur-de-lis.

My 3” angel holds a mistletoe bouquet that was influenced by the bare branched winter trees decorated with globes of mistletoe all over the French countryside.

Merci pour les souvenirs.

Cut branches of Japanese quince, Forsythia or other spring flowering bushes and trees may be brought inside for forced blooming in January and February. At this late date the buds burst into delicate blooms in just a few days.

The branches in my living room are white Japanese quince from the back yard. This is a yearly tradition for me and I am always in awe of the Asian flavor of this dramatic arrangement that brings early springtime into my home and my heart.

Mont Saint Michel, a tiny granite rock island off the coast of the border between Normandy and Brittany, is one of the most famous and enchanting sights in France. It is home to a preserved Benedictine Monastery that dominates the summit with surrounding village houses.

Its humble beginnings were in the 6th century when Christian hermits settled there and by the 10th century it had evolved into a Benedictine Abbey. It has had a dramatic history of ups and downs and now has evolved into a national monument that attracts almost a million visitors a year. It really is a must see if you are touring the west coast of France.

When we arrived on the island by bus along a raised road, we climbed the steep steps up to the monastery in the rain and then toured the medieval monastic buildings circling and climbing up to the abbey church. The interiors were at once monumental and spare, grand and gray. There was certainly an eerie almost transcendental quality that impressed and oppressed.

Relief from the gray stonework that dominated the interiors and exteriors were the outside pockets of green. The cloisters around a garden created an emerald jewel in the gray and cold stonework.

The views of the bay from the windows, cloisters and other outdoor spaces were amazing. You felt as if you were viewing the bay from the eyes of a sea bird.

*First photo is from the Mont Saint Michel guidebook cover.