Spring

March 20th 2014

In my garden I have an ornamental cherry tree which every Spring is covered with pale pink blossoms shaped like little stars.  They start off a definite pink but over time they fade to the palest shade of pink, almost white.  And then the petals fall and blow around and the leaves unfurl, a bright, fresh green.  Every year I photograph it, I can't help myself!  This photo was taken a few days ago when the very first flowers were opening.

                                

This photo is from a couple of years ago and is what it will look like with a few more days of sunshine.  This lovely tree has inspired several projects.  We built an area for our charcoal grill which we tiled with a rustic slate.  In place of four of the tiles I created mosaics of the tree with beautiful glass tile.  It was a lot of work to design, cut the glass and work out how to make the tiles adhere but it was worth it.  There is a mosaic representing the tree in each season and each is about 12 inches square.

More recently the tree inspired a pincushion and needle book for my Etsy shop.  For this pincushion and needle book I was able to go wild with my favorite embroidery stitch, the french knot, in three shades of pink.  The overall feel is of soft gentle color just like the inspiration tree.