ameliagreenheart

I was asked recently to make a large bowl as a gift from a friend. As it happened I knew the person who would be receiving my bowl and so I designed it to represent her family woodland in Sussex where I have had the pleasure of spending many happy weekends camping with Laura and her sister Emma over the years. Apparently she was very happy with the bowl which was good news and I so enjoyed painting it too!

This weekend I visited Harlow Carr RHS Garden near Harrogate with Dr Allan Hall. We had a pleasant walk through the woodland and the gardens and ended up in the the alpine greenhouse. It was there that we started talking about the beautiful spiral shapes formed by the leaves of plants such as houseleek and seed cones like those from fir trees. This has a name (of course). Phyllotaxis, from the Greek: leaf (phyllo) arrangement (taxis). These formations are amazingly exact mathematical patterns. I have been taking photographs of plants and seeds especially those with spiral and lattice-like patterns and thinking that they would be stimulating subjects for my bowls.

On Sunday, Mark and I went off to the local car boot sale at Weatherby looking for materials for the business (we found some excellent copper wire and some nice ties for Laura's bags). I usually meet someone interesting and clever at these events and on Sunday I got talking to a lady from Shri Lanka, Deidree Morrow, director of DeeSpice. She makes and markets a range of wonderful chutneys and sauces. I tasted a couple, they are very spicy but as Deidree pointed out, in Shri Lanka her products would be considered tame. I loved (and bought) her Mango Chutney. We also really liked the labels on their products which are bright and attractive. She sells her products from her webpage too by mail order.