So it finally happened! Kumiko's new miniature quilt received first prize at the Dallas Quilt Show!
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Her quilts seem to be getting more detailed and more precise all the time. Kumiko actually went to Dallas to be at the exhibit and so got to meet lot of people who have seen her quilts over the years. In fact, the miniature which won at the Houston International Show is now being shown in Chicago. I am including a more detailed picture of this year's quilt which was entitled "Little Beauty - not everything is big in Texas". To the right is a close up and right below it another close up, but this time from the back side so that you can see the quality of the quilting. Quilters always look at the back side - little bit like Turkish rug merchants.

In the meantime the spring has taken over, just a few days before the official beginning of the season. This year, because of the mild winter we had, azaleas are putting on a remarkable display and since everybody is growing them around here, it makes evening (or morning) strolls particularly pleasant. The enclosed photo is from our back yard. Finally this year the coral wine which I planted about 2 years ago is beginning to look more tropical and impressive.

In other agricultural news, the papayas which I protected in homespun greenhouses through the winter have survived. In fact, since the winter was so mild ( I think we had only one frost and it did not get very far below freezing) the survival was little bit more extensive than I expected, even though there was variation: the small papaya survived the best, did not loose any leaves and actually bloomed and set fruit over the winter, the papaya in the large enclosure lost all of its leaves except few of the very small ones, but it retained many of the green papayas and is starting to sprout new leaves from the trunk. Couple of very small papayas survived even though they were not protected, one large one did not make it and another one looks like it will recover. In short I will probably have a papaya grove by the middle of this summer. (The flip side of the coin is that due to the very mild winter the grove will be probably filled with clouds of hungry mosquitoes.)

We had a visit from our Milena, Julian, Christopher and Jonathan, who dropped in on the way from Montreal to Florida. Julian put in an super-quiet small air conditioner into Kumiko's quilting studio and so she is now looking forward to the summer. Christopher and Jonathan met our new bird and experienced first hand his strange habits. But they did not want to believe I had as much hair as they have before the bird started to pull them out.

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