EASTER IN THE TIME OF CORONA VIRUS

Hello all,

It has become a family tradition, albeit a recent one, for my daughter, Madeline, to organise an Easter egg  hunt every year for the children of family and friends. This year, however, we had to do things differently. So, I organised for the Easter Bunny  to visit our garden and hide some goodies. I, then, invited my grandchildren to come and find them. Sam and I stayed on the balcony overlooking the back yard and watched as the children came around the side of the house and enjoyed their Easter egg hunt. They left the same way they came without any contact with us. It was a compromise but better than nothing.

In these horrid times we're living in, technology plays a very important role in us staying connected. I belong to a number of WhatsApp groups, including one of my students. We share photographs of arrangements as well as other things of interest, which helps to feel less isolated.

Today my daughter, Madeline, my sister Lucy and I did a bake off on a three way Face Time. We made Tsourekia (traditional Greek Easter bread), which is a yeast based sweet bread and can be a bit of a hit and miss scenario. By doing this together, each of us in our own kitchen, we were able to support each other, especially Madeline, who had never done this before. All our Easter Breads were successful, to our great delight (and relief).

My tsourekia. The whole house smells wonderful!

Another Easter tradition is the colouring of eggs. The Greek tradition was to colour real eggs red and then compete to win each other's eggs. Things have changed and the chocolate eggs have overtaken the real ones is popularity. However, many of us love to play around with ways of decorating eggs. Here are mine.

These first ones are plain dyed real eggs done in the Greek way of boiling them in the dye.

The next ones were also boiled in the dye but they had leaves attached to them, held in place by old stockings.

The marbled ones in the next picture were done by wrapping brown onion leaves around the eggs, again, held in place by stockings and boiled in blue dye.

These next ones are very special because they were made and given to me by Renate Willenborg at Sogetsu Headquarters in 2014. We were attending classes together and I had brought with me red dye to colour some eggs. It turned out that we were doing a celebratory arrangement and I used my eggs. They were a big hit with the Japanese students and, after the class, I handed them out. Later, Renate presented me with hers, which were covered with Japanese paper and then glazed.

My arrangement in 2014

All of the above eggs have been done in previous years. Because of this forced isolation, I've had some time to try out another two methods of egg colouring.

For the first I used one of Sam's old silk ties and some printed Japanese silk. Unfortunately, I only had brown eggs, as, I believe, I would have had much better results if my eggs were white.

The next lot were not boiled so I had to remove the inside of the egg before decorating them. I had to pierce a hole on either end of the egg and blow out the albumen and yolk. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be and it took over an hour. I only broke one. I sprayed them gold and silver,  then glued the Japanese paper on them.

So, now for Easter ikebana arrangements.

I made the little wall basket, securing it on the hook by a little bit of wire, after last week's disaster.

Coloured eggs and Japanese anemones in self made basket

I, also, made a much more modern arrangement using bamboo. I, then, had to find a spot for it. As it is quite tall and delicately balanced, I didn't want to put it on any furniture, in case it was knocked over. So I put it on the floor, just below the basket.

Coloured egg, dahlias and crucifix orchids

The combination

I leave you with this little powder room arrangement. I LOVE SQUIGGLY GRASS!

The shadows  are deliberate

Stay safe and well.

Bye for now,

Emily