Cows, Flowers, Cats and Beads

Choco and the Cows
The days are warming up and Choco and I go out for longer walks. We went to visit the cows which I find interesting but which Choco doesn't like much at all.


"Those ladies are too big!"

True but they look just like Choco and they come to the fence to visit with her.

Edible Flowers
When I was a child I remember reading a book called "The Boy Who Ate Flowers". I don't why that book has stayed in my head but I remember my 6 or 7 year old brain thinking that it was such a funny book. Then I come to Japan and find that people really do eat flowers! These are called Nanohana which are Rape blossoms in English. True, we use Rape seed oil in both Western and Eastern cooking but Japanese also eat these blossoms and stems. (These have probably grown too large for human eating but when the shoots are younger they are tender and delicious.) In the fall the Japanese like to eat an edible type of chrysanthemum ("A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." -- Shakespeare. A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell. --Tanya)


Cat Balls
I know I show this picture of the armchair with three or four cats in it every few weeks. You're getting tired of looking at the same cats in the same chair. They are so funny though. Three of them (the bigger three) decided they all wanted to occupy the same space. Toi especially is very happy to sit with, on, under, beside, next to, around anyone. Patora looks a little disgruntled.


And a few minutes later they shifted around a bit and Chip joined the cat ball.


Handwork
This is my handwork for the weekend. I purchased this hand made glass bead a few months ago and it has been lost in the drawer ever since. This weekend I decided to make a necklace with a Chinese knotting technique my friend Mrs. Ochiai once taught me. It took a while to get my brain back remembering how to make knots (you know how you learn a computer technique and then a few weeks or months later you know you knew how to do it but you don't remember how! Same thing.) but in the end it worked out. I'm sending it off to a friend and not showing Mrs. Ochiai because she'd probably tell me I did it wrong...