Monday, August 23, 2010

An Afternoon in the Garden

J and I went to see my brother yesterday. His daughter Irina and her husband Andy who got married in March have a lovely little daughter. Bente was born 18 days ago. She is adorable! Rather small and delicate, but she has a good temper and doesn't cry more than necessary. I gave my niece a necklace of vintage glass beads with an Estonian silver ornament. I attached it to the necklace. It used to be a brooch, but it broke when I was around 50. I had another, and it broke at more or less the same time. Funny! I did not find anyone to repair it. Here, you can see a very big version of this kind of ornament; mine was a 2" device.
Recently, I read that these ornaments were worn by women only during their age of fertility. Maybe this is why they broke, and also my Mom had a broken one...
We also had a look into my brother's garden and he gave us some of his Russian tomatoes. These are miniature! You can see my thumb. And in his greenhouse, he has a big yellow sort, they are huge! He got tomato seeds from Russia, there they are still very tasty and not bred to death as our Netherlands devices. And here you see the "Purple Russian" -- hm. Brown is an ugly word.
We got at least a pound of his homegrown veggies to take along. He grows lovely "La Ratte" potatoes, red beet, cabbage, peaches, and grapes.
We had coffee in the garden and enjoyed the company of my folks which happens too rarely.

3 comments:

Judy said...

What a wonderful day!
I found your comments about your broken 'fertility brooches' very interesting! I would love to see pictures of the new baby.
Here we call similar tomatoes to your Russian ones "Heirloom Tomatoes' as they come from old seeds which have been passed down. Our local farmers are growing them and we get a few every week. I agree with you: they are so tasty!

xo

ArtSparker said...

Good life.

Eva said...

Judy, I asked the young mother's permission to show the photo on the blog, but haven't received an answer yet.