I am now working for the new picture book project for children about ‘wild flowers’ which is scheduled to be published in spring 2007 in Japan. In this book, some characters are featured such as ‘ the botanist, Dr Goat’ and twin bunnies to give the knowledges and stories about plants to kids readers. I like animals to draw not only plants, so I’m  enjoying working on this project now.

 

Actually I came across ‘wild flowers’ ,as the context ,in Britain when I had been staying in the school called ‘Winkfield Place ‘ located in countryside near Windsor when I was 25-26 years old . Before then, in my childhood, I have been playing with some wildflowers we could find closely, and that was all of my experience with wild flowers.

In fact, I don’t like insects so much, particulary dislike caterpillers. At Winkfield Place, I could find a lot of wild flowers  walking around huge garden, meadows, hedges and even in forests around the school, without seeing any single caterpiller , even in the highest season during sprint to summer.

It is very nice situation for me rather than in Japan, where we have more hot and humid climate, and is the rich environment also for insects. Only having the first step into the hiking road in nearest, commonest small hill nearby, you must find a lot of huge, fat pale green or furry moss catarpiller on the road, or on any stalks of the plants standby.

So, the beautiful countryside in Britain was ideal location for me to find the wild flowers.

I also had purchased some books about wild flowers in Britain. For me, the first knowledge for wild plants was not in Japanese but in English including the names of the wild plants.

 

Even now, I love to read and look of those English books for wild plants in bed at night. I can remind of those happiest younger days in my life in which I had been thinking about wild flowers and the other beautiful things all day long without disturbing by any social matters.

My most favourite one is always  ‘Wild Flower Gardening’ by Dorling and Kidersley. I’ve read this book plenty of times and my copy has a lot of handwritten notes i made myself  in it.

 

But last week, I’ve read a small handbook for Wild plants in Britain, which I left in my bookshelf for a long years and at first time found a small lovely wild plants of Linum family, which is called ‘Fairy’s Flax’. This plant has a slender stalk like flax for linen, but tiny, seems to be the same size as chickweeds and so, and also has tiny little white flowers in flax shape. What’ s a lovely name! I’d like to look for it when I’ll have a chance to visit countryside in Britain, hopefully next year.

 

As I haven’t seen Fairy’s Flax, instead I put at the top, my photo for ‘Campion’ which I took in countryside of north France.

This seems to me a common wild flower in Britain and Europe, but is cultivated in Japan also, and some florists have this flower occasionally. This campion was blooming gently amongst sticky leaves of wild thistle.

In hearing ‘ campion’, I also remind of the name of famous movie director ‘Jane Campion’ who directed a beautiful movie ‘The Piano’. ‘Campion’ is her family name, it’s a beautiful and poetic name also , isn’t it?

I took this photo last year, and can remind that I was trying to catch the gentle atmosphere of this fabric- linen gauze from our collection.

This item have been sold out for months and finally came back to our stock recently. it is really nice indeed, i’m realizing again having a look after an interval a while.

Tomoko is a  college student and our part-time staff now. she is talented for hand-made and designs in my view, and I asked her to make some cosages by our fabrics, in order to use in the photos for my next book ( making book of the kids garments) which is scheduled to publish next year. She made some cute soft flowers using linen gauzes and so on and I liked them very much.(Sorry, i can show them only next year)

and also i was happy to hear her comments saying ‘ I was so surprised by the nice results derived from the high quality fabrics’

actually i have a same feeling as usual. in hand made, we can have a best results whan we use the good and high quality fabrics even in making by very simple recipes.it is like a cooking using good meats, fishes and vegetables.  

producing high quality linen is not so simple, at least it costs even high.

those high quality fabrics cannot be easy to get particularly for young people like Tomoko, who is a student,but i was happy that she found the truth by herself and share same feeling with me.

These days I often cook yakinasu ‘ grilled aubergene’ which is the traditional japanese dish. yakinasu is yammy to eat simply with soy sauce, ginger and so, but also put in some nimono(stew) such as nikujaga which is the stew of beef with potatoes.

I cook yakinasu by grilling directly on the fire, not using net or pan. My husband was so surprised to see how I cook it at the first time 14 years ago, because in that way, I just burn aubergenes on the fire!

But I believe this is the best way to cook yakinasu. after ‘burning’ I peel the aubergenes with running water.

it is fun!

I honestly believe yakinasu can be a good companion in salad with oil and vinegar as well,;try and enjoy!