This is the second composition I did that fall and I remember I was experimenting with colors and things in general. I had taken some of the bibelots that are around the house as decor like this Chinese guard dog (or lion). They are commonly called Fu Lions (0r Dogs), that in Chinese belief these have protective powers. I only had one in this piece as my center, as this one represents a male playing with a ball, that is actually the "flower of life". The female is believed to represent the cycle of life, having her paw on a cub, as she either protects it or kills it. That's why I didn't have her on this picture. I think this is a macho perspective...why is Male the symbol of life and not female which is the symbol of death? I have to dig deeper into this...to understand the Chinese Han-Dynasty mentality.
I also placed a hand of protection from the evil eye and a set of butterflies made out of horse hair done by a town in Southern Chile called Rari. They make anything out of horse hair (crin) and these are nice brooches that I collected over the years. My mom was a fan of these things when she was a young and beautiful hippie in the 70s.
So the funny thing is that one of my neighbors had just thrown to the garbage a nice flourishing plant with its recipient. It was a lovely Begonia "Gobe" (you see it on your left just below the butterflies). This plant grows indoors, and has several reproduction methods such as by roots or by leaf cutting, this latter I have tried and it works better than the roots. So for the leaf cutting reproduction, you just take a leaf from the main stem area of the plant, it has to be a fully grown one, and you place it on a glass of water. Roots will start growing under the stem of this leaf, once it has a lot of roots and that the leaf has developed new auxiliary buds, it is time to replant. I've managed to have 3 of these at home now, and they are growing rapidly... I like them because they resemble lotus leaves...
This picture was taken in late fall and I think by the time we had our first snow that year. I was basically collecting the remains of foliage and fruits from the park next door and I managed to collect the following:
-A nice Burgundy branch with leaves that I don't know the name and the tree was cut the following spring.
-Wild red apples, you can see their size is relatively small...very tiny.
-Extremely tiny quince
and
- A branch of snowberries (Symphoricarpos)
The only edible fruits here are the apples and the quinces, the snowberries are mainly decorative plants for winter gardens and they stay mostly of the year with its fruits, and can bare very cold climates. once you open one of the fruits you will see sparkling granular snow...
In previous years I would pick some of the apples and quinces in the park and make marmalade. They taste much more sour than the actual apples and quinces but this makes it all the more interesting. My grandmother taught me how to make marmalade and jelly out of a quince . The process is quite simple, you can just makes marmalade out of the flesh of the fruit with sugar, normally it's 1 kilogram of fruit and 1 kilogram of sugar and bring to boil for a couple of hours. I use much less sugar and brown if I have some. the Jelly part is actually done with the remains, the skin and the seeds and central part of the quince. You bring to boil with less sugar than the marmalade and you will have a nice thick jelly. Basically you lose nothing. I haven't tried the process in other fruits but mainly this is done with quinces as they have a special gum in the seed and skin parts.
To top the whole, I decided to add two beautiful pink flowers, one a fully bloomed lily and a nice chrysanthemum.
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