No, I’ve not gone barking mad (not yet anyway). I have not really made off to Holland but (in a way) a little bit of Holland has been transported to our home and it has a tenuous link to my nature blog.

My wife, Wendy, has completed her most recent patchwork quilt and we have managed to mount it in our dining room. I am sure she is delighted to be able to see the culmination of months of her work but it has in fact lifted our spirits for both of us.

I feel I have contributed a tiny amount to this beautiful work of art as I bought her the book with the initial design for the quilt. I have spent a fair number of hours sitting looking at the library of books at Midsomer Quilting  (her favourite shop for all matters quilting and probably most of the UK’s favourite shop too) and it was there (drinking their coffee and eating their chocolate biscuits) that I was attracted to a book “Promenade dans un jardin hollandais” (Petra Pins & An Moonen). I love the series of books produced by the French publishers Quilt Mania as the main text is in French (there is also an English translation) and they always have the most amazing photographs. The photographs are technically brilliant and the quilts are also displayed in the most imaginative ways.

Wendy’s quilt is a tree of life and there’s the tenuous link to my nature blog.

Wikipedia tells me that

“the tree of life is a fundamental widespread myth (mytheme) or archetype in many of the world’s mythologies, religious and philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree. The tree of knowledge, connecting to heaven and the underworld, and the tree of life, connecting all forms of creation, are both forms of the world tree or cosmic tree, and are portrayed in various religions and philosophies as the same tree.”

I would love to visit “L’Ecomusée ou musée de Plein Air de Arnhem aux Pays Bas” which is where the quilts for the book were photographed and which in the book is described as:

” a magical place that relates several centuries of Dutch history through a 100 acre park. Founded on April 24th, 1912, the museum opened in 1918. Nowadays , this site includes ninety-six buildings and points of interest such as farms, windmills, a drawbridge, houses, workshops etc. from different eras, with one of the most recent attractions being a tram station from Amsterdam.”

A visit to Arnhem would also be very poignant as it was there that my Uncle Cyril (a glider pilot in the RAF) was killed in the Second World War.