The movable feast named Easter

  
The egg dropped on the table, cracked open and ozed around. A clean-up crew was ready and it was soon just an another smudge added to the accumulating collage of wax drips and spattered dye building up on the  table. Which had been especially prepared for a hard night of muck. Luckily Nancy had just started the egg. She hadn't put in hours. There were no tears or pulling of the hair. It was good to get that over and done- no more egg breakage tonight, okay everybody?  

 

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Easter snuck up fast and we hardly had time 

to plan our annual Ukrainian-esq egg dying party. Many years ago we were invited to a large Easter weekend gathering at the Angelo Coast Nature Preserve in Northern Ca. A serious contingent (none Ukrainian, that I know of) worked on their eggs off and on for 3 days and I learned the batik technique of layering melted wax and dye, working from light to dark. That morphed into spending subsequent Easter eves around our table with whoever wanted to join in. 

How long have we been doing this, anyway?  Long enough for it to be a tradition that people besides us anticipate. In the past few years people have gotten more serious about getting to the table and working with this wax resist technique. Though we use the traditional tools and dyes, our eggs have lost the look of the traditional eggs. All kinds of cheating ensues. I think it plenty good enough that we just keep doing it.

  
The tradition of egg decoration in Slavic cultures originated in pagan times, and eventually was transformed and morphed into the Christian Easter egg. Nevertheless, these decorated eggs, called pysanka have retained much of their pagan symbolism. Eggs reoccur in numerous myths as the symbol of life and renewal in many other cultures around the world, but the Slavic ethnic groups developed the painted egg over the centuries. I'm still searching online for one passage that said something to the effect that we must keep painting eggs for the world to continue. It wasn't a choice but an imperative.

And of course let there be Easter Lilies, that ubiquitous flower that I still love. And let there be other varieties of lilies I can source  loved equally as well.

A blossom petal and a Coalition

 

An early morning neighborhood walk yields a rather spent magnolia petal and a sprig of tamarisk that hasn't come into bloom yet.

Tamarisks are beautiful moisture loving shrubs. As far as I can tell, they seem well behaved in the Bay Area.  But I know better yeah, I've got my eye on them. I've spent a lot of road time traveling through the 
Southwest to another place I've called home; Colorado Springs. They are rampantly out of control in high desert areas clogging waterways and crowding out native plants. 

There is an actual Tamarisk Coalition that restores waterways to healthy conditons- you know you're in trouble when there is an entire organization dedicated to your eradication. 

Another beautiful shrub run amok.