Mary Rafferty

This is not normal

The calendar and the weather did not coordinate this winter for the required dormant season cleanup and pruning.  And then we had some abnormally warm weather — perhaps better than our typical summer weather when marine influence brings in lots of fog.  So here it is early April and we have pea sized baby grapes already!  This is more like what we would expect in June or July.

It will be interesting to see when they actually are ready to harvest.  Perhaps it will be early enough that the local critters won’t be looking for a buffet in our garden.  Last year a possum came in a couple times and wiped out the grapes just as they were ready to pick.

 

Before and After

On a more positive note, I have done some experiments with adding concave facets to previously cut stones.  The first one is a round prasiolite quartz which was initially cut with all flat facets a number of years ago.  I added a row of concave facets around the culet. The stone is 15.3 mm. in diameter. When I was getting it dopped prior to cutting I managed to chip the culet so I had to cut more than planned losing .07 carats in the process.

Another prasiolite already had a few concaves in the pavilion of a very long  (25.2 mm x 7.3 mm.)  oval.  The final weight was 6.97 carats having lost only .03 carats in this case.

A rectangular amethyst also had some prior pavilion concave facets.  It wasn’t as boring as a plain emerald cut, but it still lacked dazzle.  After the additional concaves were added, the 21.3 x 9.2 mm. stone ended up at 13.44 carats, a loss of only .02 carats.

Both of the stones with previous pavilion concaves had been cut with my old PolyMetric OMF machine a year or so before I moved up to the Ultra Tec Fantasy machine which has much better flexibility for placing the facets.  I am still learning what combination of  stone shapes and concave facets provide the best return.

 

 

Tourmaline Trouble

In mid-November I was doing a show in Ventura during terrible weather. As a result of the storm, attendance was very low, the parking lot was a lake, the room was cold and the roof of the fairgrounds building leaked right by my space.

On the second day, things were a little better and we had someone looking at the tourmalines. I noticed that one of them looked “funny” — like maybe some lint had gotten under the glass lid of the  box. Not too many minutes later, the customer had left and my daughter called my attention to the same stone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t lint. There was an ugly fracture running across the stone.

The stone had been fine initially.  There were no “feathers” or other inclusions visible.  It had not been taken out of the box and dropped. The stone had both pink and a bit of green — not enough or in the right places to be an obvious bicolor. But it seems the stone decided it was time to split the colors.

Carrot Twist

I have had lots of carrots which failed to grow nice tapered roots as shown in the seed catalogs.  But this is a new one for me.

A Visit from Big Bird

While in the kitchen this afternoon preparing some stone fruit to go into a pie for tonight’s dinner, I happened to look up and out into the garden.  One of the more unusual visitors had stopped by for a snack.  There is now one less resident lizard who was unfortunate enough to be snatched up by that big beak.