A very welcome surprise sat awaiting our retrieval in the parcel section of our group mailbox at the top end of our street.  We found the box key in our letter box when we opened it to remove our mail after our usual ravine walk.  The group mailbox sits right beside the ingress trail to the ravine, as it happens.

We do receive these surprises from time to time, delighting us no end.  They are gifts from our younger son who lives in Vancouver.  He has been a member of the pottery club at the University of British Columbia, where his office is located, for quite a few years.  And with some of his leisure hours he looks forward to designing and throwing pottery.

He's busy enough with other things that require a different kind of energy.  Say, for example, his week-end recreational trips to Tofino or the Stein Valley or Chilliwack, where he hikes, climbs, camps, canoes, kayaks.  He did just wrap up a week-end at Tofino, and here's one of the photographs that he took at that time.

As for the pottery, he also sent, as he often does, pieces to his brother in Toronto and his sister as well, spreading the joy around, as it were.  We received two dinner plates with a single-stem rose painted on each one, a design he was taken with on a trip to Italy where he bought a pendant because of that design, to use it as a template.

There was also included two delicate and surpassingly lovely thimbles, each with different floral designs distinguishing their circumferences.  And also a melon-shaped pitcher, beautifully scalloped at the mouth, its iridescent colouration fading as it reached the neck.

His ability to produce these objects doesn't surprise us particularly.  He has always excelled at whatever he takes an interest in.  His furniture-making capabilities are outstanding, using only tools that were in use a hundred years ago, in producing faithful copies of 18th- and 19th-Century pieces.

He takes his artistic inspiration from his father.