A True English Rose

In almost every English town or city there is at least one open-air or permanent market site.
Typically, stall-holders purveying everything from fine china, and linens, to fresh produce and a virtual plethora of food items.
In earlier times , the towns set aside one day for "Market Day" where buyers and sellers peddled their wares, very often incorporating livestock sales also.

The First Sergeant loved these markets, most every week, he would rummage around, and inevitably bring home a knick-knack or two.
It was at the Warrington Market where we first laid eyes on the Royal Albert, Old Country Roses china.
Exquisitely beautiful, so fine a bone china , one could hold it up to the light and see right through. A dinnerware so timeless, it has become the world's most recognized, and celebrated pattern.

Designed by Harold Holdcroft in 1962, Old Country Roses fine bone china dinnerware was inspired by a typical English country garden with flowers in bloom.
Even in the dead of winter, a cupboard filled with English roses, I can't help but smile....

Nesting

Birds' Nests

The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind.
Some torn, others dislodged, all dark.
Everyone sees them: low or high in tree,
Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark.

Since there's no need of eyes to see them with
I cannot help a little shame
That I missed most, even at eye's level, till
The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.

'Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests
Still in their places, now first known,
At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not,
Whatever jays and squirrels may have done.

And most I like the winter nests deep-hid
That leaves and berries fell into;
Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts,
And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew.


~ Edward Thomas (1878-1917 / London / England)

Awakening Days

We've had the balmiest of weather this winter.
A mild winter, with days warming to higher than average temperatures.
The warmer weather, has forced the Iris shoots to poke through the soil.
I trust they know that the season is not yet over.

 

The bird feeders have been a flurry of activity, and I've witnessed Spring cleaning of the birdhouses.
A busy little Carolina Wren, with her beak full of feathers, moss and sticks, flinging it all so recklessly with little regard for it's former tenant.  

 

The deer visit nightly

 

There are definite signs of spring.
Even the Lamb's Ear is looking perky.

The Spirit Of Life

Despite the silence, the growing continues.

"The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however remote.

It is the expression of an idea; growth according to a law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, appropriated by spirit.
 If I take up a handful of earth, however separately interesting the particles may be, their relation to one another appears to be that of juxtaposition generally.
I might have thrown them together thus.
But the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to our own. It is a successful poem in its kind."

~ Henry David Thoreau

Happy Valentine's Day

" The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.'"

~ eden ahbez, "Nature Boy" (1948).

 

Posing

 

Mum, is this my best side ?