Wellies Mandatory

We have been deluged with rain today.
Cold, wind-driven rain, the ground is soaked, the creeks are overflowing their banks.
The flowers however are happy.

Two Olivers

Oliver horse-drawn mower circa 1909

Good for mowing

Oliver cat circa 2009
Good for meowing

A Bit O' Blarney

May the Luck of the Irish be with you on St. Patrick's Day.........

May the Irish hills caress you.

May her lakes and rivers bless you.

May the luck of the Irish enfold you.

May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you.

~ Irish blessing.

The Beauty of the Emerald Isle, a treat for your wee Irish roots.





Music : "The Blood Of Cu Chulainn" by Mychael Danna & Jeff Danna

Video : Shastashene

A Dishy Love

What is it about us ladies and our love of dishes.

I confess to loving all varieties, from ironstone to fine china.
My everyday dishes are Pfaltzgraff, country white, simple yet elegant.

There's also the Blue Willow dishes, lots of them, since I am forever 'finding' new pieces, it is an ongoing love affair, just as the pattern suggests.

The Royal Albert Old Country Roses collection are my fine bone china dishes, a timeless set of delicate dinnerware.

A few years ago I started collecting the Johnson Brothers Friendly Village dinnerware, each plate decorated with various seasons of the year, they are so versatile and well .....'friendly'.

Oh there are others, Red English Castle transferware, Harvestime transferware, Blue English scenery transferware, and yet another set of fine bone china bought for me as a young bride by the First Sergeant.

So many choices, so little time....

Watching

Tea Time

 

 

A Cup of Tea

When the world is all at odds
And the mind is all at sea
Then cease the useless tedium
And brew a cup of tea.

There is magic in its' fragrance,
There is solace in its' taste;
And then laden moments vanish
Somehow into space.

And the world becomes a lovely thing!
There's beauty as you'll see;
All because you briefly stopped
To brew a cup of tea.

(J. Jonker, Amsterdam, c.1670)

The House With Nobody In It

click to enlarge

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track

I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.

I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;

That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.

I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;

For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,

And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.

It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;

But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid

I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.

I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be

And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,

Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.

But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone

For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,

A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,

Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track

I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,

Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,

For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

~ The House with Nobody In It : Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

Snow Day

Mother Nature threw down her blanket shortly after midnight last night, just in time for an artic blast moving through area.
Our first snowfall of the year, magically transforming the landscape.

 

May you stay warm on the inside, when it's cold on the outside.

Out of the bosom of the air,

Out of the cloudfolds of her garment shaken,

Over the woodlands, brown and bare

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

~~By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.~~

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)