After the Vacation

The day after vacation, I always feel the pull to do two different things.  1. To fly around getting everything unpacked and in the laundry and 2. To flop down on the couch with a book and take a nap.  I've combined the two and after throwing a load of laundry in the wash, I'm curled up in the armchair with a huge stack of reading material that includes a nursing memoir, Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart, a couple vintage magazines (must blog about that) and a section of the newspaper.  While I was hanging out the laundry, my eye was caught by how gorgeous the front flower beds are looking.  In just a little over a weekend, the wildflower mix that we spread liberally has started to really bloom.  I am so pleased by how the beds turned out, so I grabbed the camera and snapped a few pictures.  Isn't it pretty?

...And a lovely rose that I snapped a picture of as I was coming inside.

A Vacation

Good morning, dear readers.
I'm going to be on vacation from Thursday to Sunday.  So in the meantime, enjoy whatever you're reading.  As always, the archives are on the sidebar to the right, so if you get a hankering to read some old posts, go ahead!
Happy Reading to you all!

A Pretty Cookbook

I heard the Kinfolk Cookbook mentioned briefly on a blog and was fascinated.  Wonder of wonders, our public library actually had it on the new book shelf, so I snapped it up and read it aloud on the way home from the library.  I am familiar with Kinfolk and I think we even got a few issues of the magazine.  It is, essentially, a hipster lifestyle magazine.  Actually, I think it's food and entertaining specifically, but really, it's pictures of pretty stuff and then short essays and recipes, most of which are about food.  The pictures are absolutely gorgeous and make me want to find a rough wooden table and mismatched, chipped china (it sounds weird, I know...you just need to see these pictures).  The magazine fascinates me because it's so different from the 90s ideal.  It's still very much this idyllic perfection just like Martha Stewart's magazines, but what you're supposed to be trying to attain is radically different.

So when I found out about this, I was looking forward to a good cookbook read.  Like I said earlier, some of the pictures are absolutely gorgeous and make me want to spend hours with my camera.  However, the writing is...meh.  I think that the writers could do with a little lesson on sparse use of adjectives and avoiding flowery language.  The run-on sentences abound, filled with an adverb or an adjective every 5th word.  It makes for funny, but slightly tiring reading.

However, in spite of the writing, the overall tone of the book is inspiring in that they're encouraging people to get back into the home and cook and entertain.  All of the recipes look delicious.  The format of the book is a short bio about one of the Kinfolk editor's friends, and then recipes that the friends shared.  I wanted to warn you about the writing, but the overall message of the book, the photography, and the recipes make up for it.

A Father's Day Poem

I had the worst time finding a suitable Fathers' Day Poem.   It couldn't be smarmy (you know the poems…the father portrayed as this strong, silent, perfect person), it couldn't be funeral (that's a surprisingly large amount of poems about Fathers) and it couldn't be grim and dark.  It's not like you can't find plenty of that when looking for Mothers' Day Poems, but there are still the occasional poems that are beautiful without being saccharine.  I was so pleased when I found this poem.  It's by no means perfect, but there are no bitter undertones, and no smarmity.

Only a Dad

BY EDGAR ALBERT GUEST

Only a dad, with a tired face,

Coming home from the daily race,

Bringing little of gold or fame,

To show how well he has played the game,

But glad in his heart that his own rejoice

To see him come, and to hear his voice.

Only a dad, with a brood of four,

One of ten million men or more.

Plodding along in the daily strife,

Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,

With never a whimper of pain or hate,

For the sake of those who at home await.

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,

Merely one of the surging crowd

Toiling, striving from day to day,

Facing whatever may come his way,

Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,

And bearing it all for the love of them.

Only a dad, but he gives his all

To smooth the way for his children small,

Doing, with courage stern and grim,

The deeds that his father did for him.

This is the line that for him I pen,

Only a dad, but the best of men.

I thought I would also quote this poem because it makes me laugh so much.

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And you have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray, what is the reason for that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling a box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs.


I'm thinking that maybe I need to sit down and write a really good Fathers' Day Poem.  I have my dad to thank for a lot of my love of reading.  He has never liked fiction, but he read lots of wonderful children's books to my brother and me.  I can still remember listening to him read and sobbing over Aslan's death in The Chronicles of Narnia.  It was my first experience of enjoying a sad part of a good book.  Anyway, happy Fathers' Day to all of you whatever you're doing and whoever your fathers/father figures are.

What the World Eats

I took a little break from my usual reads, cozy pre-1980 novels, to pick up a very inspiring and fascinating book called What the World Eats.  This was a much-talked-about book (I think it was originally meant for children, but you can't tell in the least) when it came out in 2008 and I just never bothered to pick it up.  Then several weeks ago, I was reading a blog post that mentioned this book and warmly recommended it.  So I headed off to the library and picked this up and read it right away.  I was writing a post in my head while picking strawberries and now I've come in to write it.  Be prepared for a (minor) rant, everybody.

What the World Eats covers families in different countries, describing their daily work and what they eat in a week.  The family poses next to their table (or the ground) covered with all of the food they eat in one week.  All different people are mentioned in this book, from the French family with two college-aged daughters to the large, multi-generational Bhutanese family.  

That's probably the worst picture I've ever taken.  But you get the gist- those
people don't have enough food.

As would be expected, there is a heartbreaking difference in the amounts of food.  The poor family in Chad with 16 people in their family have about 1/4 of the food of the American family of 4.  The disparity in quantity was so strikingly unfair.  

...Aaaand the American family.  Sigh.

The other thing that struck me was the *ahem* crap (for lack of a nicer word) that so many people in the western world are eating.  Now I'm not just talking about the occasional box of Oreos as a little treat or the gorgeous green bottles of seltzer water (which I do adore) or perhaps some boxed cereal.  Oh my, no.  We're talking the whole table covered with boxes and plastic bags of stuff and then one sad, measly head of broccoli (I kid you not).  And please remember that this was the food in a week, not a month.  Oh dear, and the McDonalds.  It was everywhere, from the Chinese family to the Mexican family.  In this book, the Mexican family has 6 gallons of Coca-Cola a week.  I'm sure they're thanking America for handing them a nice helping of diabetes.  

Beautiful, beautiful green kale growing in a flower bed.

So now that I've gotten my rant out, I'll give some practical thoughts.  First, let's look at some of the families in the book who had enough (that's key) and were eating fairly responsibly.  The Mongolian family had eggs grown by a neighbor, fresh meat from the market, some oil, rice, salt, and soy sauce from a store.  Added to this was lots of produce, most of it grown locally or preserved (fermented, I think).  The large Turkish family had great food on their table.  The only prepared thing that was bought was some sesame seed paste cookies from the market.  There were eggs, fish, beef, potatoes, yogurt, pasta, feta, and milk.  And there was a nice long list of vegetables, some of them grown locally. Well, there was the pack of cigarettes, but aside from that, they had good choices.  I think it's important to look at the people that are making better decisions for inspiration.

The strawberries are starting to come on fast.  6 quarts
in one morning!  Yippee! 

Second, I think it takes baby steps (and the authors of this book back me up in the introduction).  For instance, in my part of the world right now, everything is flooded with beautiful, local produce.  We happen to have a large garden, but there are markets in pretty much every city nowadays.  It would be ridiculous to be buying Central American strawberries right now.  If we just got rid of, say, 3/4s of the packaged stuff just from March to October, we would make such a difference.  And as if cutting out all that nasty stuff wasn't enough of a reward, we'll be stealing less from people like the family from Chad because we won't be shipping unneeded resources from halfway around the world to ourselves.  

This book is fantastic and if you are the least bit skeptical after reading this post, go read this book and you won't be. Oh, and I'd love to hear what you think about this.

Tasha Tudor

Just this week, I check an old favorite out of the library.  It was one of the beautiful books that are about Tasha Tudor.  For those of you who don't know, Tasha Tudor was an eccentric old New Englander who wrote and illustrated beautiful children's books.  She was sort of the American Beatrix Potter.  But books were just the tip of her skills.  She was known for her gorgeous gardens, delicious food, old-fashioned dress, and generally picturesque lifestyle.  She lived all alone in a farmhouse with her many animals (she was best known for her collection of corgis).

Throughout the years, people came to interview her and photograph her life.  This book, The Private World of Tasha Tudor, is organized by season.  There are gorgeous pictures of Tudor's fascinating life and the words in the book are her own.  The author took multiple recordings of her talking about things in her life and then he organized them into this book.

The pictures are really the main point.  Sure, having Tudor's charming voice on paper is nice, but the beautiful pictures are what I love so much about the Tasha Tudor books.  The sweeping dresses in Civil War prints, the bank of lilies, the charmingly clutter-y kitchen are captured so beautifully.

This book is wonderful and not just in a coffee-table book way.  I find Tasha Tudor's books to be kind of like looking at Pinterest-interesting and inspiring for me.  There are quite a few books about Tudor from a garden book to crafting book.  But I think that The Private World is probably the best of them because it's written in Tudor's own words and the photography is by far the best.   I really enjoyed this book.

A Walk

After a busy morning, I took a walk down the lane to put a letter in the mailbox.  A kitty-friend (Shadow) followed me down and we had a lovely walk enjoying the view and taking pictures (in my case) and shrinking in fear from the cussing mockingbird (in her case).  I'm sharing the pictures with you that I took today.

She leaped down off of the bench where she was sleeping and agreed to join me for a walk…

But first, she had to gaze a little apprehensively up at the tree that held
the enraged mockingbird,

Who warned her that her days were numbered and if she even thought
about getting his babies, she had him to answer to.

We saw gorgeous iris and poppies…I love that little window of time
where both are in flower…

And the clothesline full of wash…

And a blue, blue sky.

A Toast Rack

Today was the retirement community sale that happens every spring.  Each year, the people moving to the home donate stuff to the sale.  The stuff tends to be fabulous vintage finds.  I happened to find the most charming little device- a toast rack!  Now you may be asking, "What on earth is the purpose of a toast rack?"  Why to serve your toast on, of course!  Except, that the toast would have the unfortunate propensity to get soggy and cold, which is just plain nasty.

So, I'm going to use this cunning little device as a letter holder.  I have several friends who send me letters and I thought what a fun way to store letters this would be!

Here are several pictures that I took of it.  What do you think?  Won't this be handy?

I'll be back tomorrow with a review of Unpunished.  Yes!  I finally got around to reading the dang thing and it was a wonderful read.

Sewing and a Book Review

Today, I have been busy with projects and flaxing around (apparently flaxing isn't a word...autocorrect suggests "flapping" or "flexing", neither of which I was doing...in my book, it means "flying around, getting lots of things done").  One of the things I did was start work on a fabulous late 40s/early 50s wrap dress.  I seem to have a bit of a thing with wrap dresses this summer.  I made a flowery short 60s dress that is for fairly nice occasions and this dress is completely different.  It's long and swishy and will be for really hot August days at home.  I actually took the time to stop and take pictures, so I've included a few.

That blue thing is the bias tape that I'm using as facing
in the place of a regular facing.  The pattern I'm
using was missing any facing pieces.

This actually has a little bit to do with a book I just read.  Well, "read" is a little too serious.  It was more like, "skimmed some parts and read some parts admired the pretty pictures".  The book, written in the 90s, is called Life, Loss, and What I Wore.  I picked it up simply because I had a few minutes and I didn't want to be engrossed in something really good and burn the rhubarb sauce all over the stove (I did that anyway).  This book is a very small memoir of a woman's life, as lived through her clothes.  So, the story starts out with a dress that her mother made and wore in the 30s and moves through her life.  Each page is a small anecdote and its facing page is an illustration of the dress.  Each chapter is a decade and ends in the 90s, with the author's granddaughter playing dress-up in one of her old dresses. And there were some gorgeous vintage dresses mentioned.  I especially loved the description and picture of the author's elegant 50s ball dress.   Reading this description, this sounds like a charming and interesting read.  And it was, to some extent.  However, I didn't love it.  The writing style sounded extremely dated (in a bad way), but it wasn't just that.  It was extremely self-involved and navel-gazey.  I found myself saying, "Oh please," more than once.  So, I don't recommend this unless you just happen to own the book and haven't read it or you really want to know about it and get it from the library.  It's not worth purchasing, in my humble opinion.

The book

But back to my dress.   I can't wait to see how it turns out.  I love this era of pattern and I think it's going to be a very nice, practical dress.  Here's the pattern, so you can see what the end product will look like.  I'm doing the shorter version because, honestly, can't you just imagine tripping over that long skirt every time you walked?

Storm Pictures

As I sat on the porch this afternoon, there was a gentle breeze whipping around and a blue, blue sky.   It was the perfect kind of day to be outside, but suddenly, I smelled that damp, breezy smell that signifies rain.  I snatched up the camera and took pictures of the storm closing in over the barn roof.  I thought I would share them here today, since this blog is both my book reviewing and my life-recording blog.

The rain and the wind came oddly fast, so the majority of the pictures ended up kind of blurred, but I was very pleased that I managed to get a few really nice ones.

The weather just can't decide what to do today.  As I write this, I'm sitting on the porch enjoying the sunshine and breezes again!

I'll be back tomorrow with a full length book review.  Until then, I hope you enjoyed these pictures!  I had a lot of fun taking them.

The Data

The poll about how to pronounce the name Flavia from the Flavia de Luce books is over.  The result is that the name is....
Flaevia!  5 out of 6 people agreed that the name was Flaevia, while 1 person told me it was Flahvia.  Since the one person who disagreed is a member of my family who never read the books (*cough* Aden *cough*), I'm going with the other 83% that say Flaevia.  Now I just have to wait to get the last book back (it was accidentally returned to the library) and I'll be all set!
So now you know.  In other news, this is what I'm going to be doing today:

That green stuff is flats of little plants waiting to go in the dirt.

People, look at all the onions!

Knickerbocker Knockabout

Would you like to hear a gripping, enthralling, edge-of-your-seat story written by yours truly?  Well, here goes.

The pasture where our escapee first headed to

Two days ago, we decided to move the pigs.  Remember those cute babies?  Well, they have grown decidedly bigger and louder and it was time for them to move from their little nursery (the horse stall) out to the big world.

The brambles she got caught in.  She still has a scratched up
nose to show for it.

The first drama came when we went to pick up the pigs.  They screamed like I have never heard anything scream before.  Loud, piercing screams.  After hastily dumping them down in the middle of the pasture, we realized that they needed to be shooed chased madly into their house (where the food and water will be) for a couple of days until they learn that that is their home base.

The place where she ducked under the fence.  

Two of the pigs, after being chased around and around, decided to go where they were supposed to go.  We were relieved, but there was that one stubborn pig that was determined to stay right where she was.  We started to shoo her and, just then, she decided to dodge between my legs and charge straight through the electric wire.  I have never seen an animal so determined to get through an electric wire in all my life.  She dodged through the wire and then ducked right under the (we thought) carefully sealed gate.  I really thought I was going to lose my mind.  Here was a pig that, evidently, had no respect for an electric wire and 60 acres (not counting the neighbors') on which to charge madly.  I briefly considered just letting the dumb thing wander through the woods for the rest of her life.

This gate to the pasture where the pigs were supposed to be.

However, we took off again, chasing this pig over hill and dale (actually, it over through knee-deep pasture and brambles).  This pig first of all decided to take off through one of the biggest pastures.  She ran at a breakneck pace that none of us could keep up with and then plunged herself into neck deep brambles.  We were sure that we could catch her because she was caught, but when I reached for her, she managed to tear herself loose and run again through the electric wire and through the barn and through some more pasture before finally turning around and racing through the open gate into the pasture where she was supposed to be.  Exhausted, she threw herself down directly on the electric wire and it began repeatedly shocking her.  I don't know if the little burning sensation calmed her, but she didn't budge.  We turned the electric wire off and gently walked her back to her sisters in the barn.  She went without a peep.

The three piggies.  The one of the left is the escape artist.

Yesterday, my grandmother reminded me of a poem from the children's book, Father Fox's Penny-Rhymes.

"Knickerbocker Knockabout
Sausages and Sauerkraut
Run, run, run, the hogs are out!
Knickerbocker Knockabout"

All's well that ends well...

Sunset

Here's a sunset picture for all you lovely readers.  I'm taking a little blogging

break for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with a review of the book Stardust.

Hope you all have had a lovely weekend and are refreshed for a new week!

The Pigs

We have pretty much every animal on my farm: beef cattle, chickens, a few loud guinea hens, 3 ornery geese, sheep, goats, two dogs, and a bunch of barn kitties that roam at will.  Well, three days ago a kind neighbor called and asked if we wanted 3 little piglets.  After a few minutes of thinking, we said yes.  So now, there are three little piglets that are living in a horse stall until they are old enough to go out on pasture.  These pigs were born in an extremely conventional (for the United States) pig operation, called CAFO units.  Now these 3-week-old piglets are living in a wildly different setting at our farm.  They have will have lots of sunshine and grass and I think they're going to be very happy.

Piggy naptime.  They're babies, so they spend quite a lot of time
sleeping and chewing on things.

Contemplative pig.

I promise, this is the last time you will ever see a pig butt on my blog.
But look!  It's a perfect heart and no, that wasn't tattooed on.

Since we've gotten pigs, I am remembering all of these books and stories about pigs.   Of course, there's the classic Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, but there are many others.  In Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, there is a story about somebody taking a pig for a ride on a bobsled.  All I remember about that story is it was funny.  Then there's the Beatrix Potter book, Pigling Bland.  There's the famous Charlotte's Web, the pigs in the Richard Scarry books, the stories about Olivia the pig, and dear old Babe: The Gallant Pig.

The waterer.  It's just a pvc pipe with a little tappy-nipple thing like
rabbits use.  These smarties figured it out without any coaching on our part!

The shoelaces on boots make excellent chew toys.

Apparently chewing on the feeder and an old rag is very fun.

This is just a smidgen of the stories about pigs.  I've wondered why there were so many pig stories, but I'm starting to understand it since I got pigs.  You see, pigs are one of the most sensitive and smart farm animals.  They actually remind me a lot of dogs.  They can get very bored if they don't have something engaging to do, they get lonely if they don't have company, and they all have very distinct personalities.  The most rewarding thing about taking care of the pigs is that when you go out to the barn, the pigs have a special happy grunt when they hear people.  All this to say, I think I'm going to like keeping pigs and I can understand why people have liked them for a long time.

A View of Easter

I had a lovely Easter weekend and I'm going to share the pictures that don't have faces in them with you!  Starting off, here's the gorgeous sunset picture I got on Saturday night after a glorious campfire.  The glowing crack is a ventilation crack in the barn.  I caught the sunset pouring through.  This is one of my new favorite pictures.

This is the traditional lamb cake that we always make.  It's a bit of a rigamarole, but we love it and it makes such a pretty centerpiece, besides being delicious!

Easter Sunday, there was church, then a big extended family party with delicious ham and sides and plenty of desserts (I'm still recovering from a sugar headache!)  After I got home, I was fiddling with the camera and got a very pretty shot of a pot of hyacinths, an old crate-turned-plant stand, and a vintage armchair in the kitchen.

So that was my easter.  How was yours?  Was it a quiet gathering with a few people?  A big family wing-ding like me?  Or did you not celebrate Easter?  I'd love to know what you did.

If I ever finish blasted A Company of Swans, I'll review it.  It's a perfectly good book, but I have had so many other distractions recently that reading has been pushed to the back burner.  I'm looking forward to a quiet week with plenty of reading!