Unusual words

PSITHURISM

The sound of the winds through the trees

PETRICHOR

The scent of rain on dry earth

SOLIVAGANT

Wandering alone

TSUNDOKU

Buying books and not reading them

QUERENCIA

A place from which one's strength is drawn

SEHNSUCHT

The inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what

Poem

a look
a glance
a smile askance
a recognition of a kindred soul
the touch of a hand
a certain smile
just to be near
the words you hear
your heart alight

a kind word
meeting of minds
sideways glance
looking forward

a barest touch
electrifies
a shiver
a tingle
sparks fly

to be yourself
is hard to do
you're sometimes me
and you're sometimes you

you succeed
you fail
breathe in
exhale

one step
then two
a foot in the shoe

your stars collide
a meteor shower
cosmic energy

Perfect Parsnips

Boil 3 mins.
Coat in flour and parmesan
Hot oil, knob of butter - 20 mins
Turn over then drain oil - hot oven another 15-20 mins

Roses - wish list

JUDE THE OBSCURE

FANTIN LATOUR

Bookmark - The Girl Who Married a Bear

Tuesday February 26th 2013 - one of the best blog posts I have ever read a wild place by Milla at A Girl Who Married a Bear

Books

Elijah's Mermaid
Essie Fox

The Fall of Light
Nial Williams

The Promise
Ann Weisgarber

Bitter Greens

The Wild Girl

Kate Forsyth

quotes

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of life, the clearer we can see through it

Jean Paul Sartre

Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength

Betty Friedan

There is a fountain of youth - it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love.  When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age

Sophia Loren

You don't stop laughing when you grow old
You grow old when you stop laughing

G.B. Shaw

The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible

Judith Regan

Everyday you must decide what you COULD do, what you SHOULD do, and what you MUST do.

No Knead Bread

3 cups flour
13/4 tspn salt
1/2 tsp yeast
1.1/2 cups water

mix all together
cover bowl with cling film leave for 12-18 hours
Heat over to 450 place a pot with lid in oven for 30 mins
Pour dough onto a heavily flou8red surface and shape
Remove hot pot from oven and drop in the dough (use parchment paper in pot)
Drop in dough cover and return for 30 mins.
After 30 mins remove lid and bake for 15 mins
remove and cool

The Last Bookshop

 

Poem

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing down a bit
Rest!  if you must - but never quit.

december reflections

My Friend Maia

Perfect Day - Miriam Stockley

Tale of Benjamin Bunny
 

Corned Beef Hash

• butter
• onion
• thyme
• 1 tsp marmite
• 350ml beef stock
• 150ml red wine
• 375 corned beef
• chopped parsley
• 750 potatoes peeled
• s and p
• butter
• cheddar
• breadcrumbs

Oven 200
Boil potatoes - when cooked removed and dice
fry onions in butter add thyme add marmite stock red wine cook briskly till reduced by half
add corned beef and parsley
cook 5 mins break up with fork
season potatoes mash with milk and butter
put corned beef mix in dish
top with mash
top with cheddar and breadcrumbs
bake for 20 mins till golden brown
 

Blog Do's and Don'ts

You don't care about your topic any more (a good blog post is written with passion).

You don't know who you are writing for (just think of one person - the post will become more personal, more conversational, and more engaging.

Edit - polish each sentence.

View topics from a fresh perspective

• Share personal experiences
• Develop your own blogging voice that speaks to your tribe
• Share a glimpse of who you are to bond with your audience
• Readers engage because of who you are
• What your readers need is you - your wisdom, ideas, unique stories.
• Take the reader on an enjoyable informative ride.

christmas card

 

scandinavian christmas

quotes

"The soul needs to look out at things and find rest and peace and beauty in the things that the eyes are seeing. I think that’s a need. it’s a need as much as having a roof over your head and food in your stomach." - Anna Pavord

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”
― Camille Pissarro

Time

Imagine that you had won the following *PRIZE* in a contest: Each morning your bank would deposit £86,400 in your private account for your use.  However, this prize has rules:

 

The set of rules:

 

1. Everything that you didn't spend during each day would be taken away from you.

 

2. You may not simply transfer money into some other account.

 

3. You may only spend it.

 

4. Each morning upon awakening, the bank opens your account with another £86,400 for that day.

 

5. The bank can end the game without warning; at any time it can say,“Game Over!". It can close the account and you will not receive a new one.

 

What would you personally do?

 

You would buy anything and everything you wanted right? Not only for yourself, but for all the people you love and care for. Even for people you don't know, because you couldn't possibly spend it all on yourself, right?

 

You would try to spend every penny, and use it all, because you knew it would be replenished in the morning, right?

 

ACTUALLY,    This GAME is REAL ...

 

Shocked ??? YES!

 

Each of us is already a winner of this *PRIZE*. We just can't seem to see it.

 

The PRIZE is *TIME*

 

1. Each morning we awaken to receive 86,400 seconds

as a gift of life.

 

2. And when we go to sleep at night, any remaining time is Not credited to us.

 

3. What we haven't used up that day is forever lost.

 

4. Yesterday is forever gone.

 

5. Each morning the account is refilled, but the bank can dissolve your account at any time WITHOUT WARNING...

 

SO, what will YOU do with your 86,400 seconds?

 

Those seconds are worth so much more than the same amount in  pounds.  Think about it and remember to enjoy every second of your life, because time races by so much quicker than you think.

 

So take care of yourself, be happy, love deeply and enjoy life!

 

Here's wishing you a wonderful and beautiful day. Start “spending”....

 

"DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT GROWING OLD…!"

 

SOME PEOPLE DON'T GET THE PRIVILEGE

christmas wish list

The Homemaker - Dorothy Canfield Fisher  - BOOK

Smoke in the Valley - David Kynaston - BOOK

Bathing the Lion - Johnathan Carroll - BOOK

Ten Canoes - FILM

Garden and Hedgerow - Ethel Armitage - BOOK

The Lost Garden - Helen Humphreys

 

watercolour art

perrine Rabouin - artist

miss literati

old age

landscapes of the mind

Landscapes of the Mind — Dawna Markova
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

life's journey

festivities

List of books to read

The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan

Small Victories
Anne Lamott

Little Boy Brown
Isobel Harris

The Homemaker
Dorothy Canfield Fisher


Me Before You

Smoke in the Valley

Time for Change
Patricia Tudor Sandahl

 

found quotes

We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we have started
and know the place for the first time

little gidding - T.S. eliot

to see the world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wild flower
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour

William blake

the indescribable innocence and beneficence of nature - of sun and win and rain, of summer and winter - such health, such cheer, they afford forever.  Shall I not have intelligence with the earth. Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

henry david Thoreau

the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched

henry david Thoreau

We are nature, long have we been absent but now we return
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks
We are oaks, we grow in openings side by side

Walt Whitman

I go to nature to be soothed and healed
And to have my senses
Put in tune once more

John Burroughs

Death hath no part of me.  I am that living and fiery essence that flows in the beauty of the fields.  I shine in the water, I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars.  Mine is the mysterious voice of the invisible wind ... I am life

Hildegard of Bingen

The poetry of the earth is never dead

John Keats

When we try to pick out anything in nature
We find it hitched to everything else in the universe

John Muir

We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each a product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

Walt Whitmaqn

I am ...

I am thinking
I am thankful
I am wearing
I am creating
I am going
I am wondering
I am reading
I am hoping
I am learning

A favourite quote

One of my favourite things

Plans for the week

In the kitchen

Around the house

A peek into my day
 

autumn