Around My House

         Listening~ The Forgotten Man:  A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Schlaes has been on my list for a long time.  I'm glad I finally managed to get to it (thanks, Hoopla!).  Schlaes sheds new light on the Depression and dispels some of the myths surrounding FDR and the New Deal.  For instance, I was surprised to learn just how influenced by socialism in general and the Soviet Union in particular Roosevelt's cabinet members were.  I also learned that Casa Grande, Arizona, was founded as a planned collective farming community, but it quickly failed (no surprise there).  I have friends who used to live in Casa Grande, so this was interesting to me.  I also didn't realize how extensive the legal challenges to the New Deal were and how much of it was overthrown by the US Supreme Court.  The book does get a little dry here and there with statistics and the like, but they are necessary to get the full picture.  Recommended reading for those interested in learning more about this time period.


I love me some Dickens!  It had been a very long time since I'd encountered Oliver Twist, and I'm so glad I revisited him.  As is typical with Dickens, the plot gets in such a tangle you don't think it can ever be unraveled, but of course it is.  The scene with Fagin in prison on the eve of his execution is poignant.  Reading Dickens reminds me that every time and place has its social evils and our time is not unique.  The version I listened to is narrated by Simon Vance, my very favorite narrator of nineteenth century British novels.



I just started listening to The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  Can you believe I've never read this or any Steinbeck for that matter?  The narrator is Dylan Baker, who narrates one of my favorite (funny) books, The Teacher's Funeral by Richard Peck.  I'm looking forward to this one.  Chapter one was brilliantly written and read!







        Reading~  The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge.  I loved The Scent of Water and am enjoying this one as well.  Goudge's prose is lovely, her characters are full-bodied, and she tells a good story!








         I've also just started The Story-Killers:  A Commonsense Case Against the Common Core by Terrence O. Moore.  The author is a professor at Hillsdale College, and since I highly respect other Hillsdale professors I've read or listened to, his credibility starts at a high level for me.  I've only read the preface at this point, but so far he's painting a pretty bleak picture of the state of public education under Common Core.  We shall see if it continues, as I suspect it will.






        Watching~  Dave had Blue Bloods recommended to him by a friend.  Not having had a TV in the house since HD became the standard, we are pretty out of it when it comes to keeping up with TV shows.  But we found it on Netflix and started watching, usually one episode at the end of the day.  It's a good, though not great, show.  The Reagans are a family of NYPD police officers ranging from a rookie to the NYPD police commissioner (played by Tom Selleck), except for the daughter Erin, who is an assistant DA.  There are some major improbabilities (most noticeably, Danny the detective and Erin the assistant DA being assigned to cases where they have clear conflicts of interest) and loose ends left unresolved, sometimes forever, sometimes just for too long. (I can't think of an example right now, but trust me, they are there!)  The family is a strong, intact, devoted, Irish-Catholic family who all make surprising compromises considering their church's stances on certain issues.  For instance, Erin is divorced, and almost all of them engage in pre- or extramarital congress, to use an old-fashioned term, lol.  On the positive side, the characters are trying to do the right thing, sometimes in very complex situations, and they are committed to seeing justice done.  They often risk their jobs or career advancement for what is right.  All in all, it's an enjoyable show, but you presumably already know that since you, dear reader, are probably more up-to-date and in-the-know than I am!

     We've also been watching a lot of this lately~

Daily there are deer down by the pond, often mama/baby pairs but sometimes just mamas and other times just babies.  Sometimes they get really curious. . .

. . . and look in through the windows!

Around My House

Reading~

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn  I received this book for Christmas.  I added it to my Amazon wishlist after hearing an interview with the author on NPR.  It sounded interesting and it is!  Cooking, or the lack of it, is about so much more than just techniques and knowing your way around a stove.  Apparently, lots of people carry lots of baggage, good and bad, from their childhoods and current relationships when it comes to the simple act of preparing food.  Kathleen Flinn takes nine women from beginner cooks to . . . well, we'll see how far she gets.  I'm only about halfway through the book now.


Listening~

The Little Book of Hygge:  Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking  Pleasingly narrated by the author, this book clocks in at a little over three hours.  I'm about halfway.  It's a good introduction to the concept of hygge, but you could probably get a enough of an idea just by doing a web search.  Wiking is a happiness researcher who clearly knows his stuff, but I'm not really learning anything new about hygge.  If you're a hygge novice, this book will be helpful.







Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset   The author won a Nobel Prize for this historical epic, which is why I wanted to become familiar with it.  The Penguin edition is 1168 pages and the audio edition I'm listening to is over 44 hours long!  I listen to audiobooks when I think I will get bogged down in a paper edition, which would definitely have been the case with Kristin.  By the end of the second part, though, I needed a break; hence The Little Book of Hygge mentioned above.  I like it--I don't love it--and I'll be glad that I got it through it, even in audio format.




Watching~

Howards End  The movie based on E.M. Forster's novel is wonderful.  I had watched it several times many years ago, but since then I haven't been able to find a copy of it until Netflix began streaming it fairly recently.  Excitement!  The acting is excellent, the scenery beautiful, the story compelling. I will be revisiting this until Netflix no longer carries it.  And just so you know, the movie is very faithful to the book.







Mary Berry's Country House Secrets   I stumbled across this series on Youtube a few days ago.  I'd never heard of Mary Berry until The Great British Baking Show, which I loved, and so was excited to find this.  There are four episodes, each of which features the always classy Mary taking us through a stately British country house.  We meet the occupants and learn some of the history of the house and area.  And oh, yes, there is a cooking component.  So much fun!





Housekeeping~

After the great pantry clear out of January, I tackled a big storage closet in our conservatory this month.  It holds board games, puzzles, and the few toys we saved for visiting children, some files, cello music, gifts for future giving, and odds and ends.  One of these days I will learn to take before photos, but here's an after anyway:

There's even room left over!

A Favorite Blog~

Emily's blog, Charming the Birds from the Trees, is lovely!  She documents her life with her Orthodox priest husband and their three children.  There is some peaceful, lovely homekeeping, a little travel, a little knitting and sewing, some wonderful quotations, and always lovely photos.  I like her approach to living!

Admiring~

The winter pond is so beautiful!  A few days ago we had frost on top of ice, and it was sparkly in the sunshine!

(Just so you know, I don't make anything from Amazon or anywhere else for my opinions about movies, books, etc.  Links are provided for your convenience.)

A Creative Life

 "Mrs Willet can tackle a hundred jobs, without having been specifically taught any of them.  She can salt pork or beef, make jams, jellies, wines, chutneys and pickles; she can bake pies--with all manner of pastries--cakes, tarts and her own bread, which is particularly delicious.  She makes rugs, curtains, and her own clothes.  She can help a neighbour in childbirth and--at the other end of life's span--compose a corpse's limbs for decent burial.  She is as good a gardener as her husband, can distemper a room, mend a fuse, and sings in the choir.

She is, in fact, typical of most countrywomen, and with them she shares that self-reliance which is the heritage of those who have had to face tackling daily jobs of varied kinds.

Mrs Willet is small and pale and yet she is 'always on the go,' as she herself will tell you.  The fact that she can do so many things, and takes enormous pride in doing them well, is, I think the secret of this apparently inexhaustible energy.  There are so many different activities to engage her, that when she tires of one, there is another to which she can turn and get refreshment.  From turning her heavy old mangle in the wash-house, she will come in and sit down to stitch a new skirt.  She will prepare a stew, and while it simmers on the hob, filling the little house with its fragrance, she will practise her part in Mr Annett's new anthem, ready for the next church festival.  And--this perhaps is the most important thing--she sees a satisfying result from her labours.  The clothes blow on the line, the skirt is folded and put away in the drawer ready for next Sunday; Mr Willet will come in 'sharp-set' and praise her bubbling stew; and, with any luck, Mr Annett will congratulate her on her grasp of that difficult passage just before the basses come in.

It is a creative life.  There is something worth while to show for energy expended which engenders the desire to accomplish more.  Small wonder that the Mrs Willets of this world are happy, and deserve to be so."

Village Diary by Miss Read

The First Day of Christmas

We will be celebrating the full twelve days of Christmas around here, and I will try my very best to post something each day.

Day One~

This photo is from divine service Christmas morning.  Our nave never looks more beautiful than during the Christmas season!  Blessed Christmas, everyone!

Scenes from My House

It's hard to know what to say when you've taken an unintentional two-month-plus blog break.  How do you jump back in?  Do you apologize?  Do you explain?  Do you just reappear?  I think I'll go with the third option but give a brief explanation:  I was just plain busy!  At least once a week I thought about my poor neglected blog, but everything else crowded it out. I don't know if I'll do any better now, but I will try.

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After a week of clouds, the sunshine was very welcome.  The morning sun held warmth and brightness.

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We had our first freeze near the end of October and I thought my flowers were done for.  They were, except not all the geraniums in the barrels near the house got nipped, and they continued to bloom.  But another hard freeze was on the horizon about a week later, so I gathered all the blossoms that remained and put them in a vase on the kitchen windowsill where they are blooming still.  From here on out it's store-bought flowers for us until spring.

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My birthday dessert, which we shared, from the local French bakery. So rich and gooooood!

Sorry for the bad lighting!  It's dark by 5:00 . . .

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English food gets a bad rap.  I can say that with authority now that I've taste-tested a variety of authentic English foods.  In fact, the only bad English food we had the entire two weeks we were there was the pasta we ordered at an "American Italian restaurant."  Dave and I had cornish pasties on the train between London and Cambridge that were absolutely delicious!  And this was just train food!  In September, I decided to try my hand at making my own pasties.  They were a respectable first attempt, but I hope to refine my recipe and technique over the winter months.  They don't look too bad, do they?

Again, bad lighting . . .

Zinnias

Zinnias are such rewarding flowers!  They are easy to grow from seed, they flourish even with abject neglect once germinated, and then they burst forth with bright, big blooms.  Once they start, they don't stop until frost.  They stand up to drought conditions, too.  To top it all off, they make great cut flowers that last and last.  Zinnias are excellent flowers for children to grow because they are fast-growing and don't require diligence.  Just clip off the faded ones so more will appear.

Merry Ol' England Part 2

Picking up where we left off. . .

Though we stayed the entire time in London, we spent a day in Oxford and a day in Cambridge, which we got to by train.  That was all we saw of the English countryside (which simply means we will have to make a return trip!).  We enjoyed both days immensely and I'm so glad we we visited these two towns.

We ducked into the Ashmolean briefly, but since we had already been to a lot of museums in London, we were more interested in seeing Oxford itself.  The prominent Martyrs' Memorial is worth seeing and mulling over (what faith! what dedication to principle!), but I was more moved by the actual site of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer's martydom, marked by a cobblestone cross in the middle of Broad Street.  It is well worth knowing the inspiring story of these Oxford Martyrs.

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Walking around in Oxford was a lot of fun.  We saw the Bodleian, various famous colleges and churches, Carfax Tower, Christ Church Cathedral (though only from a distance--we weren't allowed to get any closer--boo!), and we visited Blackwell's, which actually is now a series of specialized bookshops.

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Just walking around and looking at the architecture was a treat.

Oxford's Oldest Saxon Tower

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A highlight of Oxford was eating at the Eagle and Child, the hangout of the Inklings!

By the way, we ate mostly at pubs and, despite the reputation of English food, we thought the food was very good. Steak and ale pie, fish and chips, bangers and mash, Cornish pasties, the full English breakfast--none of it was a disappointment.  In fact, the worst food we had was as at an "American/Italian" restaurant, where Dave says he was served the world's worst calzone!

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Coming up next--Cambridge!

Merry Ol' England Part 1

Hello, again.  I didn't mention this before because, well, I couldn't announce to the entire internet that we would be out of the country for two weeks, but Dave and I took a long dreamed-about trip to England.  We will be married thirty years in August and we thought a trip like this was a worthy gift to ourselves.

I won't even try to show you everything we did and every place we went.  We squeezed as much into each day as we could and made the most of our time there.  We decided to stay in London the entire time rather than spend our time moving from hotel to hotel, and I'm glad we did.  Even with two whole weeks, there were still places we didn't get to.

One of my very favorite aspects of England was the continually happening upon historic sites and monuments that were not part of our planned itinerary.  Everywhere you turn there is something to see, some plaque marking the spot of a historic event or a memorial to someone or something.

We used public transportation the entire time, mastering the Underground and becoming familiar with the bus and rail systems.  We rode on the top of a double-decker bus and now we know where J.K. Rowling got her inspiration for the Knight Bus!  (By the way, did you know there really are night buses in London?)  We took trains in order to spend a day each in Oxford and Cambridge.  It was so much fun to see the places mentioned in favorite books such as To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book (Oxford) and to go punting on the River Cam (Cambridge).

I'll share some highlights, and they really are just highlights.  This post would be too long to share everything we did!

Westminster Abbey is truly awe-inspiring.  Rich with history and beauty, it is one of the most glorious buildings I have ever been in.  We attended two services there because we were going to church somewhere, so why not?

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In the foreground is a 2000+ year old Roman wall, part of the original wall that defended London for centuries.  Most of it is gone now, but this large section can still be seen, touched, and marveled at.

In the background is the famed and fabled Tower of London.  All I can say is wow.  The history of a place like this is astounding.  We saw the place where the scaffold was erected for private executions (there's now a memorial fountain there), the royal chapel where King Henry III was reportedly murdered, the room where Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, the steps where the furture Queen Elizabeth I sat when she refused to go into the Tower.  It is a cliche, but a place like this really does bring history to life.

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Dave in front of the British Museum.  We actually went there twice and we still didn't get to see everything we would have liked to.  Actually, we could have spent the entire two weeks in this museum alone and not seen everything.  We focused on early British history, classical antiquity, and the Enlightenment.  Items we viewed include the Rosetta Stone, the remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Sutton Hoo treasures, Roman statues and mosaics, Lindow man, and so much more.

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Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross Station was a must-see for two Harry Potter fans.  The store was absolutely crammed with people, but we did pick up a few gifts.  What really surprised us is that the station looks nothing (and I mean nothing!) like the station in the movie.  Apparently, Rowling got the station mixed up with another in her memory.  The real King's Cross is modern-- all glass and chrome and shine.  See?

The area between Platforms 9 and 10

The store is off to the side near Platforms 9 and 10

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We also visited St. Paul's Cathedral and then went back for a service.  Though very different than Westminster Abbey, it was also breathtakingly beautiful and awe-full.  Christopher Wren was a marvel.  Everywhere we looked were his buildings, but St. Paul's is his crowning achievement.  The inscription on the floor under the dome bids visitors not to look for a memorial to Wren within the building; his memorial is all around us in the building itself.

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We didn't tour the Houses of Parliament, but we did walk or ride past them many times.  The iconic clock tower which houses the famous bell, Big Ben, is an easy landmark.  

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On our last day in London we hunted up Twining's Tea Shop, which is the oldest retail store in London.  It has been located in the same building since it first opened in 1706.  We often drink Twining's at home, so it was fun to visit the original store.  It was tiny!  Look how it's sandwiched between two relative giants!  We almost didn't see it!

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This has gotten long enough, so I'll share some more another day.  Thanks for tagging along!

What's Growing Around Here

So far-- and I'm keeping my fingers crossed!-- our vegetable garden is doing really well, especially compared to our first two attempts since we moved here in the summer of 2014.  Take a look!  (Photos by Dave)


The cucumbers are blossoming~

There are no blossoms on the beans yet, but they sure are lush!

Little tomatoes are forming~

And little cabbages are growing in the middle of those enormous leaves.  Something about cabbages makes a garden look so abundant.

We also have cauliflower and herbs growing.  

In the flower department, these are a few things blooming in my flower bed~

And these wild roses are creating quite a show just now!

Spring at My House

New mailbox which actually closes!