A lovely spring day

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The Bird Cherry has a lovely light foliage now. It will take a while before it will bloom – but the buds are almost as beautiful as the flowers.
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So much happens in the garden right now, everytime I turn around something new has sprung – or disappeared. I took this picture of the Pulsatilla Vulgaris this morning.

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An hour later I went out to get a better picture – and this is what I found.

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I went to town to pick up my new computer the other day – I’m sure I’ll like Vista as soon as I get used to all the new gadgets.

Saturday with Gutenberg

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Books always seem to have been a desirable thing to steal. There is quite a lot written about chained books in “The Care of Books” by John Willis Clark from 1901.

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I like this “bookshelf” especially when you want to check something in a dictionary it would be smart to have a shelf like this.

I found plenty yesterday – but I didn’t spend much time checking out interesting titles, I only noted what I wanted to return to.

One of them is “The Apple-Tree, The Open Country Books--No. 1” by L. H. Bailey. It is a charming little book illustrated with photos.

The farm home with its commodious house, its greensward, its great barn and soft fields and distant woods, and the apple-tree by the wood-shed; the good home at the end of the village with its sward and shrubbery, and apple roof-tree; the orchard, well kept, trim and apple-green, yielding its wagon-loads of fruits; the old tree on the hillside, in the pasture where generations of men have come and gone and where houses have fallen to decay; the odor of the apples in the cellar in the cold winter night; the feasts around the fireside,—I think all these pictures conjure themselves in my mind to tantalize me of home.

Even if I can’t prune fruit trees I’m familiar with them – but I know absolutely nothing about peanuts, so when I found a whole book about how to grow them I had to take a look. This is a book I’ll write more about.

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And as many of you know, I can’t resist books for children – especially not when they are illustrated. Yesterday’s find was “Prince and Rover of Cloverfield Farm, by Helen Fuller Orton from 1921 and with illustrations by Hugh Spencer.

A perfect day

The wood anemones are budding.

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The sheets are flapping in the wind and thousands of small suns are dancing on the rivers surface. It is one of those days when life is holding its breath – yesterday, now and tomorrow have conflated into a sunny eternity.

I spent some time with Gutenberg this morning and found several interesting books – but right now I prefer to close my eyes and listen to the bumblebee who is humming somewhere behind me. I might tell you about the books later.

290 years today

Happy Birthday Robinson Crouse!
I wonder if I would find the book as fascinating today as I did when I was nine years old. We read an abbreviated edition at school but I had already read parts of the unabbreviated book (in Swedish) at home.
I took it out of the book case today – and have to admit that I’m not so sure that I would manage to read the whole thing.
I didn’t have the patience to read “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe” by Richard West, that I bought some years ago. But the picturs are nice.

A new acquaintance

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I’m sure many of you already know Charles Dudley Warner – especially those of you who live in New England. But I “discovered” him yesterday when I found “How Spring Came in New England”.
It’s a charming little book – perhaps should I call it a booklet as it is very short. I’ll give you the first – and last paragraphs:

New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. It is La Vendee. To conquer it is only to begin the fight. When it is completely subdued, what kind of weather have you? None whatever.

What is this New England? A country? No: a camp. It is alternately invaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of the tropics. Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoasts are fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a third of the year a contest between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the gulf. The result of this is a compromise: the compromise is called Thaw. It is the normal condition in New England. The New-Englander is a person who is always just about to be warm and comfortable. This is the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. A person thoroughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. Look at the Bongos. Examine (on the map) the Dog-Rib nation. The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards made his theology. Thank God, New England is not in Paris!
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Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years. Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.

And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. During this most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almost immediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth violet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink, the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; the world, of color.

In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed with the white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day the mercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.

There was no Spring.

The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the Revolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost his head after that.

When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbers have four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north and kills them in a night.

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninety degrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful. Many people survive it.

I’m still using a borrowed computer and have no access to my own pictures so I borrowed the above photo from http://www.visitnh.gov/.

Afternoon tea

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Lemon or Orange Jelly Cake.
1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 2/3 cup milk, 4 eggs, 3 cups sifted flour, and 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder. Bake in four layers.

Jelly—for Cake.
1 small cup sugar, 1 egg. Grate the rind and use juice of 1 lemon or orange, 1 tablespoon water, 1 teaspoon flour. Place the dish in a kettle of boiling water and let it thicken. When cool spread between the cakes. This is very nice for any layer cake.

From "The Cookery Blue Book" by Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San Francisco, California, 1891

Crocuses

Gold flame and silver flame,

Burning through the mould,

In the east wind's scornful breath,

When the world's a-cold:

Fiery from the earth's red heart

Leap they to the light,

Gold flame and silver flame

Crocus yellow and white.

000000000 May Byron