This year we ordered another spring flower CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) from the woman who lives in our town. You may read about her from last year, here. She just recently had a baby girl, and is still doing as much as she can on the flower farm, with the help of her husband. She is skipping the farmers' market this year, and "just" doing the weddings which are lined up! Wonder woman, indeed.
Anyhow, the first spring CSA bouquet was available today. Almost all tulips, and three poppies.
And a few minutes later, they opened!
I feel there is a kind of perfection in starting the vegetable and flower plants in the kitchen. After all, this is the room where most of them will end up - as flowers on the windowsill or vegetables being cooked and eaten.
We put a drop cloth on the kitchen table when we are planting seeds, or transplanting when they have grown too large for their pots. The big lights are set up in front of a south-facing window with a heat register underneath, and the woodstove a few steps away. This heat has been just perfect for the growing plants. We also have smaller lights on two counters. The kitchen is pretty much "remodeled" for these weeks, but it makes me happy just walking in and seeing all the green.
Here are some pictures. They aren't awfully good photographs with all that fluorescent light, but I took a few with the lights off as well.
I've always loved the entire song "April Come She Will", and I thought I'd use the first part as a quote du jour.
This is sure the way it is around here. And in snow country it is the melting snow that swells those streams and rivers.
I just played the Sounds of Silence album the other day. It is just excellent.You may listen to the song here:
https://youtu.be/PYD-DIggB2k
As I opened my Susan Branch calendar to April, this delightful poem appeared.
For my January book. I chose 4. - the New Year's category. The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers begins with Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter going off the wintry road into a ditch.They walk until they come to Fenchurch St. Paul.
It was past four o'clock and New Year's Eve; the snow that had fallen all day gave back a glimmering greyness to a sky like lead.
I bought a lovely used copy years ago. I have been meaning to read it in January, prompted to do so by Gladys Taber whose housemate Jill read it every year in that month. From Stillmeadow Sampler:
Jill, of course, reads Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors again, although she almost knows it by heart now.
And from Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge, concerning which one book to take to a tropical island:
Jill would take Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors and just reread it every few days.
I enjoyed the small parts of the book which focused on a dotty vicar and his long-suffering and much-loved wife. However, I simply cannot say that I liked the book. The main subject is campanology, which is bell-ringing. Sayers is clearly very knowledgeable on the subject, but this reader could not understand it at all! I felt like I was reading an unknown language. And the locale was so dismal and depressing that I couldn't stand being there, even if in the pages of a book! The villagers for the most part seemed as miserable as the locale.
I watched The Nine Tailors many years ago, and my memory of it is that I just didn't get what was going on. I felt sure that if I read the book, all would become clear. But, no. The book is well-thought of, and highly praised, but I cannot add my voice to the throng.
"The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour."
Vita Sackville-West
I have mentioned the wonderful Dean Street Press before, but I don't think I told you that they offer a "free Kindle e-book of the week". Isn't that the most marvelous thing!
You may go here to see what is offered each week. I am delighted to have just gotten the 2016 biography of Noel Coward!
Addendum: I read about 120 pages, and while it was pleasant enough, I must say I got a little bored and quit.
I saw on instagram that the first episode of As Time Goes By premiered on January 12, 1992. 30 years!! I can hardly believe it. My children turned 10 and 7 that year.
I decided I would start watching it all over again beginning tonight. I own the boxed set, and have watched many times. I have a note that the last time was 2017.
Long time readers will remember Mrs Bale making many appearances, and I am thinking she might again this year. She has her own letter topic on the sidebar, with 80 entries!
Back in 2016, I posted two poems by Susan Moorhead, a woman I "met" via blogging. She no longer writes her blog but it is still up so you may visit here. I have remained in touch with her via instagram. This poem is from her 2021 book.
January - 7
January - 7
I read 10 fiction books this year.
The first I read was The Swiss Summer which I wrote a bit about here. I am currently reading a second book by Stella Gibbons, and am just as happy with it. Thanks again to the Dean Street Press for publishing these wonderful works by women whom most of us have not heard of. I also read three by Molly Clavering. You may read about her here.
I read three works of Japanese literature that I thought so original, so different from anything I have read before.
I thought The Bishop's Wife by Robert Nathan to be quite odd, not anywhere near as good as the movie!
I wrote about the Boy... by Charlie Mackesy here. Not impressed.
The other fiction was the prequel James Runcie wrote - the prequel to the Grantchester mysteries, called The Road To Grantchester. It was excellent.
Only 3 non-fiction but all of them were utter gems! The Splendid and The Vile, Citizens of London, and A Child's Christmas in Wales.
8 children's books. Most were so-so but Cynthia Rylant's The Old Woman Who Named Things and The Railway Children by Edith Nesbitt were wonderful.
1 mystery thriller still scares me to think of it.
1 book of poetry - A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman. I was sure I would love it, but I didn't. I loved some lines but was not interested in much of it.
I'll save the stats for another post.
In 2021 I read 62 books, of which 39 were mysteries.
Finished the Harriette Ashbook series that I raved about last year.
How do you feel? The Old Woman Who Named Things
Describe where you currently live: On - A High Wire in Nuala
If you could go anywhere, where would you go? A Child's Christmas in Wales
Your favorite form of transportation: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse - the last named
I want to thank my most loyal and kind readers. I love it that you are always there even when I rarely do a blog post. I am so hoping for, as The Kinks say, better things in the coming year. So here is our 2021 Christmas card for you. It may not have come through the mail but it is just as heartfelt.
Each year I bring out this dear little book with all the other Christmas books. I don't think I have ever read it in its entirety until now. Most people seem to catagorize it as "prose poetry". Whatever it is called, I loved it so much, and I find myself admiring the film version even more because it is very true to Thomas' words. I've written about the movie here, if you would like to read it.
I had forgotten that I gave it to my mother.
It clutches at my heart and makes me cry - the way she wrote "my Nan". She died three years later.
Two years earlier, Tom had given her this album on the first Christmas after my father died.
