The bookstore and a Sunday Whirl

Hello Sunday Whirl! Haven’t seen you in a while.

Actually it’s been a while for a lot of things round here.

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Number one thing is Robbie is in Vancouver.

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Number two thing, we need more books!

Isn’t that the way it always is. I can never bring enough books from our library in Vancouver to our library in Oxfordshire and vice versa. Robert is reading thru the Wheel of Time series and he’s on book nine. The speed he reads at he’ll blast thru the remaining five books by next Tuesday! The only practical thing is to visit Dalyce in her magical book store and stock up.

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It’s lovely to hang out with Dalyce and chat for a while and find all the books our little hearts desire.

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Number three thing: it’s been so, so incredibly busy round here that I’ve started my Sunday whirl poem three Sundays in a row and haven’t finished a single one to post.

Well, I’m proud to say that there is whirl for this week; the effort of a couple hours this morning.  Thank you Brenda for the wonderful words to play with. Now to go visit all my whirly friends.

nebulous, bleak, cut, vision, timing, touch, hover
crush, opaque, blazing, torch, slab, breath

There was nothing said, there was no timing

You stayed in your room all day and wrote a “this is how I’m feeling” poem…this small and sacred piece of it… printed a hundred copies, and sold them at a “this is how I’m feeling” poetry stand out on the street for a quarter.

There was a summer day and there was your vision.
There were June bugs sunning themselves on the screen door. They hovered expectantly around the windows hoping to touch you in the cool of your room.

You read each cut of your intensity; your torch blazing undiminished even after multiple copies.
Virtue standing strong even as it was spat out of a slot over and over again in a mechanical burden that follows after you loaded the slab of paper and pressed one-zero-zero and the Print key

Your parents were proud holding their breath and peeking at you from behind the living room curtain.
“Our little girl breaks all the rules. How cute, how constructive” they said while you beamed optimism from your bleak little table where stacks of carefully arranged emotions gleamed under the sun.

You, to whom the answer came easily with only a bit of hair pulling and a few bitter post cards. You, who were all seeing and all knowing, who camped out by a stream in the heart of me until you knew your way around in the dark. You are still there, you are still made of that nebulous wilderness which cuts thru my darkness.

You looked down the road and saw the bends filled with a crush of sports cars and mini vans trickling in an opaque haze towards your emotional stand, pulled there by the magnetic force of your turbulence; your printed piece of art.

Quarter-filled hands hanging out of rolled down windows

Playing with something new in the studio

It’s a quiet day at home.
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Everyone’s busy doing their own thing,
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and I had enough of photography for the day.
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So I snuck away into my studio and altered a book.
This is a sweet little children’s book with sturdy pages. It is called Sheila Sinclair’s Quest by Muriel Stapley. I loved the little cameo image on the front cover and decided this would be my quest to play book.
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I glued every three pages together with a glue stick to make a sturdy “canvas” for holding paint, collage, anything. This left me with 18 paintable surfaces. Not too long, not too short, just right for a quick fun play.
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The first page evolved into a life-sized petunia blossom from my garden, painted with acrylics and India ink on a backdrop of collages paper.
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The second pages features a found phrase and is painted with black gesso, India ink, colour pencils and white chalk.
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For the next pages I’m playing with constructing pop-ups.
Stay tuned for more.

Biscotti for mother’s day, my favorite thing.

If I’m going to eat a cookie I want it to be made from real butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate, nuts…you know, all the good stuff and none of the unpronounceable, unidentifiable stuff.

Would you agree with me?

Today I wanted to make something lovely for us all and also for my mother and mother’s day.

My favorite go-to cookies are biscotti. Who’s made them? Aren’t they just the most versatile, crunchy, satisfying cookies in the world? I make them in about seven different flavours but my most favorite are walnut and chocolate or almond and anise seed.

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Today I made walnut and chocolate.

Would you like the recipe? Of course you would.

1 ½ C toasted nuts
½ C butter
1C sugar
3 eggs
1tsp vanilla
3C flour
2tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 ¼ C semi sweet chocolate bits

Method:

The dough is a little stiff and so it really works out the arm muscles…or…alternately, stick it into the Kitchen Aid with the flat blade and save your arms.

Cream butter and sugar together, add eggs and vanilla, sift dry ingredients (like I bother), add dry ingredients and mix, add nuts and chocolate and mix again.

First baking:

Line a no edges baking sheet with tin foil and divide the dough into two and shape two rectangular logs on the foil. Try to imagine that after the first baking you will cut the cookies into the angled slices and so try to shape the rectangles to make the job easier on yourself with straighter sides and angled ends.

Bake them at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes. Take out and cool 5 minutes.

Second baking:

Carefully slide the foil off the baking sheet and onto the counter. Cut the two rectangles by slicing with a large knife from the top down but try not to go from side to side. Return the cookies to the baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes more to dry the cookies.

There you go.

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Now go make a cup of tea. :)

Were you seriously going to wait till they cool down?

Silly girl…lol.

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Sharing with Claudia at Mocking Bird Hill Cottage because they are definitely my favorite things. :)

We’re definitely out of the closet!

C and I are having a bit a spring clean round here and part of that is taking everything out of our closets, storing away winter clothes and freshening up the summer clothes.

So while we were finishing up the organising I complained to C that I haven’t posted in a few days, the photo challenges are Artificial light, and patterns, and didn’t know what to post. She said, “look”.

So I give you:
Our clean and organised closets, with tons of interesting patterns and overhead lights.

This is my closet.
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And this is C’s. The pink dress is for a Saturday wedding she’s going to.
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I love Sarah Jessica Parker’s saying, “I like to see where my money is; hanging in my closet.” But our stuff is only about 10% really expensive designer had-to-haves, 25% vintage, 25% pret a porter, and the rest is an assortment of travel finds, imports, hand-me-ups, (C’s case hand-me-downs), and one or two pieces of wearable art which we probably will never wear but is fun to have.

Now to go take away that huge charity bag in the hallway.

It all started with white bluebells

So you all know about my love for bluebells…well…the other day I found some white bluebells growing on the side of mom’s house and mom happily let me dig a few for my garden.

Don’t they look lovely in the last of the evening sunlight?

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I thought the white bluebells deserved a lovely spot in the perennial border at the front of the house.

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Morgan likes to be very close to me all the time and chose to watch me from the round bottomed pot under the noble privet.

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It took several hours of edging but the front flower bed looks great and my special white bluebells will shine there.

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Early lunch and a hike

It’s been a while since I answered a WordPress weekly photo challenge. Today I was wondering why I stopped and thought it was just life…you know…life carries you towards a different challenge on a Friday.
But today I give you “from above”:
Looking down Cleveland dam at Capilano Canyon.
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and happily include 5 random thoughts (RT) for Nancy’s Random Five Friday
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C and I felt like having a bit of a lunchtime hike and so we packed a little light lunch and drove to Capilano Park and then hiked up to the power line to see our favorite tree, the white pine.

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We had a little prosciutto, a little salad, a few bruschetta with fresh mozzarella and roasted pepper and some funky little whole pea crisps.

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RT 1: Who thinks to flash dry and crisp whole pea pods? Do you just one day think hmm, I think I’ll make whole pea pod crisps and mass market them! They are good though.

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We sat/lay at the edge of the reservoir watching the hummingbirds and swallows zooming around and way up high there were two eagles riding a thermal in great lofty circles.

RT 2: They say that each living creature has relatively the same amount of heart beats in an average life span.
RT 3: I once had a hummingbird’s nest. It was the tiniest most delicate thing in the world made of moss, lichen and cobwebs.

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RT 4: It’s illegal to own eagle feathers unless you have First Nation status, but what if one falls down and you find it? I’m voting for finders keepers. (Because secretly I’d love to own an eagle feather.)

Finally we had to tear ourselves away and up the mountain we hiked till we got to the white pine.

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Western white pines are rare in Vancouver because of a very bad disease which has killed many off and so a beautiful mature white pine is protected and this one has a designated heritage tag.

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The cones are spectacular. I always want to take one home and just keep it to look at, but they don’t belong in my house, they belong in the forest and so we take only photographs and hike back down. And besides, what if everyone who hiked up took one? Tragedy of the commons? I think maybe.

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RT 5: I don’t want to get back to work!

Admiring the light

I’ve said before that I bought this house because of the light. Because of the old-glass, single-pane, broken down old drafty windows which let in such incredible light, and it’s so true.

I love the way the light dawns into my bedroom in the morning and cuts ribbons across the lace curtains.

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And then it picks up the golden pollen on the living room side table; fallen off the euphorbia blossoms over night.

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I love that by the evening it comes streaming into the dining room and lights up anything on the dining table.

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And I love how the last rays sneak under tables and lamps playing with a bit of wood grain here, a little velvet there.

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These are the reasons there are several cameras on hand at all times in this house.
Is there such a thing as being too addicted to the light if you’re a photographer? Couldn’t possible be. :)

Sushi lunch with dragons for tea cup Tuesday

Today was one of those days, one which hasn’t happened in…like…forever, where there is actually nothing I had to do. There are always plenty of things I want to do but, just today, there was nothing I HAD to do.

The sun was shining in the living room and I thought that what I’d really like to do is sketch, photograph, have lunch with C and check up on all you, my favorite tea cup Tuesday gals, and beyond.

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I grabbed my water dragons for inspiration and sketched some little garden flowers on more music paper and then it was lunch time.

I love my water dragons. They are Victorian, probably from a water fountain in some old manor house in the Cotswolds, and cast from bronze. They were my Christmas prezzy from R last year. (Honestly, he finds the best prezzies) The mom’s a bit battle scarred and a piece of her horn is missing, but she has her tail wrapped firmly around her baby dragon, who is looking adoringly into her face.

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What better for lunch with dragons than sushi! Isn’t that the absolutely perfect lunch so you can keep sketching while eating?

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I made us some tea but C’s tummy still wasn’t 100% after her boat trip this weekend, and she chose to have a Ginger Ale instead. I love that I brought my children up without pop, except as a special treat for upset stomachs or restaurant meals.

I love that they only choose a Sprite or Ginger Ale and don’t drink Coke/Pepsi or anything like that at all.

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But never mind that, after lunch we had our tea.

I’ve inherited five slightly out of control clumps of Euphorbia Wuflenii in this garden and they have been spreading at an alarming rate. I mercilessly chopped back several stems and singed the ends and stuck them into two ironstone containers, one on each of the side tables. The tea cups I chose are Royal Cauldon ironstone and have a beautiful lacy, bumpy, flowery self pattern.

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For afters we had some mixed dried fruit and some Turkish delight. (Who can resist fresh Turkish delight, and the powdered sugar means no sticky hands!)

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So we were sitting in the sunshine, enjoying our tea and I kept hearing a sound like a soft clicking or maybe a pinging. I thought maybe the heating was on and the vents were cooling or something like that, and then I looked down beside my chair. I had moved the creamer and tea pot to the tray on the floor out of the way of my camera and forgot about them there.

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Yup, you guessed it…that scrubby cat’s nose is just small enough to wedge inside the creamer and lap up the milk.
(And that was our very expensive lactose free milk too.)

Oh Morgan, what are you like? :)

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Linking to Teri and now want to find and look at Kimberly’s ArtJoyStuff, with Martha and thinking I really should Spring clean instead of dossing around today, with Sandi and loving her fresh, green carnations, and Bernideen and thinking, hmmm, a tea time mystery, what fun to read!

Weekend review on a mosaic Monday

There’s a local joke that goes:

“What comes after two days of rain in Vancouver?”
“Monday!”

Yeah, it’s not that funny if it’s your weekend. Saturday I promised mom some help with a supper she was hosting at her house. Eight guests, I was the youngest; the oldest recently turned 99, several doctors, one lawyer, one financier.

For me, there is no better way to combat a rainy Saturday and busy supper preparations than a visit to my favorite nursery Southlands Nursery. There, in the several greenhouses, are such fantasies as all my gardening dreams are made of.

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Later, back at mom’s I was inspired to make several arrangements from mom’s garden flowers and my father’s camellias which are in glorious bloom right now.

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Later we started the preparations and had a lovely time together,

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And, when the guests came, we had a wonderful evening.

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I wasn’t wearing any jewellery, (except my always ring), so mom and I went to the safe and she gave me her beautiful amber necklace. My father gave it to her. Sunday morning as the sun came into my bedroom, I lifted it up in the sunlight and marveled at the fire within.

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I’m linking up my weekend review with Mary from Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

First lunch al fresco…with sunshine!

This week Chloe and I were optimistic about the weather and braved lunch out at the big rustic table. As she was still studying for her finals, C’s readings came for lunch too. Actually, lunch is a great time for us to discuss concepts and ideologies C is having problems understanding.

Finals days require brain food and I made us some crab stuffed salmon, for the omega 3’s,
fresh spinach leaves drizzled with the best balsamic vinegar, for iron and magnesium,
and a couple of artichokes because it’s such a joy to eat with our fingers.

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This was such a good idea that now we want more meals outside. Come on sun! :) Have you had meals outside already this year? I hear it snowed in Ontario yesterday. Honestly!?!