Thursday, May 29, 2014

onions?



This has been a day of logistics.
Returns to stores.
Trying to wrap up my class ( grades) and ordering with a code online 
and it didn't work. Things that would be easy  became filled with waiting
and logistics.

Until I saw these with dirt on them in Whole Foods ( not my photo).

I knew they were in the onion /garlic family but there was no sign and 
no price. I asked and they are ramp onions. 
I knew they were fresh. Just picked.
So I got just a handful.

At the register, she charged me twice the amount per pound. 

Now this made it 19.00 instead of 8.99 .... which I was thinking
my handful was very light and would only be a few dollars at the most. 
It came up to 4.00 which would have been about 2.00 at the lower 
price. At the end, she looked at me and said : Going to take it off. 
A gift. 

Thank you. 




Very short video here that will not go through when I put try to upload it. 
See : logistics. 

You are blessed if you have these tulip leaf onions! 
Eat the leaves: spinach garlic taste.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

a new look



fresh
for 
summer,
lighter
than 
brown

new 
artist

do 
you 
like
his 
work?

he is new to me:






Tuesday, May 27, 2014

can you believe such a place exists....

Ponte de Lima, Portugal
Ponte de Lima, Portugal

Umbria, Italy
Umbria, Italy


Jacaranda….

By George Veltchev
Jacaranda….
By George Veltchev

Sunset, Cornwall, England
Sunset, Cornwall, England

Side street, Oslo, Norway

Spring, The Alps, Switzerland
Spring, The Alps, Switzerland



Saturday, May 24, 2014

for the weekend


“Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit which is life and peace. In that stillness you will know what His will is.”  Amy Carmichael

Photo: Art of the Day: Van Gogh, Walk Along the Banks of the Seine Near Asnières, Summer 1887. Oil on canvas, 49.0 x 65.5 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Have a lovely, lovely weekend, everyone.

 Van Gogh, Walk Along the Banks of the Seine Near Asnières, Summer 1887

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Book Club tomorrow



The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge

( photo from The Murmuring Cottage)

Monday, May 19, 2014

almost done with grades



It is done. 

I got my English final graded today. 

I had several students bless me deeply by what they 
wrote , even poems on Beowulf.

Now waiting for this translation and it includes:
Sellic Spell (meaning "wondrous/strange tale" in Old English[1]) is a forthcoming short story by J.R.R. Tolkien, re-creating the (lost) folk-tale underlying the Norse Hrólfs saga kraka. The manuscript is held by the Bodleian Library.[2]

It comes out on Thursday. 




Plus this lovely old children's book came in the mail today:

Thursday, May 15, 2014

an English day today



Rain.
Lots of rain.

This came in my inbox from London:



CABBAGES AND ROSES
STYLE & EASE
STYLE & EASE: THE GARDENING SMOCK

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Love and adore this poem


This was published at The Rabbit Room yesterday and I am 
stealing it ( not really) and posting it here. Next is copying
it in my journal. I would have my students read it BUT they 
are taking my final tomorrow. NO TIME. ( although I may 
post it on our FB page after final exams are over)

This is what joy looks like

THIS IS WHAT JOY LOOKS LIKE

This is what joy looks like:
It looks like walking over the lawn in that time
of late winter’s striving with early spring,
when afternoon and evening brush fingers in passing,
throwing careless glances over shadowed shoulders,
and all the wealth of the sun’s bullion lies heaped in treetops,
mounted and piled among far-flung boughs like plunder, forgotten—
or abandoned—in sudden flight. (Boys once sought a piece of this prize,
training their darts towards all that opulence, aiming to see an arrow
gilded before falling to earth once more, transfigured.)
All earth holds its breath, waiting, for that one, clear, cold note;
for the ache of the thing that is surely coming; for the nativity of the world.
(You have forgotten to wait for it, sitting indoors with your fingers
interlaced, or kneeling to blow on bloodred coals yet smoldering upon a bed
of grey ash. But now you remember, stung alive by that keen air,
bearing tinctures of delicate things for all its rude handling—violets and tiny white feathers
and bits of blue shell at the foot of a tree. Forgetting takes time, but
remembrance is the matter of a moment.) It is then, when you have finally
opened your eyes that the miracle steals on tiptoe, lifting with smallest hands
the bank of heavy cloud which has sullened and saddened the earth all day,
throwing out in one radiant glance enough glory to christen the world. Thus known
and named, all things sing back themselves for sheer gladness, in flashes of
birdsong and music of color: Glory to thee and all thanks to thee, O Namegiver!
In that light, all is canticle and verse; all is wild tumult of praise: leaping serum
of veining sap and homing dove and bright cacophonous rooster’s crow!
And yet, the bird in the hedge falls silent, checked in his mad virtuosity
by that strange creeping splendor decanting itself like summer wine, casting a holy blush
over every living thing. It is in that moment, poised in perfection upon
the very doorstep of eternity, that you catch the echo of scarce-dreamed-of
desire, resonating down darkened vestibules, haunting the ventricles
and chambers of your heart. For one searing instant, you prize past all equal
the spangling of sun-shot tears trembling from the naked branches; the rising incense
of mist is more costly than gold, and that one aureate wisp caught among
the dark tresses of the pines far more precious—and then you know:
You are more alive than flesh and bone could ever hold;
more vital than body and blood and thought.
You are made for more
rapture than one life can contain.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

I do love these



from my obession with only one tumblr:
The Murmuring Cottage





this one from France:

this poem made me be still before the Lord



Possible Answers to Prayer

BY SCOTT CAIRNS
Your petitions—though they continue to bear   
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.   
Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent   
entertainment value—nonetheless serve   
to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath   
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more   
conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,   
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes   
recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly   
righteous indignation toward the many   
whose habits and sympathies offend you—         

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend   
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.

Handwork



Itching to do some from Drop Cloth. Inspired. 
She just moved to NYC. 
She led me to Handmade Librarian. 









BiblioCraft Cover
 This is in my public library! YEAH.

Monday, May 12, 2014

I dreamed my house was clean

Paper Products Anne Taintor Dreamed Paper Beverage Napkins 3521 16083 Cocktail Napkins


Back from Graduation weekend in Boone of #4 son and last weekend
in Nashville to hear Wendell Berry and see friends HAS MADE
my house need of cleaning !!  I found this card this weekend and 
it keeps making me giggle. 

So,  getting out 
Mrs. Meyer's sweet smelling cleaning supplies to freshen the house.
School ends in a week and I have a final to write. I love my students
and am really looking forward to reading their English final. One 
student begged to put the poems on it that  we have memorized this year. 
Charlotte Mason was right about delight. It awakens and engages
and brings lasting joy. 




from the murmuring cottage/tumblr

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Song of May: Milton and Lanier


(via Rylee Hitchner Photography » Blog)




I am hunting for last year's poem by Lanier Ivester and this year she posted
this wonderful writing: ( did she know I was yearning for the ocean?)


And while I dreamed an inexorable sea away, they sang,
white robes ruffled like fledgling feathers breathed upon by auroral breezes,
round mouths wide to drink in all that dew of blushing morn and maiden
May. The earth is glad once more—their sweet song rouses it with a shout! 


Then John Milton: 



Song on May Morning
(1632–33)
NOW the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
  Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire        5
  Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
  Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
  Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.




It's time to wear white


This is the title of the email in my box today from my favorite store:
Anthropologie. Had they peeked  into my day because I WAS 
wearing white? White pants for the very first time. I even wondered
if it was TOO early. Then as I arrived to class this morning, there was
 my dear fellow teacher and friend in WHITE pants too.
 It is time.  

Today I would have rather gone  to the beach and strolling the sand
 and watching the waves . I am catching up from much travel: 
heard Wendell Berry this weekend in Nashville
Son is graduating this weekend from college 
so it is not part of  my weariness but there is preparation for such a 
celebration. I was so struck by Berry's joy , humor, and wisdom. 
I need quiet to think about all he said and how he said it. I adore
his books. SO today my students blessed me with recitations of the 
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Middle English, readings of 
sonnets of Shakespeare to acknowledge his 450 birthday, and
 a great quote by Walter Wangerin about writing :

Good description is like Chartre Cathedral: it makes the reader move forward, move, you see, in the direction (narratively and emotionally and interpretively) that the author intends

We looked at short videos of Canterbury and Chartres Cathedral. 
And I still long for a time of rest but like Berry, it may be within one
of his Sabbath poems. We did read a couple of my favorites.

We didn't go to the beach. 

More soon on what he said and how he said it!



May 2014 Lookbook

May 2014 Lookbook