Heavenly Autumn

 

I have never been a lover of the hot days and I hope John Donne was right when he said it will always be autumn in heaven.

                                             Elizabeth Goudge in 

                                The Joy of the Snow

  

Sweet Double Snowdrops

 

I forgot to post this picture before the Candlemas Day post because snowdrops are supposed to bloom before it.

I picked these three the morning we had a dusting of snow and they looked so cold that I had to bring them into the warmth of my kitchen. They sit up on a shelf so that I can look up into their sweet faces.

These are Galantus Nivalis, Flore Pleno, a double snowdrop.

"I've six snowdrops out," said Mary triumphantly. Mrs. Baker had told her that country snowdrops must be in flower by Candlemas and watching the tight upright spears in her garden day by day she had been afraid The Laurels' snowdrops might fail in their duty. But they had not let her down.

           Elizabeth Goudge in The Scent of Water

 

 

The Kitchen in Genitian Hill

 

Genitian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge takes place when England is expecting an invasion by Napoleon, and I think is Goudge's second novel. It is beautifully written but did not have the star power for me of her later books. 

Young Stella, the foster child of Torquay farmers Father and Mother Spriggs, was a foundling, snatched from the arms of her dead mother after they were shipwrecked on the coast of Devon near Torquay [pronounced TAW-KEE]. It is obvious to all that Stella is different from her good foster parents, an exceptional child. The novel tells of the love that she grows up to know but also solves the mystery of who her real parents could have been.

But Goudge's description of Mother Sprigg's kitchen places it near the top of my favorite literary kitchens:

The kitchen was the living room of the farm, for they scarcely used the small paneled parlor upon the other side of the flagged hall. It was a large room, roughly square, but with many nooks and bulges, like a cave, and with two wide mullioned windows with deep window seats in the long west wall, and one smaller one to the south. The walls were whitewashed and the whitewashed ceiling was crossed by strong oak beams with iron hooks for hanging the hams and bunches of herbs. The furniture--the large kitchen table, the tall dresser, the settle, and the straight-backed chairs--was of oak, shiny and black with age. The stone-flagged floor was snowy white from years of scrubbing and under the kitchen table were the pails of water that were kept filled from the big well in the yard.

But the greatest glory of the kitchen was the fireplace that filled nearly the whole of the north wall and was almost a room in itself. It was so deep that there was room for seats on each side, while across the opening in front was a sturdy oak beam with a little red curtain hanging beneath it. The wood fire never went out, winter or summer. On each side of it were the firedogs to hold the spits for the roasting, and swinging cranes for the pots and kettles. Delicious smells were creeping out now from the fireplace, onion broth cooking in the pot that hung from one of the cranes, and apples roasting in a dish placed under the outer ashes of the fire.

All the crannies and bulges of this enchanting, cavelike room had unexpected things in them--the bread oven in the thickness of the wall underneath its fascinating little arch, the grandfather clock, Mother Sprigg's spinning wheel, the warming pans, secret cupboards filled with homemade wines...shelves piled with pickles and preserves, brass candlesticks, and Toby jugs...

But though the irregular shape of the great kitchen made one think of a cave, there was no suggestion of damp or darkness, the sun streaming in all day saw to that...And there was plenty of color in the kitchen with the blue willow pattern china on the dresser, the scarlet rag rugs on the floor, the scarlet window curtains, and always baskets of apples and plums in their season, golden marrows, and pumpkins in their striped jackets of yellow and green.

 I know that I quoted a long portion of Genitian Hill to give a picture of the kitchen. This is my first post here in several weeks and it's been difficult to come up with blog posts when my mind has been so much on the news in our country ever since I watched in horror as our Capitol Building was invaded. Blog posts seem trivial in the light of everything that is happening in our country so this is my attempt to begin again, my heart not really in it.

But during this time, the kitchen has called to me, meals to be cooked. And so Mother Sprigg's kitchen was something I happily read about as I read Gentian Hill at night, in bed. Books and cooking are something that calm me, comfort me, and dachshunds snuggling with me while I read and keeping me company in the kitchen as I cook. 

For now, that is a start. 

 

 

Concerning Blogging, and A Favorite Lunch

 I'm probably not alone lately in feeling that the world has been too much with me and in a desperate desire to find tranquility of mind and spirit, I'm pulling back my involvement in social media to a comfortable level. As a small part of this I'm blocking comments at both my blogs and, at least for the time being, will be posting only as a type of personal journal that may involve long boring posts on my favorite books or recipes that I'll mainly post for that family cookbook that my kids will stick in a drawer. 

[Tuppy thinks to herself] Seventy-seven. What had happened to the years? Old age seemed to have taken her unaware and totally unprepared. Tuppy Armstrong was not old. Other people were old, like one's own grandmother, or characters in books. She thought of Lucilla Eliot, in The Herb of Grace. The epitome, one would have thought, of a perfect matriarch.

                      from Under Gemini by Rosamunde Pilcher

 I am now the same age as Tuppy and am examining how I want to spend the energy and hours I may have left. We live in unsettled times, to put it mildly, and owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to weigh how we want to spend precious time that will not always be there.

One thing that I don't want to spend my hours on anymore is elevated stress following the political story of the day on Facebook, or, God forbid, ever again participating in what Mrs. Minerva called, "tedious and unprofitable discussion...clear from the outset that neither side was going to budge an inch."

Good grief, how such discussions drain one!

Tuppy refers to Lucilla Eliot as truly old so maybe I truly am too because I agree with Lucilla in one of my favorite books, The Herb of Grace (American title: Pilgrim's Inn):

Lucilla knew always...that it was homemaking that mattered. Every home was a brick in the great wall of decent living that men erected over and over again as a bulwark against the perpetual flooding in of evil. But women made the bricks, and the durableness of each civilization depended upon their quality, and it was no good weakening oneself for the brick-making by thinking too much about the flood.

                   Elizabeth Goudge's The Herb of Grace/Pilgrim's Inn

I've come to realize that in this stage of my life I need to be careful to redeem the time (Ephesians 5:16). Each one to their own mission in life and Lucilla's is mine. 

But it is only fair that I warned you that I'm closing comments on my blogs in case you don't want to spend your own precious time reading a blog without comments. 

In order to have pictures with this post I'm including pictures of a favorite lunch. I don't know how much longer good watermelon will be in the stores this season but I intend to enjoy them while it lasts, with a squirt of lime juice and a sprinkle of Trader Joe's Chile Lime Seasoning Blend. 

 

 Surely watermelon is one thing I can pig out on!

 

With it I had some of my tuna/rotini salad that consists of whatever fresh veggies are in the produce drawer and a creamy mayo/Proseco vinegar dressing.

 

 And almost always two squares of 72% dark chocolate for dessert, strictly for all the good antioxidants naturally. Ha!

God bless you and keep you and good health to you,

Dewena 

Do not be afraid, Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today...The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.

                                        Exodus 14:13-14

   

The Scent of Water's Col. & Mrs. Adams

For years I have meant to review Elizabeth Goudge's The Scent of Water, especially after rereading it in the days following the loss of our twin dachshunds Milo and Otis in the fall of 2017. 

Night after night my reward for getting through the day was getting into bed with The Scent of Water. It was the courage and dignity of two minor characters in the book, Col. & Mrs. Adams who were living in necessary frugality in their Holly Cottage, who helped give me courage to face the next morning.

And so I will simply share with you here Goudge's words about this remarkable couple who I wish had a book of their own, themselves the main characters. 

Here are Elizabeth Goudge's Col. & Mrs. Adams:

They did not have supper, just cocoa and bread and butter when they went to bed, cocoa being cheap...

 The fact was that by the time they had done the work that had to be done in the cottage, cooked and eaten their frugal lunch and washed up afterwards, they were tired and couldn't do much more for the rest of the day except sit; out in the garden in warm weather, in front of the fire in winter.

Colonel Adams was eighty-two and crippled with arthritis. He had suffered with a grim and humorous heroism for many years though now the joints were fixed and he was in less pain; but it was difficult to get about on his two sticks. Mrs. Adams was younger, a little creature who hardly reached her husband's shoulder, but her physique had not been equal to the strain of bearing her four sons, losing three of them in the war and having the fourth turn out so disappointing. Then had been the perpetual planning and contriving that had been necessary with the cost of living ceaselessly rising and Service pensions staying where they were. And so now she was delicate...

But if life had been hard for Mrs. Adams it had never occurred to her to think so, and her soft face was serene as a kitten's. It had never occurred to the Colonel to complain either. His lean brown face, with bushy white eyebrows and white calvary mustache was wrinkled in lines of perpetual good humor...

Colonel Adams finished his tea and turned his chair around to the fire and lit his pipe. The little room was shabby and charming...remnants of a beautiful carpet...yellow curtains and chair covers were faded and darned but still pretty. There were books, photographs of their children, and a few bits of rare china that could not be sold because they were cracked...Outside the window the evening light was turning the garden to magic and in the wood the cuckoo was still calling.

 Elizabeth Goudge in The Scent of Water

While there were other wonderful characters in this book, and I have a personal fondness for another minor character, Mrs. Hepplewhite who most people avoid like the plague, Col. & Mrs. Adams really tugged at my heartstrings.  

The whole community where the book takes place wrapped itself around my heart and I even rejoiced when the Adam's selfish sponging son had his own redemption story. 

Many layers make up The Scent of Water, not to mention the title itself that contains hidden meanings.

Finally, "What is the scent of water?"

The answer: 

     "Renewal. The goodness of God coming down like dew." 

Have you read The Scent of Water? Did you enjoy it?

Any other Goudge fans out there?

 

 

March Reading and Old Diaries

I love combing through my six bookshelves for a good book to read and Elizabeth Goudge's The Scent of Water is one I reread with much pleasure recently. That one is worth a whole blog post, someday.

As many books as I have, a trip to Goodwill always ends with me finding a few books I haven't yet read, and Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, and Open House by Elizabeth Berg came home with me this month. 

I thought I would like the Harris book as much as I did the movie from her Chocolat. I didn't--it was dark and depressing and Johnny Depp wasn't in it--but finished it as it was well written.

Berg's book was good, what Berg book isn't? Open House was an old one I'd missed, a fun read of a woman who discovers that her husband leaving her is not such a bad thing after all.

There came a day this winter when I had to break down and order some new paperbacks, rare for me when I can get them at Goodwill for 99 cents. But I was in the mood for something I hadn't read before and it needed to be something lite and fun and something to do with food.

Amy E. Reichert's The Coincidence of Coconut Cake and The Simplicity of Cider filled the bill. I'll be watching for more of her books. I loved the cider book, partly because of its setting in Door County, Wisconsin where blogger Angela of The Parisienne Farmgirl has recently moved. This was a good love story too, but all the details of the heroine in her craft cider business was fascinating. I always like stories where the work people do is woven into the plot and this was accomplished beautifully in The Simplicity of Cider.

If you like chef centered novels, The Coincidence of Coconut Cake is a good one for you. I'll skip trying the recipe for coconut cake in this book because my mama's recipe for it with lemon filling is the Bomb. But I do want to duplicate one meal in the book, where friends are gathered outside for a grill meal:

An hour later, the four of us sat at the patio table laden with the sliced pork, mojo sauce, black beans, cilantro lime rice, and grilled peppers and onions.

Hello! That meal is calling my name. But will Lou find out that the restaurant critic who was responsible for her business going south is the same man she has fallen in love with? Will she forgive him?

I saw that ending coming, naturally, which is not a bad thing, not to me. I no longer have to be shocked in a book or in life, and I much prefer a happy ending after some twists and turns.

What I most liked about Amy E. Reichert's books is that they are set in Wisconsin. I am now in love with Wisconsin! 

I turned to a different kind of reading material the other day--my old journals. I pulled out a dusty one from 1992 and began in March. Humor me, will you, while I go back 26 years?

In March of 1992, my sister had just found out after what seemed like a very long wait that she did not have breast cancer, news that made her family very very happy. 

This made me think of a dear friend who has recently gone through the same wait to be given the same good news. And today a dear family member was given an all-clear on a CT scan.

I am clapping my hands here!!

March gives out good news and it gives out bad news, as all months do.

On March 17, 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed, and there was also an attack on a group of high school students in Israel where two students died by sword and others were injured.

I recently posted about Anti-Semitism. Will there ever come a time, short of Heaven, where we don't wake up to hear more horrifying news on television? From places you expect and in places you used to not expect it to happen?

Aren't people ever taught to play nicely as children anymore?

In March of 1992, Zack counted over 200 daffodils in bloom in our yard. Okay, I admit it, I sure do miss all my spring bulbs at Valley View. This past autumn neither RH or I were emotionally up to planting bulbs at our new house. We hope to this year.

In March of 1992, my sweet corgi Tex and I spooked five deer in our woods, and we had just watched, for the first time, The Long, Long Trailer with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz during our Friday family pizza and a movie night. And laughed our heads off. Almost as much as we did when we first watched Home Alone. 

Those were lovely years, when Friday nights meant pizza and a movie and kids at home with us, before they were old enough to play on the basketball team on Friday nights, before Friday night became Date Night.

I think I've moved on but sometimes I wonder. I miss them and I miss the sweet corgi who was there with us.

In March of 1992, we went to our friends' house one night for a steak dinner and Scattergories. Our friends are no longer here on this earth.

In March of 1992, we awakened two mornings with snow and ice on the daffodils--mother nature replayed that scene here this March of 2018, twice. It was a beautiful sight here last week when I opened the kitchen door to find light snow had fallen on flowering trees around the pond.

In March of 1992, I had just called all males with strong backs inside to completely switch the furniture in two rooms, our dining room and living room. Years later we switched them back again. Hey, I've been rearranging rooms since I was 14 years old. And six decades later I'm still doing it, and still calling on all strong backs in the family for help.

Two weekends ago when we had family here for supper, between supper and dessert RH called two sons and a grandson to my bedroom to move my bed. I could not believe how they did it--four men went to each corner and LIFTED my king-size bed in the air, over the top of other furniture and placed it on the opposite wall.

They earned their pecan pie for dessert!

I've warned RH that when I stop rearranging rooms is the day he needs to order my tombstone. It's not going to happen until then. However, I think I'm beginning to have found my sweet spot in this house and there won't be as much furniture rearranging from now on. But I can't promise anything.

I do know that there are big goings on in the backyard that I'm so excited about. It's moving along slowly after the first five days of intensive work by RH. Then came bad weather interruptions and now the Cold Bug of Guinness World Records to hit him. Hoping he's better when our son comes here after Easter to help him continue his latest project.

Here's a tiny preview of Phase I, Bree-Bree checking out what dad's done so far:

Another project is planned sometime, I hope. Seven boxes of flooring have been sitting under my dining table for almost three months now, awaiting installation in my kitchen. You may not can tell from this picture because who notices a floor when our daughter-in-law and granddaughter are so dang pretty, but our kitchen flooring must have come from leftover tiles used in a school hallway, and their condition gets a failing grade.

But that will surely happen someday, I hope. It took 14 years, from 1990 to 2004 at Valley View, for RH to add on a brand new kitchen.

Fourteen years from now, 2018 to 2032, might find me beyond caring--or knowing--whether I have a new floor in my kitchen. Let's hope it happens before I turn the boxes under my dining table into Lincoln Logs for visiting children.

With an hour to spare the other day before my annual opthamologist appointment, RH and I stopped by another Goodwill and I found three books that had my name on them, figuratively. Truly, when these things happen I know it was meant to be.

Here's the one I'm reading now, only 30 pages in so far, but I am enjoying it so much.

David Grayson said this about March: "The key virtue is endurance." I know that people in the Northeast section of the US have been called upon for that virtue during March of 2018. I hope that some good books have made it easier.

Happy reading and happy journaling,
Dewena

Three Sorts of People

"Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people,

those who find comfort in literature,

those who find comfort in personal adornment,

and those who find comfort in food..."

Elizabeth Goudge in The Little White Horse

It's that time again to give you a report. Today I have been two months on this diet--I know, I was not going to call it a diet but rather an eating plan for the rest of my life where I did not eat sugar, white flour, white rice, diet sodas. But it feels like a diet, looks like a diet, so why haven't I lost those four pounds more needed to have a 15 pound weight loss so I can buy a lampshade? Not to mention more weight the doctor wants me to lose?

The lamp is still without a bonnet.

I have stuck faithfully to this new diet for two months and still have only lost 11 pounds. Oh, I got close  to my second goal several times, two pounds away from my second reward of a lampshade for my new fish lamp. I focused on meals comprised of fish and vegetables.

And these became my surefire drop two pounds standbys because the plan I'm following says that dried beans are a diabetic's best friend, my homemade five bean salad and Cedar Lane's Quinoa Tabouli.

My bean salad tastes nothing like the horrible stuff that comes in a can or even what is sold at Whole Foods' counter. 

It is delicious, whether you're dieting or not, full of fiber and packed with fresh vegetables.

I made Laurie Colwin's black bean soup. It sounded sophisticated when she wrote about it:

"I had my first taste of black bean soup on a cold winter Saturday

when I was sixteen years old.

"A friend, home for the holidays from a very glamourous college,

gave a lunch party and invited me.

Seated at her table, I felt that I--

mired in high school and barely passing geometry--

had died and entered a heaven in which people played the cello,

stayed up at night discussing Virginia Woolf,

saw plays by Jean-Paul Sartre,

and went to Paris for their junior years abroad."

Laurie Colwin

These meals were tasty, I admit. But then I got to missing spaghetti. I missed my yummy recipe where I use Alessi's Fra Diavolo Arrabbiata Sauce. Yes, I know it's for pasta with seafood but I happen to love it in my spaghetti sauce. So I purchased the whole wheat pasta that I am, after all, allowed on this healthy eating plan/aka diet, and happily set the pot on to simmer all afternoon.

Why have I avoided using whole wheat pasta all my life? It was wonderful!

And still legal, according to the "plan," even with the dressing I made for the salad with no-sugar mayonnaise and red wine vinegar.

But guess what? Those two pounds were b-a-c-k. And it was so worth it.

Dear Miss Goudge, you are one of my favorite authors, but I am not one but two of your "three sorts of people." I would hazard a guess that few people find more comfort in literature than I do. Books, at different times of my life, have been my...

             escape, salvation, joy, addiction, reward, comfort, motivation, encouragement,

                       friend, family, lover, challenge, consolation, means of armchair travel,

                               reason to get up in the morning and go to bed at night.

But there's no escaping the fact that I also find comfort in food. Will I ever see food as merely a means to stoke the body? Do I even want to feel that way? Shudders run up and down my spine at the very thought. No, when it comes time to stand up and be counted, I'll stand with two sorts of people.

With Miss Heliotrope, the governess who found comfort in literature, and with Wiggins, the dog--and I'm glad he was considered "people" by Miss Goudge--who found comfort in his food.

The third sort of people was Maria, Miss Heliotrope's young charge, who found comfort in personal adornment. I like pretty clothes as well as the next female, but, hey, they don't hold a candle compared with books and food to me.

Losing weight may take longer than I had planned but I do hope by the time the 12th of November rolls around that my fish lamp will have a lampshade. That is when I'll also go to my doctor to see if three months on this diet has helped my glucose report, which is more important than a lampshade.

Would you feel like telling me what sort of people you are? Are you a Miss Heliotrope, taking comfort in literature? Maybe you're a Maria, taking comfort in personal adornment? Or do you bark with Wiggins, taking comfort in your kibbles like our Brown Eyes and Katie Belle do? Or purr with pleasure like our Sammi Gayle does when her very expensive cat food gets topped off in her bowl?

I know that Elizabeth Goudge left out lots of categories, but if you had to fall into one or more of hers, which would it be?