Christmas Gift by Frances Parkinson Keyes

This small book by Frances Parkinson Keyes, one of my favorite authors when I was young, is actually a 1959 compilation of years of her Christmas cards that were messages to her friends and family. 

I have a whole shelf of her novels and nonfiction, almost every book she ever wrote. Her husband was United States Senator from New Hampshire and Keyes proved through years of traveling the world to write her books that you could lead a productive life even though in poor health. 

I love her novels but her own life makes her one of my heroines. Here is a small excerpt from one of her Christmas letters in this book. 

I have the gift of work. I am doing work that I love, in surroundings that I have chosen, and I have the assurance that it is going well. For a long time, my tasks were hard and thankless. Nothing about them suggested a benefit received. All that is different now.

I have the gift of health. For many years I was an invalid, for many others a cripple. Now, though still very lame, I am otherwise well.

I have the gift of companionship...When we [family and friends] can get together, it is a time of great rejoicing; but, when we cannot, we do not repine...

I have the gift of faith: faith in myself, long lost; faith in humanity, long shattered; faith in the future, long dark; faith in God, omnipresent. I think faith is the greatest gift of all.

And I do too. 

 

Of Nativity Scenes and Other Things

This was my favorite Nativity scene, one of the last ones at Valley View, that I ever built over many years. It was such a pleasure to arrange, almost like my own little spiritual journey. 

The Baby Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, were figures I bought one day after Christmas many years ago for half price, standing in line to pay for them for an hour, I kid you not. All the other figures were from thrift stores, collected over the years.

There was even an elephant because I loved it so.

The orange, blue and cream silk fabric had a sentimental attachment too. It had served many years before as RH's "Pharaoh" costume when he went to a Bible costume party as Yule Brynner as the Ten Commandments pharaoh Ramses, a sarong-type skirt wrapped around him.

Our daughter Christy went as Miriam, carrying baby Moses in a basket, our own baby playing Moses. 

Last Christmas was my last time to arrange my own little crѐche, this time here at Home Hill in a niche in the wall that once must have held a large television. I keep my Aunt Teenie's ship painting over the hole in the wall now but it was a perfect place for these beloved figures. 

In a desire to simplify, I've shared and donated many of our Christmas things these last few years and this was the year to pass on our Nativity figures to our granddaughters. I hope they have lots of fun arranging all our funny little thrift store figures.

Do any of you display your own Nativity scene? Do you put them all out at once or hide the Babe until Christmas morning? Do your Wise Men stand afar off as they travel towards Bethlehem? Do you have special traditions for putting up your own Nativity scene?

In an old Good Housekeeping magazine in my collection, December of 1951, they wrote of beautiful Italian actress Pier Angeli saying she would miss many things about her home in Italy that Christmas in Hollywood, including "the Capanna, or Bethlehem scene, her architect father designed. Each year he added to it, until the Angeli Capanna was the most beautiful in the neighborhood."

I wish there had been a picture of her family's Bethlehem scene. I meant to include a picture of Pier here because she was so lovely but instead will include a link to her life here for anyone interested. I can't resist telling you about one fascinating bit I read...did you know that she was the love of James Dean's life? 

Oops, there I go, getting off subject, the subject being Nativity scenes, crѐches, or Bethlehem scenes.

What do you call them?


 

Spring Bulb Planting? Check!

RH just planted over 300 spring bulbs!

We were so surprised in our first Spring here at Home Hill that very few bulbs showed their faces. Wouldn't you think that this 1935 farm cottage would have had some owners in all these years who would have planted bulbs in Autumn? 

Other than a clump of yellow daffodils around a stump and a few more clumps behind the barn, not a single Spring flower appeared. Our first fall here RH and I were mourning the loss of our beloved dachshunds Otis and Milo and last fall I was sick for six weeks so not a bulb got planted.

This Summer I was determined that next Spring will be different so I placed an early order with John Scheepers. (Good thing I did it early because most of these bulbs have been sold out for this year.) Next Spring I want to look out my kitchen window and see tiny little bulbs blooming around our cupola perennial beds.

I have a thing for the tiny bulbs. RH planted 25 Galanthus Nivalis Flore Pleno...

 And 25 Scilla Bifolia Rosea in these beds, tucked around the larger perennials. Aren't they sweet?

 Even though it's a long time until Spring and I am completely in love with Autumn, and even Winter, I can't help getting excited about the possibility of looking out this window next Spring and seeing beautiful flowers around the crab apple trees.

And to open our front door and see clumps of flowers surrounding the pretty Japanese maple and in a bed surrounding the old park bench.

In the nearer beds will be what I hope will eventually be many little Muscari Armeniacum. Maybe not as many as in the catalogue, not in my lifetime...

But at least as many as we had around our big Kousa dogwood at Valley View...

Also in the nearer beds are "RH's bulbs." These are sacks of bulbs he bought at Costco. "My bulbs," more special bulbs from John Scheepers, are planted in the park bench bed, which stretches much further than shown in the picture.

Here will be some of my favorite Narcissus like we planted at Valley View, Cassata...

and Mount Hood...

and Starlight Sensation, a new one to me...

 
 And behind them will be purple Allium Ambassador, only six of these pricey babies at first, but Poppy, it's a start anyway, even if not in the great swaths surrounding your house in Crete, of which you know I love...

 RH got these in the ground before our big cold front comes in this weekend so I pray they'll sleep well over the Winter and reward his hard work next Spring with beautiful blooms.

Maybe eventually we'll have a Spring garden like our sweet one at Valley View.

 A garden that will be handed down and many years from now a woman will look out her windows here and be grateful to the owners who cared enough to plant Spring bulbs in Autumn.

Someday our Kousa dogwood will be as large as the one at Valley View, it really will.

A Spring bouquet dedicated to you in November, my dear friends and family!

 

Looking Back at an Autumn at Valley View

In the words of a beloved author, Agnes Sligh Turnbull:

The woods still have color left and there were rows of cornstalks with the piled-up ears and pumpkins between.

The fields in autumn always look content to me.

They remind me of mothers past middle age whose appearance seems to say, "I've lost my first beauty, but just look what I've produced!"

A Hot October Morning

It was one of those dark steamy October mornings when the dawn mist crept up from the Housatonic and inundated Shreve's Crossing.

Frances Sill Wickware

from "The American Thing"

in Woman's Home Companion

January 1934

  

We don't live in Shreve's Crossing and are nowhere near the Housatonic River, but when RH took this picture of a turkey family visiting the pond I thought of this quote I had scribbled down when reading one of my old magazines. I can't put it into pretty words, and I tried, but the picture and the words affected me. They sort of belong together, don't you think?

Too Tired for the Harvest Moon

I've always loved everything about the full moons. Each month watching for them, calling them by the Native American names I first read in Gladys Taber's books. 

At our old house we watched it rise over the hill looking out our front windows. And yes, the Harvest Moon was always orange. 

 At our home here, it rises above trees outside the kitchen window and is just a pretty creamy white. 

Why is that, I wonder? 

And we go to bed far earlier than we did in years past, too early to see a full moon soar high overhead, too tired to stay up for it.  But I still love the Harvest Moon and these words in a favorite book by Ronald Blythe call to something deep and dim in my memory, something a little mysterious.

Does it call to you, too? At all?

A harvest moon stares frankly into the house with a 'Here I am once more...

but where are the sights I used to see, the tired field-men...

the thankful supper, the tithes and quarter-rent on the scrubbed table?

Ronald Blythe

Word from Wormingford

 

Was your Harvest Moon orange this year? Did it magically shine into your windows, calling to something old and disappearing? Maybe to grandparents and great-grandparents who farmed the land, as mine did? 

Do Blythe's words thankful table hint to you of something almost sacred, something we unconsciously seek to provide our loved ones with even if what we put on our dinner table was grown by others? 

Here's a simple salad recipe that I could have for supper over and over. It's from my wonderful new copy of America's Test Kitchen The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook and I would link to it except for the fact that printing it off there is impossible if you're not subscribed (by money) to their online site. I wish I had the ability to have you click on a print icon and just print the recipe but haven't tried to set that up.

It's really simple anyway, I just added leftover roasted chicken breast slivers to make it a one-dish meal and sauteed slices of leftover baked potato.

America's Test Kitchen's Asparagus and Arugula Salad with Cannellini Beans:

5 T. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 red onion, sliced thin
l lb. asparagus, trimmed and cut on bias in 1-inch lengths
Salt and Pepper
1 can Cannellini beans, rinsed 
2 T. plus 2 t. balsamic vinegar
6 cups baby arugula

1. Heat 2 T. olive oil in nonstick skillet over high heat and add onion and cook until lightly browned, about 1 minute. Add asparagus, 1/4 t. salt and 1/4 t. pepper and cook, stirring, until asparagus is browned and crispy, about 4 minutes. Transfer to bowl, stir in beans, and let cool slightly.

2. Whisk vinegar, 1/4 t. salt and 1/8 t. pepper together in small bowl. Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle in remaining 3 T. oil. Gently toss arugula with 2 T. dressing until coated. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Divide arugula among plates. Toss asparagus mixture with remaining dressing, arrange over arugula and serve. 

It's September and Anything Is Possible

Anything is possible...as long as I'm wearing my red lipstick by Prince Matchabelli.




Oatmeal Beige hand-knit wool by Iraina-Norelle...
Tortoise-shell belt...
Cat's-eye buttons...
Silver-muskrat lining in raglan straightcoat...
Muskrat-belly beret...
Jewels by Black, Starr and Gorham...
Prince Matchabelli Red Flower lipstick...
Kislav gloves... 

Photographed in Kodachrome by Louise-Dahl Wolfe... 

Harper's Bazaar September 1942