Best in show

Coppered

Gilded

Silvered

Speckled

Splashed

Nibbled

Contrasted

Flamed

Floated

Illuminated

Balanced

Noted

All at The Savill Garden.

Must end soon.

Rave review

In this stupendous work, we scarcely know which to admire most - 

the extensive erudition, or the unwearied, 

we might say super-human, labour of its author.

Dr P. may well exclaim, with the Roman bard,

'Momentum exegi aere perennius.'

Dr Johnson's great Dictionary, in four volumes, 

cost not one tenth the pains and research that

 Dr. P's Pentaglot must have done.

Dr P. will not be rewarded during his life-time, 

for the labour he has undergone

 and the wear and tear of mind and body 

which he must have experienced in the construction of a book,

 that might be considered a hard task for a long life of

 literary drudgery in the study,

 free from every other avocation or pursuit. 

What, then, must have been the destructive toil 

by the midnight lamp, stolen from rest and sleep, 

during the compilation of this 

immense cyclopedia of dry technical terms,

 definitions, and derivations.

 A genuine review for the life's work 

of a distant forbear which it was my privilege to peruse
in the British Library yesterday.

If only I could say,

'Momentum exegi aere perennius.'

about my humble scribblings.

In fact I have no idea what it means as Google translate 
is no help at all,

so unless Mr M. is looking in...
I must just hope that it isn't rude.

Je cherche

Marie Josephine.

I would want to find her,

even if we weren't related.

This sweet portrait,

by Jean Francois Bosio is called

Girl Feeding a Canary.

I have to confess,

it may not be her,

but she had a pet canary

and it escaped from its cage.

She followed it into the vineyard and called to it 

and returned to the house

with the bird perched on her finger

which pleased her people so much that

 they had her portrait taken lifesize

with the bird on her finger.

So it will do for me.

Brain gym

Please excuse the brevity of my posts for a while.

I have been firing up the little grey cells,

unaccustomed as they are 

to the rigours of academe,

in the pursuit of an elusive ancestor;

a fugitive of the French Revolution.

Good advice...

... in ten words,

with no word longer than two letters:

If it is to be,

it is up to me.

A pithy mantra from an essay called,

The Pleasure of Litter-picking by Valerie Grove

in Simple Pleasures,

Little Things that make Life worth Living

produced by The National Trust.

Happy Valley

A walk first taken over thirty years ago,

and revisited today.

A golf course has taken some heathland;

a new housing estate encroaches,

but not all the jewels were plundered.

The perfect tea-table?

When the cocktail fashion was in full swing

there was a particular tea-table in London that remained notable.

Whether you were hungry as a hunter 

or merely wanted tea and talk,

it met the case perfectly.

I must describe it because it seemed to me 

the apotheosis of the tea-table.

Its beauty did not lie only in old silver and delicate china,

but in the intelligent way the food was served.

For the hungry there were different breads on a wooden platter

 to be cut thick or thin as you pleased. 

There were cheeses also on a wooden board 

and a long dish of lettuce hearts and radishes.

There were home-made jams and exotic jams and aromatic honeys. 

There was dark, sticky gingerbread and cream 

to eat with it if you chose; 

there might be an ethereal orange cake.

Lady Portarlington, whose table it was, 

has a gift for associating beauty with essentials. 

That combination of the elegant with the robust - 

the wood and silver touch - stays in my mind.

Lest you think it unseemly to describe 

so rich a feast in these austere days, 

let me point out that the principle is perfectly suitable now. 

No food cut about, no sandwiches to go stale, 

nothing left to waste because it was uneaten.

Cheese from Neal's Yard,

 breads from The Tassajara Bread Book- 

so now I just have to choose the cake recipes.

Nigel Slater has a Double Ginger Cake,

Nigella has Fresh Gingerbread with Lemon Icing 

and John Pawson has the ethereal

Orange and Almond Cake

with cardamom syrup.

text from Come into the Garden Cook by Constance Spry 1942 .

Painting Still Life of Salt cellar, Cheeses, Bread and Radishes.

 by Maerten Boelema de Stomme 1611 

All things bright and beautiful

Early morning mantlepiece,

mid morning Pilates, 

early afternoon

supermarket car park,

mid afternoon cosmos,

late afternoon washing.

A freezingly,

dazzlingly, spotlit day.

Which version did you sing?

Strip the Willow

Once upon a time

there grew

a little twisty twig.

It grew out of a low wall.

The little twisty twig grew little twisty branches

and was viewed as an interesting 

and welcome addition to

the low wall.

The little twisty bush was novel and ornamental,

a charming, serendipitous curio.

The little twisty bush

surreptitiously lengthened its trunk

and became a little twisty tree -

a twisted willow tree.

It shed its twisted yellow leaves decoratively,

each autumn

and shaded the greenhouse

a little too effectively,

because quite without anyone noticing

it had grown into

an enormous, jumbled mass

of serpentine branches.

It grew until you could no longer see

the gigantic Leylandii

behind it.

Some feat.

One day it outgrew its strength

and one of its twisty branches split and crashed 

onto the ancient but little apple tree cowering in its shadow.

Tree surgeons came and said, business-like,

'It fulfills two of the 4 Ds -

dead, diseased,

dangerous and damaged.'

And so the work began.

It took four hours.

It's amazing how much light
has returned.
I'm going to grow some peas
up some little twisty twigs
next year.

Shameless toadying

My walnut whip cake.

Using my mother's walnut cake recipe

with a chocolate ganache icing.

(For Mr M.)

My Carlton ware lustre garlic bowl.

(For Mrs M.)

33

I saw the first of the twelve men 
who landed on the moon's surface
over 230,000 miles away in 1969,

but I have been at least as moved and impressed 
by the landings on the Earth's surface

of each of the thirty-three men
who were trapped
2,300 feet 
beneath it.

Hallelujah!

Two hours!

Two hours!

With Sunil and Saurabh and Salil

and many other anonymous men and women

in Delhi.

Many 'please hold the line' s

long, long silences on hold,

many new numbers,
wrong numbers,
many transfers,
to new departments,

supervisors,

floor managers,

line managers,

system crashes,

complete abandonments,

promises to call back,

today, tomorrow, next week,

send a form,
credit a card,

write a cheque,

Many 'Please bear with me' s.

Many reiterations of name and account number,

demented repetitions of the whole sorry story.

The telephone battery even gave out.

And that was just today.

I have been trying to get a refund

for the money that B.T took twice every month
for nine months

for our broadband account.

And today another man said,

'I'll sort this out for you.'

and I didn't believe him.

But he did.

The money is in our account,
but It has tainted this forever.

Roses from Bella

A vase of Roses.

The link goes to Wikipedia (where else?)

and makes nerdy chocoholic reading.

I too miss several of the discontinued varieties,

the Chunky Truffle, Bournville,

Almond Charm and Turkish Delight in particular.

And now I must fortify myself

for round 5 with B.T.

see here for the back story.

Rainbows

I'm always happy to see the rainbows again.

It's a seasonal event,

a spring and autumn,

extravaganza

when the sun is low enough to catch the prisms

on the landing window.

But you have to be vigilant.

It's a fleeting touch.