Saturday Surprise!

Early this week we had a generous snowfall. It was a white, slippery, and wintery world until about Thursday when the wind started to blow and melt the snow away. It's mostly gone now except for a few patches here and there. And the weather warmed up to the mid-forties today, allowing for a nice walk around the neighborhood. As I passed by one of my garden beds I thought I'd look for green shoots coming up through the earth. I was pleasantly surprised when I found not only shoots, but an early snowdrop plant in full bloom! It made my day! By the way, I've always considered snowdrops a domestic plant rather than a wildflower. But recently I was watching a DVD called Seasonal Forests in the series Planet Earth by the BBC. The photography was stunning and both evergreen and deciduous forests were shown in great detail. I was surprised to observe one forest scene in early spring where abundant snowdrops were blooming on the forest bed. I guess in some places they are wildflowers as well. They made a stunning white carpet with the forested canopy overhead --- very beautiful.

Sis Travels Abroad

Long-time readers may remember my sister, Judy, from my post last spring when I shared about her trip to the tea plantations of Sri Lanka. She enjoyed immensely visiting the tea ladies at a large tea plantation. She went out into the fields with them while they were harvesting tea leaves and also shared lunch time with them. I really appreciated all the pictures she brought back for me, as she knows I adore tea and how it is presented and served. Sis and her family are again on a mission trip. This month they are spending several weeks in a remote area of the Philippines and then will be visiting a mission in Indonesia for a week before they return home. Your prayers for them would be so appreciated. . .both for their safety and that they may be of service to those they are sharing the gospel with. I know they will come home with many interesting and exciting stories: they always do. Sis is traveling with her husband and her son, Matthew (shown in this picture with her above).

Growing Friendship

I don't remember where I found this picture, but it was one that caught my eye and I love it! Two little girls at tea, sharing a lovely time together. The sentiment is beautiful as well. To me it says that although we have each grown and changed since we first met, our friendship has deepened and grown along with us. I feel this way about my lovely blogging friends. Each day I look forward to reading comments and sharing tidbits of daily life, homemaking, family, nature, and hobbies with you. And I love to visit your blogs and catch up with what's important to you. Thank you for the little window into your life and sharing what makes it important to you. That's what friendship is all about --- sharing our lives with one another. Friendship is a precious thing --- thank you for sharing yours with me.

The Merry Wren

"Amid the leafless thorn
the merry Wren,
When icicles hang dripping
from the rock,
Pipes her perennial lay;
Even when the flakes
Broad on her pinions fall,
She lightly flies
Athwart the shower
and sings upon the wing."

James Graham

View from my yard --- this week. The snow comes and goes. Just when we think it's gone for good, it snows again! All I can do is to try to 'savor the moment' and enjoy each day as it's sent from above!

Wildflowers Again

Elizabeth Joy at Wildflower Morning is having a virtual round-up of SPRING as her readers share with one another using weekly wildflower themes as a guide. This week's theme has been literary wildflowers. I already posted once, but would enjoy sharing a few more items about wildflowers that appear on the printed page. So, this last night of this week's event I would like to share a little more.


Last year you might remember that I posted about this lovely book called Wild Flowers Every Child Should Know by Frederic William Stack. Found for $6.00 at a Rare and Used Bookstore in town, I purchased it for mostly emotional reasons. During my childhood years I had a grandmother and mother who adored wildflowers! I can remember a lesson my grandmother taught me when I was very young. After collecting a variety of wildflowers in the field we came home where she taught me all the names of each flower part and then helped me to draw them on an art pad. A flower press was usually taken with us on family trips to the mountains. Sometimes we would take a drive up Mill Creek to gather wildflower plants and mosses so we could help Mom make hanging baskets or terrariums so we could enjoy nature's beauty at home. But I digress. This wildflower book contains text, photos in color and in black and white, and a beautiful title page photograph in color of small children picking wildflowers in a meadow. I was happy to find pressed wildflowers between some of the pages; wildflowers that some previous owner of the book had placed their to press and dry. This book was written by Mr. Stack, a field collector o the Museums of Scientific Section of Vassar Brothers Institute and of Natural History at Vassar College for his boy, "Sunny Jim", whose interest in wild flowers prompted the purpose and this volume.

The watercolor sketches were some my sister and I found in one of our mother's art pads. Mom was always eager for spring and sometimes would sketch and color her favorite spring flowers in her journal or art pad during the cold winter months. The grass widow was always one of the first wildflowers to bloom in our valley and was a sure sign that spring was here! And the yellow violets were not far behind, blooming in abundance and showing their cheerful faces throughout the woodlands. Sis and I have taken these simple sketches and made them into post cards that we can share with friends.

Be sure to stop by Elizabeth Joy's blog for a listing of other Wildflowers in Winter participants. They have been posting many interesting posts in this theme.

Recipe Quirks

Everyone has their quirks, and one of mine is my keen interest in other people's recipes. I love to read their scraps of paper with recipes written on them, or look through files and scrapbooks of aged recipes. I've even purchased complete recipe collections in metal file boxes at yard sales when I couldn't convince the seller to keep Aunt Susie's or Grandma Miller's lifetime collection. Some people keep recipes in very unusual places. My mother-by-marriage preferred washing dishes by hand and never used her dishwasher for it's intended use. Instead she stored her cookbooks and files neatly cataloged on the dishwasher racks. I could never remember to open the dishwasher to pull out the gliding rack and find the cookbook needed. It was such an unusual place to store a recipe collection! Aunt Mildred kept her favorite recipes attached together by a clothespin on a spindle that was kept on her kitchen windowsill. It served her well for more than eighty years. Although she has been gone for nearly five years, her recipes still grace the windowsill in the warm Arizona sunshine. They are a part of her ranch house kitchen that will probably always remain there as long as Uncle is yet alive and living in the house. Some people keep recipe collections on disks or websites, others in beautiful notebooks or painted file boxes with colorful cards. Each becomes it's own work of art and heart. And each speaks volumes about the individual who lovingly put their unique collection together. How do you store your recipes?

Photo: Aunt Mildred's recipes