Cheese Festival, Anyone?

The Great British Cheese Festival at Cardiff Castle.

I want to go to there.

And yes, that is a model of Cardiff Castle made out of cheese (via Light Reading).

The Bee's Knees

I may have been incredibly inactive here over the last few months, but the weather is (sort of) cooling down now that September is here, which means I'm back up to my old tricks in the kitchen. I recently checked Richard Bertinet's Dough out of the library, and the first thing I made was his ridiculously good lavender and honey wheat bread. The best part, in my opinion, is that Bertinet prefers to do everything by hand, so I got to play around with a bowl full of flour, rubbing in the yeast and dried lavender. Can anyone say baking win?
And the finished product (which, incidentally, was fantastic with the lovely soup that my sister made the following day):

Come Out to Ramble

It's been a lovely rainy day, with patches of sun breaking through and big heavy clouds. The sweet peas are blooming, the orange blossoms are opening, and I got my lettuces in the ground a couple of days ago. It smells like spring, all green and floral and damp. Here's a snippet of A.E. Housman, because hey, it's Wednesday:

'Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found. -from A Shropshire Lad

Of course, with so many nice things growing outside, one simply must bring something indoors. I've been putting little bunches of one kind of bloom (or tree, in this case) into tiny Moroccan-style shot glasses I found at Sur La Table this past weekend, and I bought a gorgeous bunch of ranunculus at the farmer's market that is a perfect fit for the Austrian pottery vase I stole from my mother:

More Midweek Poetry

Here, courtesy of Davey Talbot's PoemaDay, is a portion of a poem by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado:

From Proverbs and Songs (translated by Robert Bly)

XX
Sing on, sing on, sing on,
the cricket in his cage
near his darling tomato.

XXI
Form your letters slowly and well:
making things well
is more important than making them.

XXIV
Wake up, you poets:
let echoes end,
and voices begin.

XXV
But don't hunt for dissonance;
because, in the end, there is no dissonance.
When the sound is heard people dance.

XXVI
What the poet is searching for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you.

.........................

XXXIV
If a poem becomes common,
passed around, hand to hand, it's OK:
gold is chosen for coins.

XXXVI
Sunlight is good for waking,
but I prefer bells --
the best thing about morning.

XXXIX
Now, poet, your prophecy?
"Tomorrow what is dumb will speak,
the human heart and the stone.

XXXI
Pay attention now:
a heart that's all by itself
is not a heart."

Midweek Poetry Fix

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring--
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worth the winning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Said the Three-Year-Old Boy

As he colored his map of the United States: "We live in California, over here are the other states, and this one in the middle is Mashed Potato!" Also, "Lions only ride on trains if they can bring their books with them."

Signs of Spring

You know spring is in the air when you spot:
Three boys in aprons (two out of three with flowers!)

Flowering fruit trees (peach and plum, to be precise)

One grey cat dozing amidst the flowers

And daffodils, of course!

I know, I know, it's only February, but in Southern California we have to take what we can get. Days of rain alternating with sunny, breezy days, blossoms and new leaves on the fruit trees, and blooming bulbs are as springy as anyone could wish.