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Showing posts from 2006

Sussex dumplings

Today I made some traditional Sussex dumplings to go with our lunchtime soup. They are very simple and really rather dull. Make them by mixing plain white flour and some salt to a soft dough with water. Then scrape teaspoonfuls into boiling water using two spoons, or a spoon and knife. Simmer for 45 minutes, drain and add to your soup.

The snail on the crab apple

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This reminded me of Roberts frost's lines: For I have had too much Of apple-picking; I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. . .

Sammy's mandala

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Something to look at rather than to speak about. Sammy made this 'Tribute to the Moon' in the garden today. "I was just playing" she said. It is on the site of a fire.

Chinese tea

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I surveyed a small back garden on a slope facing the sea. There was a bank of grass, a patch of brambles and convolvulus. A late cabbage white flew down the road and back. There were woodlice and garden snails under the stones, even a few sandhoppers far from the shore. A Chinese woman from Beijing brought me a cup of green tea full of cornflowers, rosebuds and assorted leaves.

The Child in the Garden

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When to the garden of untroubled thought I came of late, and saw the open door, And wished again to enter, and explore The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought, And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught, It seemed some purer voice must speak before I dared to tread that garden loved of yore, That Eden lost unknown and found unsought. Then just within the gate I saw a child, - A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear, - Who held her hands to me and softly smiled With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear; "Come in," she said, "and play awhile with me; I am the little child you used to be." Henry Van Dyke [1852-1933] The child is our granddaughter Elly, the place our garden in Sedlescombe on 26 August 2006.

Rain, rooks, viols

French grey rain dimpling olive puddles The anemones and dandelions stay shut on the hedge banks A rook stationed itself on the wire by the top of the telegraph pole while the car carried the slow sound of viols along the wet lane

The Third Branch

The Third Branch, the chequered horse at the stream under the skylark overlayered landscape of dens and denes, gills and gullies woods, copses, shaws and spinneys.

Fire cows

Brazen celandines pinned on the grass where fire cows ruminate on cud dreaming of leaf-rimmed pools pierced by fallen timber. While the cantilevered branch splashes the blue-brown water the weblogs interweave, one modifying another

The dangerous prophet

A prophet may come in the new Dark Ages From the sea-green forest where the leaf waves crash in the branches From the glaucous sea, ribbed and dangerous

Ivory sheep

Ivory sheep in the morning sun crowded the summit of the cold brown wold A man bent over a spade, digging earth from a dry bank dumbfounded by phenomenology dreaming of sultana pudding

Cold red dye

Cold dyes leaves with a red hand shades of crimson, vermilion, oxblood and ruby purple wrestles green incarnadine cold

Imaginary taxonomies

I think I have nothing to say, so I say nothing Lines are the names of cryptic species in imaginary taxonomies ornus, or as the pinax more peculiarly, fraxinus bubula

Breakages

Broken bricks to make a road Broken years to make a life Broken winter to make a spring

Rose cold

Camellias flower after frost Souvenir de Bahuaud Litou who was this remembered rose tendre, tardif, imbriquée Thorn wands haunted by rose-breasted batchelor chaffinches But the van still hit the dove, grey feathers in a mirror

The alders

The alders are cloaked in thin russet veils, catkin coats against the cold the east wind puts knives between the sun and earth some hold out their hands, palm up, wide ides in meetings