Wordless Wednesday

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

more cat pictures

"I like to sing-a...

more cat pictures

...about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a!"

This June, all of us moon-lovers are singing about tomorrow's full summer solstice moon and how it will appear extra large and close. To read how this works, try this article titled, "Don't Miss a Huge June Moon Illusion:"
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25212851/

Bloomsday

Today is Bloomsday in the literary world, the day James Joyce fans everywhere celebrate his book, "Ulysses." If you find the tome daunting, you may like to check out this fun, illustrated summary, "Ulysses For Dummies." Copying and paste this address into your browser. http://home.bway.net/hunger/ulysses.html

(photo shows Zero Mostel as Leopold Bloom)

The bargain bin

As a serendipitous shopper, I keep my eyes and mind open to finding treasures everywhere. It's amazing to see what wonderful items are just waiting to be found. Today's treasure came from a big-name bookshop's bargain bin: "Decorating With Color Inside and Out, An Essential Sourcebook of Decorative Schemes" by Sally Walton and Richard Rosenfeld. Ripe, juicy colors all but drip from this book's large, lush photographs. Readers are taken on a journey of colors, each named and shown in luscious illustrations. Decorating ideas spill from every page. Some ideas are accompanied by step-by-step instructions, ideas for things such as painting techniques and window treatments.
I was ready to spring to my feet to begin working on these ideas although it was late at night when I read the book. Colors bold, colors delicate and colors in between are all here, and so are many tastes and modes of decorating. The most unusual thing I saw was a "playful" garden chair featuring strips of Astroturf on the seat and back with plastic daisies here and there.
Even those who simply appreciate beauty and who have no notions of decorating will linger over the pictures in this book. The writing style is sensible and straightforward. It relates the how-tos in a way that makes anything seem possible. Although the book was published in Britain, American language equivalents are given so that instructions are easy to follow.
Not only shall I use this book in future decorating plans, but it is also something I would want if I were in bed and too sick to follow a plot in a book. It's cheery and lovely as well as useful.

Happy Flag Day, America!

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

Handsome Herbie, the blind cat, found a loving, permanent home at a sanctuary for disabled animals. www.rollingdogranch.org

Tuesday is Teasday

Imagine walking into your favorite grocery store and finding a shopping trolley filled with teas and tisanes all marked at clearance prices. You would be as delighted as I was when this happened to me not long ago. Let me tell you about two of my purchases.
From Organic and Pure Tea comes a lovely white tea (Bai Mu Dan) mixed with lemon grass. As a hot tea this left me cold, so to speak, but when iced it is a most refreshing summer drink. Chilling this tea brings its delicate flavors to their peak. The lemon grass gave me deliciously cool shivers on a hot day.
Meanwhile, for tisane lovers I recommend Celestial Seasonings' Cranberry Apple Zinger. It has the pizzazz their Zinger flavors always pack, coupled with sweet, calm notes of apple. Cranberry Apple is up there with CS' Lemon Zinger as my favorite tisane to chill for summer.

But what do teas and tisanes have to do with those flowers at the top, you're wondering. Nothing at all. The flowers are Judy Garland roses, and I posted them in honor of what would have been Judy's eighty-sixth birthday today.

Happy 74th birthday, Donald!

Booking Through Thursday, 5.June

"Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?"

I read fiction over nonfiction at a ratio of about 9:1 in my younger years. Now I read nonfiction only. How-to books and cookbooks have always been my friends, though. I never read horror or true-crime now, and it's been a long time since I dug into science fiction. Now I read books with more world-views. If I ever sat down and wrote the fiction books I want very much to write, I would probably pick up fiction reading again, but for now, fiction feels more like a repudiation than a pleasure.

Wordless Wednesday

Poetic Monday

"I can hear these violets chorus
To the sky's benediction above;
And we all are together lying
On the bosom of Infinite Love.

"Oh, the peace at the heart of Nature!
Oh, the light that is not of day!
Why seek it afar forever,
When it cannot be lifted away?"
(William C. Gannett)

A Sunday cup of tea

Let me suggest another summer tea delight, as a follow-up to my earlier review of Twining's of London's Tastes of Summer black tea. Do also try Twining's of London's Four Red Fruits black tea! The label says it contains "blended black teas, artifical and natural flavourings, cherry, redcurrant, respberry and strawberry pieces."
Once again, my dear Friend sampled tea with me, and, once again, it appealed to Friend enormously. This is also a tea labled "medium flavour strength," making it ideal for sensitive palates and for summer sipping. The red currants and the raspberries stop the tea becoming overly sweet; instead it is a delightful, light blend of black tea accented with subtle fruitiness, rather a bit more so than the Tastes of Summer has. It is, like that tea, perfect for keeping in tall, frosty pitchers in the refrigerator and for serving at summer tea parties. But this die-hard hot tea drinker will have it steaming. No matter where I have lived or visited, I have never known it be too hot or sultry for hot tea.
Another point in the Twining's of London teas is that they are found readily in most grocery stores, and at affordable prices. Despair not if your store does not carry it, however, and order it online at www.twinings.com.
Would you like to lace your hot tea with an opulent flower? Then I recommend basswood honey. Try it first on your tongue to savor its full delights. Then add lashings of it in your tea, on warm tea cakes or onto fruit for a truly sensational treat.

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

Today is the seventy-fourth birthday of the Dionne quintuplets, of Ontario, Canada: Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette. Although the girls were world-famous for many years, their lives were marked by tragedy and misery owing from abuses by their family and their government caretakers. Annette and Cecile, the surviving quints, prefer to be called the Dionne sisters.

Over the teacups with TeaReads

Although I disdain teas labled "artificially flavoured," I must admit to enjoying Twinings of London's Tastes of Summer Black Tea. The label says it is "fine black tea with a delicate and refreshing mix of fruits and flowers." I love the tastes of flowers, so that sold me.
The tea box says it is a "medium flavour strength" tea, but I would call it a mild tea. The black tea dominates pleasantly while the strawberry and orange peel add gentle, pleasant enhancement. And the flowers, what about those? The marigold petals are listed last on the ingredient list, so that may be why I had trouble detecting them at all. I would not have guessed there were any flowers in this tea. I tested this tea with a friend who enjoys tea but who is not a tea fanatic. Friend loved this tea, both iced and hot. We tried it with and without a dribble of honey. Friend loved it all ways, and would give it four stars. I enjoyed it, too, though somewhat less than Friend.
If you appreciate subtlety, chances are you will love this tea as much as Friend does. I liked it enough that I'll look for this company's Four Red Fruits Flavoured Black Tea. I recommend this tea for your summer iced tea enjoyment served in a pitcher with strawberries and orange peels floating among the ice cubes.

For Memorial Day

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo'
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few;
On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread;
But Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead
(by Theodore O'Hara, 1847; found on www.usmemorialday.org)

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."
(John Adams)

Short break

TeaReads goes on hiatus for what is hoped to be a short time. A very dear friend was hospitalized last week. I am spending so much time with my friend that I have little time for anything else. I'll try to post, but we shall see what happens.

Booking Through Thursday, 15.May

"Following up last week’s question about reading writing/grammar guides, this week, we’re expanding the question….

"Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?

"Do you ever read manuals?

"How-to books?

"Self-help guides?

"Anything at all?"


I'm a habitual reader. I even read the directions on shampoo bottles although it's unlikely that any new techniques in shampooing have developed in, say, the past five thousand years. So, yes, I always read the instructions and manuals. Sometimes it's fun to read the instructions because they were obviously written in one language before being translated - - not very well - - into English. Figuring out how to follow the instructions then can be maddening, but also entertaining.
I don't care for self-help books, but I like how-to guides, especially those written about "lares and penates," home and hearth.
I learned many things from books and online articles. Almost everything I know about cooking and baking techniques came from books. Right now I am reading about how to correct drainage problems in one's yard. The situation looks hopeless so far, though, and my thoughts have ranged as far as an Archimedes screw, but in reverse (tongue in cheek).
I admit it was with more shock and distaste than needfulness that I read The Joy of Cooking's instructions on skinning game and plucking fowl; I think the pictures were worth volumes. So far so good: I've never had to do those things!
Short answer: if I'm going to fail at some project, it won't be for lack of reading the directions.

Happy 60th birthday!

Poetic Monday

"A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!"
(1333, by Emily Dickinson)

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"For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins."
(from Atalanta in Calydon, by Algernon Charles Swinburne)