house of sticks

A tree born in 1518 and still alive. It was a priviledge to gaze at it. . .

I have a real love of trees. Their branches reach up to the skies like wooden lungs. I am a perpetual collector of sticks and cones when I am out walking... and now my daughter does it too. We bring the sticks and cones indoors and keep them about the place. I need to have these things around me, I call it having a pagan heart. I like to bring the outdoors indoors.

My Dad recognises this in me, and so on his recent walking trip to Spain he brought back two huge pine cones from the tree above which was growing at 8000 ft. They are perfect on my mantlepiece.

And here is my childhood sweet chestnut again, this time the wilderness in summer, and J now old enough to be held in its branches like I was as a child.

This weekend I came upon some wooden buttons from Toft Alpaca Shop. The type of tree from which the button is made is etched on to the back of each... and the wood is salvaged, so no sad tree souls.

Woods destroyed to build 'new build' housing estates break my heart. The only solace is the coppice left between...

I must leave you now in order to bring in some pots of ivy from the garden. I plan to somehow grow ivy up the walls of my bedroom just like Colin's mother's abandoned room in the film of The Secret Garden. More outdoors indoors..

a scrapbook of my absence...

...but now the desire to write has returned.

hey, love, castle

My house is my castle and full of the things I call treasure ... but the roof is leaking again and I am uncertain of many things. yet rather than brood, I always seem to be somewhat observational in these situations and perhaps ever hopeful that fortunes will change... I would like to type this sitting in the kitchen sink, for I am in a rather Cassandra Mortmain sort of mood today...

Everything is so pretty but there is a terrible draught...

white bears

Gosh... we have colds and runny noses, little toddle-belle and I. We are truanting from playgroup and hiding indoors today with homemade soup, The Lion , the Witch and the Wardrobe on DVD (with some scary bits fast forwarded as she is too small), play doh and fairy lights...

The temperature has dropped to zero now and there is frost and rolling mist. I am re-reading North Child by Edith Pattou. It is wonderful, based on the fairytale East of the Sun , West of the Moon, a white bear takes a girl away to a place carved into rock. Oh how I love it. Set in Norway and another of the animal groom fairytales I love so... Just as Beauty in Beauty and the Beast has her room of books in Beast'd castle due to her love of reading, so Rose in this story has her room in the white bear's castle full of threads and yarns and a loom due to her love of making things.

There is also The Princess and the White Bear King. This book's artwork adorns my daughter room...

How I love white bears.

autumn sowing / sewing

Yesterday I did some autumn sowing in my kitchen garden. Some broad beans behind the lavendar... and some spinach in the pots by my back door. I am not sure you are supposed the do the gardening in a white slip, wrinkly grey wool tights and a pair of pink kiddie shoes... but hey, the shoes do match my gardening gloves...

I love pottering in the garden and I am slowly finding the time to increase our 'homegrown' produce. In spring I will clear more ground and spread out the veg a little. Till then its autumn spinach and broad beans sprouting up outside while I cook up the rest of the apples and cultivate lots of luscious herbs on the window sill inside...

Today I woke early at 5 am and could not sleep longer. I love early morning rising. So I snuck downstairs to finish sewing the Ophelia bag I started so many weeks back. Planning to do some finishing touches after this post. Sigh. Happy weekend. x