February is passing

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.

~~ Barbara Winkler

February is almost past. When you live in the season, it seems time passes so quickly. I try to live in each month and not simply look out longingly for my favorite seasons ~ fall and winter. I think this will make spring and summer more enjoyable for me. I find myself longing now for the first buds to open. As you can see we do have crocusses. They no longer do well where they are planted so we will have to rethink some areas of our very tiny garden. February is a month when you can turn your thoughts to your garden. It is a time to brouwse a garden center or catalogs for new planting ideas. This year with our weather being so unseasonably warm, our garden is already awakening. Normally, this is a month of anticipation. We wait for March to arrive and watch things start to regrow. Even my clematis are standing in bud waiting for a bit more warmth and sunshine to start to spread open its leaves.

For now, my first daffodil has shown its flower in my garden this morning. It is slowly opening its delicate petals to reveal its regal yellow splendor and tell us that spring is here.

Spring's early arrival?

Let the little birds sing;
Let the little lambs play;
Spring is here; and so 'tis spring; --
But not in the old way!

I recall a place
Where a plum-tree grew;
There you lifted up your face,
And blossoms covered you.

If the little birds sing,
And the little lambs play,
Spring is here; and so 'tis spring --
But not in the old way!

~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay from 'Three Songs of Shattering'

I hear more people saying that spring seems to be peaking out at them in their corner of the world. Here in Holland, we have not had any real winter to speak of. Our weather is very warm for the time of year and the birds are busily singing in chorus. Whether you are of the mind that Mother Nature is simply repeating historical extremes or this is the result of global warming, this winter has been one of surprises for many around the world.

Feed the birds

We love feeding the birds at home or at our cottage up north. Up north, we have the chance to see many more kinds of birds with it being right on the edge of the woods. This past weekend, we went to two visitors centers ~ one for Holland's Natuur Monumenten and the other for Staats Bosbeheer (forest rangers). I fell in love with the bird feeding tables outside each center. I did something similar a number of years ago with a rusted old table. In the end, some blackbirds picked all the moss off it and used it as nesting material.

It is so important for us to feed the birds especially in the cold, winter months. It also encourages them to come into the garden as well as having the joy of watching such fun creatures.

A day out.....

This is Castle Doorwerth. It is located just outside the village of Doorwerth along the Rhine area of Holland.

The castle was first mentioned in 1260 but in 1430 started to take the shape as the castle has today. It was then that Reinald van Homoet began to extend the castle.

The castle has a history of many owners who made their mark, good or bad, on this beautiful building.

Various time periods are evident as you go through or walk around the castle. It was altered up through the 19th century.

This incredible tree has stood the test of time proudly in front of the castle.

The draw bridge which brings you into the grounds of this wonderful sight.

Coat of arms by the entrance.

Cottages built in the castle complex.

Gate to a small drawbridge on the opposite side of the castle grounds.

Every castle has its own colors and these mosterd and blue colors are seen on the doors and shutters of the castle.

Valentine with Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

~~ Lord Byron

Winter is finally here!

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 'Snowflakes'

Winter is finally here in Holland. It is snowing! It is really beautiful outside. Isn't snow just magical?

Our first winter frost in the new year

Have you ever noticed how much prettier the world is when it is painted with frost? I woke up this morning to our first frost this year. It has been far too warm here in Holland. Last night it dipped down to minus 6C in some places. Here it was cold enough to give my garden slight touches of winter frost. I love looking out my window to see the white touches in the bright sunshine.

Photo of one of my garden lanterns.

Someone painted pictures on my

Windowpane last night --

Willow trees with trailing boughs

And flowers, frosty white,

And lovely crystal butterflies;

But when the morning sun

Touched them with its golden beams,

They vanished one by one.

~~ Helen Bayley Davis, Jack Frost

A quote from Jane Austen.....

"The rooms were dressed up with flowers, &c., and looked very pretty."

~~ Jane Austen

From a letter to Cassandra written from

Sloane St.: Thursday (April 25)

Photo of my coffee table decorated with dwarf hyacinths, chevron quilt, the book "Tea with Jane Austen" by Kim Wilson and antique glasses

Still 'nesting'

"Just as meditation can be healing for the body, cleaning can be healing for a house. It's taking away what doesn't belong to allow the beauty of what does belong to shine forth. This affects the lives of the people who live there: Even a relatively neat environment is conducive to both good living and clear thinking."

~~ from "Shelter for the Spirit" by Victoria Moran

My 'nesting' season is continuing here in my home. This weekend, I am finally starting on my quilt studio which has been neglected during the cleaning and decluttering of the other rooms upstairs. I found it easiest to get through other rooms by putting off the decisions on certain items by placing them in the quilt studio until I got to this last room on my list upstairs.

This room is very important to me and normally a place I spend a great deal of time in. It is my center of creativity and where I find peace while doing the crafts I love so much. It does not look like that sacred place at the moment. I want to start in this room with that sacredness in mind. My quilting and stitching are very much what makes me who I am and this room should reflect that also. It is connects me to things from my past. My past projects are there waiting to be used during the correct season or on display to enjoy in the studio. There are items there that remind me of the special people that gave them to me.

Do you have a special room that holds items that connect you to your past? Do you have items there that can be seen for all their beauty to remind you of family and friends who are dear to you? Look around in that room and see if you need to edit things to bring out the beauty of those items you really do love.

Further story about my dishes and Jane Austen.....

We drove down south to Chawton from the Lake District. We found a wonderful farm B&B in Chipping Norton to stay at with the friendliest farmer and his wife. It was really wonderful. There was a good laugh when they asked if we stopped there so we could visit Blenheim Palace the next day. We had no idea we were near Blenheim Palace but were tired and stopped on the way to Chawton to visit Jane Austen's house. They had no idea who Jane Austen was which I found amazing. We joined them later the next day after returning for tea. They asked about how the house was and had I read the novels. I was impressed with the farmer after all and thought he must have been joking with me when he said he did not know who she was. His wife came in the room with tea on a tray and proceeded to ask him if he told me he looked up Jane Austen after we left that morning. We had a great laugh together. I have never forgotten that stay with them or their beautiful farm!

This is the house than Jane lived in with her mother and sister in the Hampshire village of Chawton.

While in one room, I read about Jane writing Cassandra about buying Wedgwood dishes and a some of the original dishes are there at the museum.

Excerpt from Jane's letter:

16 September 1813, Jane was writing to Cassandra from London: "We then went to Wedgwood’s where my brother and Fanny chose a dinner set. I believe the pattern is a small Lozenge in purple, between Lines of narrow gold, and it is to have the crest."

I was also very much in love with the dining table in the parlour of the house which is also the room in which Jane wrote some of her novels. Seeing the set of Wedgwood here after only just buying our own set was very surreal. The photo above is from a book I bought at the museum which shows the parlour and table with the dishes.

A couple of years later, we had been looking for a very long time for a new dining room table. We thought an antique would be too expensive but started to discover that it is not necessarily so. We looked at a number of places and almost were going to buy a rectory table when we decided to stop by one more shop out in the Dutch countryside. We walked in and there was our table. It is a Victorian crack winding table from 1860 but looked so much like Jane's table back in her cottage in Chawton. I was thrilled to have found it. It seemed to have made our trip to England those years before even more complete!

My dishes

This is my set of 'good' dishes. It is from Wedgwood's Edme Plain also known as Queen's Ware. We went on a trip to England many years ago and had a route planned out to visit friends in Yorkshire followed by a few days in the Lake District and then on to Scotland. It was May and there was a freak snow storm which caused us to change our plans. We had already been touring the home of the Bronte Sisters, James Harriot country, both homes of William Wordworth and Beatrix's Potter's Hilltop Farm. When the kind people at the last B&B in Keswick told us that the roads to Scotland were impassable, we changed our plans to continue on a 'literary tour' going down to Chawton to see Jane Austen's house.


On the way, I noticed a small red notation in the atlas saying Wedgwood. I convinced my husband to take the exit and see if the factory was open to the public. It was to my delight and there was a factory shop. I had always dreamed of owning a set of Wedgwood but it was simply too expensive for us. At the factory shop, we found a set of Edme Plain dishes that were marked at 1/3 of the normal price. I was thrilled. We asked the sales lady if they could be very well packed as they had to travel home safely on the ferry. She was very kind and did a wonderful job of making sure we could get them home safely. She commented that they never have the Edme Plain complete like this and we were very lucky. I was in heaven knowing I was able to get them.


The story takes another twist which I will tell you about in my next blog entry.....

The 'nesting' season

Do you find January to be the 'nesting' season in your home? Our thoughts turn to how cozy our homes are in the winter season.

It is the time of year that I go through things and clear old and unwanted items away. This year more than ever. We have so many things that I have noticed we have not used lately since we have too much. At the moment, I am trying to come up with items to take to the thrift shop so others can enjoy them. This will mean I can get out the special items that I love and have put away for safekeeping. I started thinking about this when we had a discussion on one of my lists about not using my good dishes. I decided that as long as they were set up so beautifully in the hutch, I still will not get them out daily to use.

I have photographed my old blue and white dishes and put them up for sale online. I then put the good set of dishes in the kitchen cupboards to start using. Beautiful things are only beautiful if you see and use them so that they can be appreciated.

Differences in nature

The birds are gone,

The ground is white,

The winds are wild,

They chill and bite;

The ground is thick with slush and sleet,

And I barely feel my feet.

- Winter Poems

Some things are oddly different in nature. I grew up with robins in the States being a larger bird that showed the first signs of spring. Here in Europe, a robin is a tiny little bird that stays here year round and is very much a visitor to our garden even in the deep winter. He loves to even sit among the branches of any shrub to watch as I do odd jobs in the garden. He jumps and darts around mostly on the ground waiting for the seed that other birds carelessly throw from the feeders. He sometimes sits on the edge of a garden chair looking curiously in the cottage windows at me.

Photo from the BBC.co.uk website.

Where has winter gone???

O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Is it climate change or just the natural courses of Mother Nature. There are many conflicting ideas about what is happening with our seasons. Some weather men say this abnormal weather does happen once in a while if you review history. I named this blog for my love of the seasons. As I look outside my window, it feels more like spring starting than midwinter. Our bulbs are coming up too early. Even the wild geranuims are starting to sprout their tender first leaves. We will have to start doing our 'end of winter' garden preparations now instead of the normal end of February. I wonder if February will still bring us winter? It just may be that Mother Nature holds some surprises in store for us. At any rate, looking at a Thomas Kinkade painting gives me the feeling that winter is here and I will hold that in my heart for now.

Is it winter in your part of the world? Tell me about how things look out your window today.....I would love to hear from you.

Painting by Thomas Kinkade ~ 'Evening Glow'

More wintery decoration ideas

What says winter more than ice skates? Use any pair you have or can find (check out flea markets). Tie them together and add any extras you like. I used a pair of antique wooden skates with some greenery, child's mittens and a bow. Mine are hanging from my radiator as you walk in our front door. This is where my mirror is with all my snowmen so it really says 'A Winter Welcome'.

Decorating for January

It is January and time for the Christmas decorations to come down. It is also a time when the house can look rather bare after becoming used to the festive look. I try to put out items that work well in January. I have lots of candles sitting around along with a blue and white quilt. I also wait to use my snowmen then and not with Christmas. I have three adorable reproduction vintage snowmen. I put my 'Dress Warm' pinkeep I made on a plate stand. The chubby snowman was a gift from a friend as well as the white hyacinth bulb in the silver pot. It was given to me at Christmas time and works so well with the snowmen.

This year, I am really sorting through my decorations before I put them away. I have so much and really need to cut back. I am packing up all my items for my tree and then going through all the rest to decide if I really love the things enough. I also got out an old set of coffee cups along with some odds and ends like mugs that I never use. I will take them all to the thrift shop so that someone else can enjoy using them instead.

A very happy New Year

Wishing you a very happy New Year! May 2007 bring you all the best life has to offer. May you find contentment in what you do and where you are in life.


Thank you very much for reading my blog.

Christmas wishes.....

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

~~ Calvin Coolidge ~~

Last installment of 'A Christmas Tree'

"A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled; from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O may I, with a grey head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet, and a child's trustfulness and confidence!

Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. "This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!"

This photo is of a crazy quilt stocking I made years ago. A fun idea at Christmas time is to use stockings as holders for flower arrangements. They really adds festive cheer to anywhere they hang

Installment four of 'A Christmas Tree'

"Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blind-fold.

Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child. All dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who jumped upon the baker's counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a ghoule, could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-horse,--there he is, with his nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!--should have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his father's Court.

Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light! When I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear Dinarzade. "Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young King of the Black Islands." Scheherazade replies, "If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet." Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe again.

At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves- -it may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of these many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask--or it may be the result of indigestion, assisted by imagination and over-doctoring--a prodigious nightmare. It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don't know why it's frightful--but I know it is. I can only make out that it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes, and receding to an immeasurable distance. When it comes closest, it is worse. In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights incredibly long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for some small offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensation of having been asleep two nights; of the laden hopelessness of morning ever dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.

And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of the ground, before a vast green curtain. Now, a bell rings--a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells--and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down, went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have been let off. Comes swift to comfort me, the Pantomime--stupendous Phenomenon!--when clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do it!" when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being changed into Anything; and "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so." Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation-- often to return in after-life--of being unable, next day, to get back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet stayed by me!"

The following installment of Dickens will be on Thursday. I am off to Brugge, Belgium to see the Christmas lights. Until Thursday.....