The Gift of Reading

One of the most treasured Christmas moments this year was undoubtedly the half hour or so one evening when my teenager sat and read a Dr. Seuss book to me. I was reading in the living room and he settled in a nearby chair to read the Dr. Seuss book he had come across after cleaning out his bookshelves. He started to read to himself, but then something made him chuckle and in the next instant he was reading aloud to me and turning the book to show me the illustrations every now and then. It was a lovely interlude, bringing back memories of so many evenings when sharing a book together was the only way to end the day.

The Return of the Mung Men!

I have been very busy lately, as you have probably noticed by the scarcity of my posts. But my absence has been for a good cause. I have been planning a get-together as part of a larger reunion with my high-school classmates. And in preparation, I have been baking for a few days now in order to treat the ever-growing gang who will be gathering this Saturday afternoon to a selection of baked goodies. And one of those treats is a very special type of cookie. These cookies are not special in and of themselves, what makes them special is their form. For they are mung men. Mung men took over our class year, a sort of band of mascot warriors. Before we knew it, they threatened to take over. They made an appearance on our winter carnival buttons, and on our school beanies, and of course they graced the pages of our yearbook. So in honour of the event, the mung men have made their return.

Pussy Willows

The pussy willows are blooming once again, one of the signs of spring from my childhood where they grew wild in a field across from my school. I would pick a bunch and bring them home to welcome in the season. When my husband and I bought our house I planted a pussy willow, nothing more than a twig at the time, because I thought it would be nice to have one for the children we would have one day. The wild pussy willows of my youth were mere shrubs , the one I planted in our garden quickly grew taller than the roof of our house. It takes constant pruning to keep it under control.

On Thin Ice

When I was little, I loved it when thin ice formed over the top of puddles. I loved the cracking sound it made underfoot, thin crisp sheets of glass shattering into shards. I still search out this type of ice and I still love to make it crack.

Cosy Memories

When I saw this hand-knit tea cosy at a thrift store, it reminded me of my dear friend Margery who used to knit tea cosies just like this one. She had given us several of them when we lived beside her in the 70's. It's such a British thing to make a large pot of tea and keep it hot by covering your teapot with a cosy. And many a cup of tea I shared with Margery over the years, sometimes accompanied by her freshly baked scones, almost always accompanied by her reminiscences.

You don't see tea cosies in use much these days. That may be why this one was priced 99 cents. What a small price for such rich memories of a dear friend.

Retro Gingerbread Man

Gingerbread men and I have a long history. As a young child my mom would always take my sister and I to Ogilvy’s in Montreal at Christmas time. Standing outside in front of their Christmas window with its mechanical Steiff animals we watched in awe and fascination as the animal folk went about their daily chores such as baking bread, sweeping the walk, and carting things about. Eventually we would tear ourselves away, pass through the front doors and take one of the gated elevators run by young women in white gloves and tartan kilts to an upper floor. Once there, we would join the assembled crowd of children to watch Ogilvy’s entertaining puppet shows, while sipping milk and nibbling first the legs, then the arms of a gingerbread man.

In those days there weren’t any gingerbread ladies. Such cookie cutters were yet to come. By the time my children came along, they had their choice of men or women to devour. When my sons were in middle school I went traditional and made gingerbread men for the annual Christmas Concert bake sale to raise funds for the band. Each gingerbread fellow was decorated with royal icing, had a cinnamon heart, and was wrapped in his own little bag tied with ribbon and festooned with a tiny candy cane.

At a church rummage sale a couple of years ago, I stumbled across the vintage cookie cutter pictured here. It was love at first sight. I’m not sure what era he belongs to, maybe the forties? But, oh my, he is charming! And he gets a cinnamon heart as well when I bake him.

A Piece of My Heart

The word for memories in French is souvenir. So it was apt that I would want to bring home a small souvenir of my beloved mountain on a trip back to my childhood hometown.

At the base of the mountain, along the path in the car park I noticed this heart-shaped rock. I brought it home with me, a small memento of Mont St. Hilaire. But there’s a tiny notch at the bottom missing… the little piece of my heart I left behind.

Apples Every Day

When I was a teenager, I read a junior fiction novel called Apples Every Day. The title was alluding to the fact that the school children in the story were served apples every day in the months that followed the October apple harvest. Something our family, with three apple trees in our garden, knew about first-hand. Those trees produced more apples than we could possibly use despite daily offerings of apple sauce, apple betty, apples in our school lunches... and despite my father giving box after box away to his city colleagues. Author Grace Richardson set the novel in St. Hilaire, where I grew up, and the action taking place in a private progressive school was modeled after an abandoned manor that we thought was haunted. Fast forward thirty-something years and the haunted manor house has been turned into a four-star hotel. Just look at it. Charming, and the gardens are scrumptious! I definitely want to stay there sometime!

The Manoir Rouville-Campbell, as it is now called, was built in 1832 by René-Hertel de Rouville. The house was remodeled in 1850 by Major Thomas Edmund Campbell, having purchased it from the bankrupt Rouville in 1844.

Apple of My Eye

Did you know that all of today’s McIntosh apples can be traced back to a single tree that was discovered by John McIntosh on his farm in Dundela, near Morrisburg, Ontario in 1811? It’s true.

This bowl of glorious McIntosh apples, also known affectionately as Macs, came from my childhood hometown. All these years later you can still go back to the same white barn with a giant red apple painted on its side and buy apples from the same orchards, the same trees. It wasn’t until I returned home and snapped this photo that I noticed the one on the top that carried an imprint, the distinct shape of an apple! No matter how many years go by, hometowns still hold magic.

Auclair's Barn

Sometimes it’s just so comforting to find that something hasn’t changed, especially when it’s a warm cherished memory that’s at stake. So it's always with some trepidation that one returns to such places. Auclair's barn is such a place, a local landmark for the last 50 years or more. We stopped by on Sunday during our visit to Saint-Hilaire. What a relief to find it unchanged. McIntosh apples by the bushel basket, local cheddar cheese — both mild and old, as well as a Canadian swiss, fresh-pressed apple juice and pumpkins.

Posting Myself to England

Came across this photograph the other day. I can't believe that it was taken almost 15 years ago. Even more unbelievable is that I haven't been back to England since then! Various circumstances have played a role I suppose. But really, a trip is long overdue. I will say so here in the hopes that if I put it out there for the universe to hear, then maybe my return will happen sooner, rather than later. This photo captures one of the cottages in the lovely village of Bucks Mills, Devon, on the road leading down to the beach. What is particularly interesting is that the post box dates back to Victoria's reign. If you zoom in enough you will see the VR at the top of the box. I guess it got missed in its out-of-the-way location with each succeeding monarch. I'm so glad. If only I could post myself! A little bit of brown paper and string, some stamps and an air mail label...

Pixie Home

Doesn’t this spot look like the perfect place for the entrance to a pixie home? When my son was younger, he and I would go looking for such entrance ways. He, like me, has a fascination for the world of elves, and fairies and other wee folk. It is such a fine thing to have an imagination that allows for the possibility of such creatures and their abodes.

When I was a little girl I was drawn to all those lovely English illustrations of worlds in miniature. Whether it was Cicely Mary Barker’s charming watercolour illustrations of flower fairies from one of her “Flower Fairy” books (the first was published in 1923), or children’s books with depictions of the interiors of mice homes with their match-box beds and sewing spool tables, I loved the sweet images and the imaginative minds that could conceive of such an anthropomorphic world in miniature.

Marble for My Collection

As a kid, I was quite the marble collector, quite the player too. So it wasn’t surprising that I gravitated to the marble seller’s table at a Sunday flea market in a city I was visiting for the weekend. He regaled my sons and me with a brief history of marbles and explained how they are made. He even showed us a rare marble that is worth $1200.

I did come home with a marble, but it wasn’t that one. It was a reject from the assembly line. Something must have been slightly off because the marble ended up not round but oval. It only cost $3 and I love the mix of caramel and burnt toffee, the burnt orange shades and the lovely aqua swirls. It’s every bit a collector’s item as the more expensive one the marble dealer showed off to us.

Letters from the Heart

At one time people used to send handwritten letters. In fact there were so many letters delivered through the mail, some people even had mail slots in their doors that were specifically labeled “letters”. What a magical sounding word. Email may be great for instant communication, but oh what we have lost in terms of aesthetics. Imagine for a moment slicing open an envelope, hand addressed to you, a letter written on beautiful heavy coloured paper stock with a fountain pen in the most beautiful shade of peacock blue. Imagine too that the stationery carries the slight scent of rose water, or lavender perhaps. Now imagine that the person that has taken the time to write you this letter is someone very dear to you. Are your senses overloaded yet? Yes, we have definitely lost something very special in this age of emails and texting.

Admit it, doesn’t your heart lift just a little on the rare occasion when you find a letter in your mailbox, not a bill or a flyer, but an actual letter? Maybe it’s time to return to some of the time-consuming but oh so satisfying ways we used to do things. Letter writing should be one of these. What a treat to bestow on someone you care about.

Butter Pats

Yesterday I mentioned the antique wooden butter pats that were passed down to me from my Scottish grandmother. In case you’ve never heard of butter pats, they were used to mold butter into textured shapes to serve with bread. When we had special dinner guests, my mom would use her slightly more modern pair to make fancy pats of butter to place on the table, and in time I too learned how to do it. The trick is getting the butter the right consistency. Not too hard, not too soft. You roll a cube of butter between the paddles, back and forth, around and around, until the cube is transformed into either a ball or an oval. It takes some time and can be more than a little fiddly. Hand-shaped pats of butter are just one more of those things that seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Old Quilt: $1.50

Church rummage sales can be wonderful things. Some are better than others, it’s true. I like the ones that aren’t too organized. When you have to really poke through everything there’s more chance that you’re going to find something which the person before you missed. And it’s more likely that the items will be priced ridiculously low. Such was the case at the rummage sale where I picked up this vintage quilt. The lady with the cash box looked it over and only saw the rips and tears and all the places where the cotton stuffing was sticking out. “$1.50” she pronounced. To her it was nothing more than a rag, something you might use as a painter’s drop cloth. But when I looked at it I saw a piece of someone’s history, made of the fabrics of life.

I turned to a quilter friend for any information she could give me about it. With help from her copy of Dating Fabrics: A Color Guide, 1800-1960 by Eileen Jahnke Trestain, Nita estimated that my quilt dates somewhere between 1910 and 1940. She explained that it’s a utility quilt, made from scraps that most likely date to various times.

This well-worn quilt was meant to be used rather than to show off someone’s quilting skills. And used it is. Thrift was likely the motivation behind the use of all these scraps of material. Since quilts like this were often made during tough times, maybe this quilt was created during the Depression. The dates would make it seem likely. Never mind that it’s in pretty rough shape and will require lots of repairs, I think it is thoroughly charming!

New Beginnings

Spring is officially here… according to the calendar anyway. And with spring comes that feeling of newness, renewal and possibilities. For many, it’s the New Year that signals a chance to start over, to begin anew. For others, it’s the coming of spring with its abundance of examples of rejuvenation in nature. But for me, it has always been autumn that puts me in the mood for fresh starts and opportunities to go in unfamiliar directions.

Who can’t remember setting off to school that first morning in brand new shoes, carrying a school bag of unused school supplies? Excitement and nervousness all mixed up together. The pristine exercise books, brand-new crayons, and unsharpened pencils held such promise. I always made the same vow to myself... this year I would fill the lined pages with the neatest handwriting I could manage. And oh, the sense of disappointment the first time I made a mistake and had to cross out something I’d written.

Truth be told, I have been seriously thinking about blogging since last fall — my time for new beginnings. The project has filled my mind for many months but somehow never made its way to the top of my “To Do” list. Perhaps the promise of spring has me hankering to move on, to go somewhere different. Whatever it is, I am feeling the prod to get going stronger than ever. I have some idea of what I want to do here, but only time will reveal where this undertaking will eventually lead me.

And so... with a deep breath, I don my new shoes and set off on this journey, all the while hoping that I manage do so without marring my entries with mistakes that need to be scratched out!