Thursday, August 11, 2011

Thursday 11th August

~ Yesterday I dug up an accidental potato plant which had planted itself by the compost bins, and which I had been rather whimsically earthing up with grass cuttings.  The yield was not large, but there were enough for a small bowl for my lunch, with chopped chives, some mayonnaise and a little tinned tuna.

~ Lately I have been succumbing to Tom's latest teatime (well, winetime really) television quiz indulgence, Pointless, I do like that Alexander Armstrong.  Tonight I knew, and the contestants didn't, that Skellig Michael was a UNESCO world heritage site in the Republic of Ireland.  This set me to dreaming of  that tiny cone of rock in the ocean, where a thousand years ago and more the monks sat out the Atlantic storms and held their precious texts and images to them, living with, and on, the sea birds at the edge of a darkening world, and of how I hope one day to visit it, and climb the long, tenuous stone stairs up to the beehive cells, before the world darkens again.

~ Straightened my blue room up completely at last after the children had been nesting in it, so it looks like this again,


I like seeing it being used to the full and covered in bedding and bears and books and all their junk too, but it's nice to get it back.  I took this photo before, in fact, to send to MH, my former student, who gave me the beautiful blue pot that has the fern in.  The patchwork quilt was made by my sister Alison, whom we lost last year, for my eighteenth birthday.  I only recently took it out of storage, I don't know why I left it so long.  My other sister made the small patchwork cushions.  The space on the wall above the fern is waiting for a print of Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière which came from Chartres and which I've still not got around to having framed. (Thanks to Christopher for prompting me to post about the blue room in the last comments.) 

4 comments:

zephyr said...

what a lovely room, full of dear memories, and tokens of love and affection.

marja-leena said...

Lovely, cozy room indeed. Are those your photos in the frames above the shelves?

christopher said...

You are quite welcome. I worked hard back when you were putting it together the first time to get the lay of things from the photos you shared and I thought I had a pretty close idea of the whole room, which has an outside entrance if I remember right. You had two beds in it set up for a visit, I think. In this photo of course, the door is outside the picture to the left.

Pam said...

Oooh, I do like your blue room and the lovely family pictures. And thank you so much for your photo advice. How kind you are. I shall mull it over and ask for emotional support from the young and more technical members of my family. It's not that I think my photos of babies and cats and flowers are of any artistic significance (unlike yours) but I like them for me!