Fitzwilliam

The entrance hall and staircase is the only part of the museum where you can take pictures.  It's very grand though.

~~~

Just a quick one today.  See you tomorrow.

Today

Today I saw a bumble bee, trapped in a web on the wooden pillar of the barn, and a spider half its size, but big enough, ran out to catch it, changed its mind and ran back in again.  I freed the bee with a clothes peg; instantly it flew towards a small cyclamen flower, which opened a pink door for it and let it in.

Today I saw a straight old man, tan jacket, smart cream linen hat and trousers, walk with a cane and a brisk purpose into the lotissement they call 'le Tertre'.  Was it to see a woman, old now, he had once loved, or a young one he'd like to make a fool of himself over, or an old pal from service days, or was he simply going home, or none of these?

Today I saw the finely-pointed gable wall of the old house there, the walnut tree in splendour next to it, the Calvary beneath the limes, their leaf litter and the tiny hard velour-skinned fruits amongst it underfoot, and the strangely self-effacing angels on the housefront.

Today I knew that these, all these, hold  meanings, stories, histories and worlds that I can't know, sealed in by time and space, holding themselves in mute and distant gentleness apart, refusing all translation.

Save in a play of light cast, aslant and rippling, onto the receiving presence of an inside wall.

(30.8.2010)

Zébré

Hey, it's Woodwork Wednesday again!

In my orange heaven

Sunday was fruit liqueur day.  I took the sloes from the freezer, and put them to macerate in the gin - it's a little late to have that ready to drink by Christmas, but there's still a bottle left from last year.  I also chopped up a quince, which is a thing I can never resist buying in the season for its beauty, its fuzzy bloom and fragrance, its echoes of the mediaeval - quince paste, membrillo, courtly walled gardens with flowering quince trees ... and its general Old World oddity - 'they dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon...'.  Once I have kept it and admired it for a time, picking it up and inhaling its perfume whenever I pass, I'm often rather at a loss what to do with it; I always have more jams and jellies than we can eat or give away, B the German Doctor makes membrillo and gives it to us, but in truth I'm not over-fond of it, and tarte tatin, should I ever get around to making it, is really better just with apples. So this time I thought I'd try making it drinkable, putting it minced fine into a mishmash of poire William aquavit and vodka I had standing around, with some almonds and other things I've forgotten what already.  Heaven knows how it will turn out but frankly it can't go too far wrong really,  that's the good thing about making liqueur and schnappsy type things.

Ad finally I did another experiment, which came to me when Tom went looking for the gin for the sloes and inadvertently picked up a bottle of triple sec, a clear spirit flavoured with orange peel, instead.

I scrubbed some clementines,

and sliced them up,

then put them in a wide-necked jar, with a few of their leaves, a stick of cinnamon, some cardamon and a good handful of coriander seeds.

I added some honey

and the triple sec ( along with some brandy and some reddish Rivesaltes aperitif to lighten and stretch it a little bit)

Then I shook it all about plenty.

It was all so luminously, fragrantly gorgeous, I couldn't stop photographing it.  

These are only a selection, there are even more on the Picasa album here, which you can see as a slide show, if you want to.

In a very short time, it will have lost its looks, and be just a mushy mess in the jar, and even when it's decanted and filtered it won't look anything special.  But the alchemical wonder of fruit liqueurs is in how the original visual beauty of their constituents is transmuted to a beauty of taste, so that the tongue and palate will later remember and re-live what the eyes saw.  

That's the idea, anyway.

Leaves on tarmac

'Pinky-brown dead leaves from Brochain's eucalyptus tree have fallen into the patches of soft tar on the road.  They flatten and meld and crack, and look like some decorative effect.'

( 24th July, from my often neglected but still operational other blog)

Nutch glass, verdict, a question answered.

A while back, there was a conversation hereabouts concerning, to begin with, drinking wine out of mustard glasses, and then about a product called Nutch, which also came in glasses, but  the existence of which seemed either to have been lost in the mists of time, or was in fact a figment of the (often quite febrile) imagination of the reader concerned, since he was the only one, not just here but apparently within the whole breadth and scope of the googlable world, to have any recollection of it.  Happily, an anonymous commenter chipped in a short time later and said that they too remembered Nutch, and that they had a Nutch glass in the cupboard for years, and had stumbled upon that comment thread as the sole mention of it anywhere.  Having just read back over it, I am astonished that a curious idler actually read through the whole post and its comments as far as the bit about Nutch.  It's for unmissable moments like that I allow anonymous comments here, and I would like to shake that person by the hand, only I can't, even virtually, because they were anonymous.

Anyway, though Nutch may have gone the way of all bygone spreadable products (such as Fry's Chocolate Spread, which came in a waxed paper tub and which is sometimes reminisced fondly about here, or a gloopy kind of honey substitute called, I think, Sunny Spread), we are not averse to its present day and better-known equivalent Nutella, nor to collecting and using the glasses it comes in.  Nutch glasses, it was said, were so irredeemably ugly and horrible that not even water was any good in them, but the other day, I inadvertently placed a Nutella glass containing sparkling mineral water (something from the supermarket in a crackly plastic bottle, none of your fancy Badoit or St Pellegrino), in front of a lit violet-coloured candle, and thought to myself that even something so humble can be a thing of prettiness in the right lighting, so I took a photo of it, as I do.

~~~

The sole, which was the real Dover thing, not any old lemon dab, was delicious.  The dopey fishmonger had skinned one side as requested, but on one of them the side he left on was the sharky black side, a faux pas than which he should have known better ( that's for people who write in with letters of complaint for about dangling prepositions, not that anyone does that here, you're all far too intelligent and polite).  Never mind, I had the other one he'd done properly.  The raspberry vinegar was lovely with it, in fact I liked it so much I splashed a bit more on, as it was very delicate.  A mixture of raspberry vinegar and lemon would have been better still, as would some real garden peas rather than the cucumber salad I made to go with it.  But it was a very fine meal indeed.

~~~

Much earlier in the year, the 'Questions' call-and-response that Plutarch and I had been following over at the 'Compasses' blog, ground to a halt.  It ran out of steam for a time, stuff happened, one way and another we both felt somewhat blocked and at an impasse with it, I think, but it was not abandoned, only resting.  Now, hip-hip-hooray, Joe has revived and reignited it with a real cracker of a poem in answer to the question I left him with at the end of the last one: 'Where would you be if not in this place?'

'...A conversation never had.
But, in a fine rain, instead,
Among manicured trees, I hear,
Repeated, the same hollow note.'

Magic, worlds within worlds.   I think we're up for it again. 

Leeks and sole

Leeks.  I heard a story somewhere about a small child who had reported that they had been given 'little rolls of Sellotape' as part of their school dinner.  Puzzled, his parent finally ascertained that these were in fact sliced leeks.

Nest to aubergines, these are  perhaps my favourite vegetable.  What's yours?

~~~

Still on food: some very fresh-looking sole on the fish counter yesterday decide Tom that he was going to fulfil a culinary ambition and cook sole à la meuniere, clarified butter and everything.   They are sizzling on the stove as I write. We bought unsalted butter but omitted to buy lemons, so the pan will perforce be de-glazed with a mixture of white wine and the delicious raspberry vinegar which Tom's daughter brought us as a present, (along with some very good plain balsamic, which proves to be excellent on kippers).  Culinary revelation or abomination?  I'll let you know.

It all goes by so fast...

(Cambridge evening streets, 31st October, 2010)

~~~

And somehow I've been blogging for four years.  Box Elder turned four yesterday (that's dating its inception from the first post anyway, I think I probably opened the blog and stared at it for a few days before that, astonished and inhibited by my own temerity, before I put anything on it), and this is its six-hundred-and-fifty-first post.  I marked its first birthday but since then have been inclined to let other anniversaries slip by forgotten and unnoticed, as I almost did with this one.  It doesn't seem to mind being thus neglected and taken for granted.

Although I'm not doing anything particularly remarkable here, experiencing any great creative surges, or lavishing the time and effort on blogging that I might and perhaps once did, I do feel that I am presently going through a phase of falling in love with it all over again, mostly because of the contact it has brought and still brings, and all the many and wonderful places it has led. I feel I get back seventy-times-seven, if not more, what I put into it.  

I really don't care to imagine life without it now.  

Three things

A long time ago, I had a small collection of scented geraniums.  In the winter they were left in too cold a place and died.  Tom always blamed himself, and pledged that henceforth, no scented geranium would die on his watch..  We carefully transported a batch of the lemon ones out here on the back seat of the car thirteen years ago, and every winter they undergo a transmigration of the vegetative soul by means of cuttings, and  enough always survive to be planted out again to ramp merrily in whatever part of the garden they end up.  

Last year however, the survival rate was low, but I had by chance picked a branch in the early autumn and put it in water in the pale blue glass Muscadet bottle on the windowsill in my room, and not only did it continue to stay green and fragrant, but started to grow a very healthy root system, and was quite happy to be transplanted into the open soil in the spring.  

So this year, we saved up seven small plastic drinks bottles, and  the dining room windowsill is now the nursery to the next generation, this time being raised hydroponically.  Contrary to the impression this blog may seem to give, I am not a particularly fond or passionate gardener, I frequently feel frustrated, defeated and wearied by the matter of growing things, yet there is something so jolly and eager and companionable about these little things, with their perfume of Turkish delight; they seem to smile greenly at me when I open the curtains onto the dark mornings, and to offer good cheer.

~~~

When I was in England, despite the fact that I have done very little drawing or painting for too long a time, I bought myself a small tin of Rowney pastel pencils, beautifully polished crayons, traditional pencil forms in natural beechwood but leaded with soft pastel, with just the ends painted to show their colour. I opened them and observed how bright the colours seemed - poppy red, lemon yellow, pansy violet, a light phthalo blue.  Nice, I thought, but felt a slight, momentary disappointment; they seemed rather limited and limiting, glib, over-cheery and gay... Then of course I realised there was another layer below, and, see, the deep dull earth and dark colours: raw sienna, Vandyke brown, Hooker's green and Prussian blue.  Ah, that's better!  Now the brights stand out and glow like flowers on the ground.

~~~

Please, read this. 

'I realized that in fact I was born into an atmosphere of grief, into a world of mourning, into a culture shell shocked, guilt ridden, & desperate.

And so, perhaps, were you.'

And while you're there, read the rest of her blog. If Jarvenpa were in a novel, I'd wish that someone like her might really exist.  Reading what she does, makes me feel at once humbled and enlarged, with a sense that, in truth, I only barely dare to live at all.

'Before I become part of the dust that softens the edges of this world, before I am still, I want to care more, dance more, sing more, watch more free flying hawks, love more.

And since every breath could be a last one, and every word a last one, I am not going to be caught saying "I give up" .  With every breath I am going to be saying Yes. Or at least...maybe..'

Woodwork Wednesday

There seems to be something of a tradition of alliterative blogging customs; the Nablopomo people have suggested 'Wordless Weekends', so that people doing the daily blogging marathon might have a small respite from their wordsmithing and just post pictures instead.  Since I might in fact be more likely to try to string a few possibly worthwhile words together (no promises mind) at weekends than other times, and since signing up officially at the site is about as much commitment to joining a group activity as I'm prepared to make, I'm not inclined to opt for 'Wordless Weekends'.  I have, however, noticed that I do have a number of what I regard as interesting photographs of things made from wood, which I have not hitherto been able to find a time and place to post, so I have decided to institute a 'Woodwork Wednesday' here on this blog.

Anyone else can follow suit if they wish, of course, though I never saw myself as a trailblazer or anything.  You might  wish to do your own thing along the same lines: 'Textile Tuesday', for example, or 'Fresh Fruit Friday' - the fruit bowl is often a good source of inspiration I find, and it is often replenished at the end of the week - or what about 'Mugshot Monday' where you could post scans of old passport photos of yourself? Perhaps one could give one's jaded readers a break and have a 'Thankless Thursday', when no one would be obliged to leave comments or even visit... no, perhaps not.

For now, though I'll just stick with the woodwork.  So to start, here are three pictures of lovely things made from wood which I saw in Cambridge.

1

 2

3

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