Swedish Furniture Names

If you were a piece of Swedish furniture from that big box store with the blue and yellow logo, what would you be?

My Swedish Furniture Name is KÄROLINDÖRD. I'm a chest of drawers.

What's yours? Blogadilla has a clever way of finding out.

Let me know what you are. 

Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig

After all the views from hotel rooms, this was the view from my bedroom at home this morning about 6:30am. The second picture is just a closer view of the Great Blue Heron in the first picture.

I told the lady at Appleton Farm when I picked up my share this week that it was so beautiful here, I wondered why I ever left. She smiled and told me - because you wanted to see other beautiful places, too.

That's true, of course, but still... it's so lovely here now that I have been thinking about a favorite poem - "should we have stayed at home and thought of here?" and "...must we dream our dreams and have them, too?/ And have we room /for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

Here's the whole poem: Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"

Daughter of COG, Avert your Eyes

Before: Arden Lodge













After: Arden McMansion

A perfect English summer day

We had lunch on Sunday with a cousin of the COG's. The sun was shining in her beautiful garden. Her two ancient white cats were dozing in the sun. Here are a few pictures of her lovely garden. Cousin of COG is not only a wonderful gardener and a great cook, she's a librarian. I left with a whole list of new books to look for.

England and other places

I have left a number of things out of my descriptions of the trip. For example, the night we spent in Marseilles before flying to England for the weekend. I always hate the cities we go to after our walks in the countryside. Marseilles was no exception. I'd like to revisit it someday, when I am able to appreciate city life.

We flew to England for a long weekend of family visits before returning home. From a month of sunny mid 80s to mid 90s weather, we landed in rain and 60 degrees. Then, for reasons too boring to mention, it took us many hours to get to Birmingham from London. The travel time from Marseilles to our hotel was 12 hours. Longer than it took us to get from Birmingham to home.

Spent a happy hour in an English bookstore, surrounded by books in English. I had been reading only in French for 2 months and I cannot describe how wonderful it felt to find books I could read easily and quickly.

Spent all the rest of the time visiting various family members. It was great to see everyone and I enjoyed every single minute of the visits. We took almost no pictures, but here is one from our hotel room window, in King's Coughton, near Coughton Court, a National Trust property with associations with the Gunpowder plot, and other events of Catholic/Protestant reformation history in England.

It's worth mentioning that in this idyllic location out in the countryside there were bars on the windows of our room and signs all over telling you not to leave valuables in your car. England has changed so much in the nearly 40 years I've known it. There's so much thuggery and violence there now.

Beach Last Night in Cadaques

Recorded as we had coffee in a beachside cafe on our last night in Cadaques. Mostly for the sound of the waves on the shingle beach.

Short video panorama from Banyuls