Plants plants everywhere!

After my successful improvisation of a window sill to accommodate flowering bulbs I googled around about the benefits of houseplants, and was reminded that according to a study by NASA they are absolutely topping for cleaning the air in the house.  And seeing as I have been having the occasional asthma issue I thought, here is the answer to all my air quality problems!  I found a list of the best performers, and went out to buy about a dozen, which I distributed around the house.

Pleased with my efforts I went back to google some more about the advantages of these green friends, only to discover to my horror that the whole thing is a fraud!  Apparently the NASA study was (a) flawed and (b) wrongly reported, and anyway one would need about 30 plants per room to make any sort of difference - with that many plants in a room I wouldn't fit any longer!

I was kind of in a bad mood after that.  All this space I have allotted to those green things, and they don't even bloom, and now they will not make me healthy, either!  To make things worse, I mainly bought the sort that are almost indestructible and so I can't kill them off by over or under watering, darn it!

What's a woman to do?

View from dining room into the Mouserleum

Primroses and Lily-of-the-Valleys

Tete-a-tete and grape hyacinths in the Mouserleum

Forget-me-nots in the Mouserleum

Smallest room in the house

Back bedroom

Back bedroom

Front bedroom

Shamrock is doing ducky in a bonsai pot

There is always a clivia in bloom in the house

Happy Post-Easter!

Cool Easter chicks!

I have had a very busy Easter break!  As if cooking, cleaning, dipping candied orange peel slivers into chocolate, and preparing for Easter wasn't enough - do you like my decorations? - I also went in to overdrive on the plant front (separate post coming up) and researched power tools, bought a goodish many, and went twice to the hard-ware store to buy boards for my new door.  They were a bit long, so the bus driver refused me entry and I had to walk the 45 minutes home with several long boards balanced elegantly over my shoulder - twice!  Watch this space for my various carpentry projects, bound to be fun, since this is a new departure for me ......

Napoleon McStagg isn't into Easter much!

Lamb for Easter Sunday, obviously

The frogs are back in town!!!!

A Belated Happy St Valentine's Day! Hermes Jeux de Paille

Turtledoves amidst the straw!

I have been super busy these last few weeks, and on St Valentine's Day I actually had visitors staying with me.  I had a post all ready composed, but needed to take photos, so what with one thing and another, nothing got done.  Still, better late than never!

I am rather fond of my Jeux de Paille scarves - yes, I have more than one.  Two are in silk & cashmere, a relatively rare type of scarf material.  I only like the older silk & cashmeres, since they are thicker and warmer and less likely to pill than the newer ones, and there is little choice out there, so most of my cashmere & silks are duplicates.  I think it is interesting to see how the pattern looks so different in the cashmere & silks than in the silk-only scarves.  The colours are much richer and more glowing in the all-silk scarves.

When I grew up I spent a certain amount of time in haylofts and stables, so playing in dried grasses was a significant part of my childhood.  Especially haylofts were great, you could build caves and little sleeping hollows in there.  I guess nowadays children are probably forbidden to enter haylofts, health & safety being what it is, but in my days we had such fun in there!  And the smell was so wonderful ....

Of course usually when people think about playing around in straw and hay they have amorous games in mind, which is reflected in the imagery of these scarves.  Jeux de Paille means Joys of/in Straw, and the turtledoves depicted point unambiguously towards pleasures of the unchaste kind.

However, when you examine the other aspects of the scarves you will see that Jeux de Paille also refers to basket weaving, and all the other items one can fashion out of straw by dint of dexterous fingerplay and practical imagination.

I feel this scarf design, which is so charming in its evocation of times past, both innocent and artisanal, ought to feature higher in the estimation of the scarf-fancying community than is currently the case.

Happy post-St Valentine's Day!!!

Silk

ditto

as well

yet again

and another

additionally

artist's name

Copyright symbol

Title

 

Cashmere & Silk version in red

ditto

and in blue

as well

and finally!

Alternative use for a Clothes Horse

Visions of Hillegom!

Today I experienced the joyous realisation that I am indeed a genius. This is not a common occurrence for me, so I spent the rest of the day savouring the experience.

So why am I a genius?  Did I re-invent calculus, or launch an innovative new web-browser, or genetically engineer hamsters to collect seeds in the countryside for humans to solve the world's famine issues?  No none of that small stuff!  I sorted out one of my household dilemmas, and as everyone who occasionally has a stroke of genius knows well, there is nothing more satisfying tham to solve life's little problems by sheer innate ability.

Here it goes.  Ever since I spent time in Holland in my youth I fondly remembered the windows of a bed & breakfast in Hillegom near the Keukenhof.  It was an old house, and had huge window sills.  There were no curtains, instead the window sills were filled with blooming bulbs, and there were even hanging baskets suspended from the top of the window, also filled with blooming potted plants.  The result was enchanting, hyacinths, daffodils, tulips, grape hyacinths, and any other flower that could be forced from a bulb in mid-winter, all jostled for space on those huge magic window sills.

Since then I dreamt of having window sills.  I never had any, and the Little House I currently inhabit, while admirable and adequate in most respects, only has pathetic little narrow sills of about two inches depth.  For years I have thus had to do without flowering potted plants.  The only house plants that survive the distance away from the windows that my sill-less existence necessitates are sturdy ones, like Mother-in-Law-Tongue, Aspidistra, and Clivias - those latter seem to thrive in my house, and I have to divide and re-pot them every year.

This morning I was mooching about, bemoaning once again my lack of indoor blooms, when it occurred to me that I could buy a Sutherland Table - you know the sort, they fold up and have a very narrow surface - and shove it under a window, to use as a sill.  The trouble is, they are expensive, and delivery is such an issue.  Then I had my stroke of genius!

I am the happy owner of not one, but two clothes horses.  I just need one, really, though the second one can come in handy when guests are around.  Still, I could spare one, if needs be.  I also own an impossibly long, narrow, hitherto unused old oak serving tray.  So I thought, if I put the tray on top of the clothes horse, it could be used as a ledge, and if the be-trayed clothes horse was positioned under the window, bulbs could be accommodated.

You are getting my drift?  Let the photos speak for themselves.  And if there are any of you people out there who own a clothes horse they don't need, but long for a window sill, I trust you will gratefully adopt my innovation.  No need to thank me, us geniuses labour for free to improve the human condition!

I note that one could probably use a simple wooden umbrella stand for the same purpose - it is another pretty (now) useless piece of antique furniture, since nowadays most people use small umbrellas which are not long enough to fit into the old umbrella stands.

One old mahogany clothes horse

Oak tray placed upon top of clothes horse

One window sill covered in plants!

It really doesn't take up a lot of space