a perfect blueberry cheecake

I have raved about this cheesecake recipe before, and I'm perfectly willing to do it again. But I almost went astray to try a different one.

I'm a sucker for a beautiful photo, and I had this image on a pinterest board of things to try:

I did not make this

It was called Icelandic Cheesecake, but the link didn't end up leading anywhere. After examining the image I thought that if I spread some blueberry jam on the cake, I could place some fresh blueberries on top and they'd stay put and it would look just like this pretty picture.

At the supermarket I found this,

which ended up being perfect, and the blueberries came straight from the freezer. 

It was entirely delicious. And since I used Siggi's yogurt, I guess I can call it "Icelandic"!

a hope for the world

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine;

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine:

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;

May peace abound where strife has raged so long;

That each may seek to love and build together,

A world united, righting every wrong;

A world united in its love for freedom,

proclaiming peace together in one song.

- text, Lloyd Stone/music, Jean Sibelius

Sweetie listens to the ball game

Today could have been August - it was ninety, and humid. I was smart enough to get up at the crack of dawn and got a lot done before it became uncomfortable.

The cats ended up laying around limply, like in Gary Larson's Far Side comic - the Boneless Chicken Ranch.

(I hope it's not illegal for me to show this here)

Anyway, have I ever said how Sweetie jumps on my little radio, (like, every day), stepping on the buttons and turning it on, off, or changing the station?

I went to my room to find her sacked out on the bed, head near the radio.

I heard something - it was on. 

It was the Red Sox game.

like dew, like light

For God, the living God, I thirst.

Like dew upon the fleece come down,

Like rain upon the desert sand,

Like light into a darkened room.

-    from Magnificat, May 2018

the gardens at Peacefield

adjusting a new bed skirt

I got another bedskirt on ebay. It's certainly easier if you can find a used one - easier than making it, I mean. But I still had to alter it, because it was for a regular twin bed, and mine is a daybed.

This one is soft cotton, like bleached muslin, with a row of faggotting, not ruffled but with a pleat here and there. But, like any bedskirt it has two long sides and one short. On my bed I need one long side, and two short. I cut off the long side which would be along the back of my daybed and cut it down to attach part of it to the short side which is "bare". I make quick work of it, not bothering to strive for perfection. But now I'm glad to have two, so when one needs washing the bed isn't unmade half the day until it's dry.

goodness

We took a trip the other day to the home of my favorite president. The gift shop was excellent, but I chose just one thing, a (recycled) pewter bracelet, with a quote from the man himself engraved on it.

"To be good and to do good is all we have to do."

                             -  John Adams

I am absolutely thrilled to have been there. 

flowering trees and politics

It was breezy today, and petals from our neighbors' crabapple tree have been flying by in blizzards, so the glory of the flowering trees is already waning. Our own cherry tree's blossoms have gotten paler, but they're still attached.

I'm still enjoying the garden book:  About A Gardener's Book of Plant Names (1963), by A.W. Smith, a British military man who later settled in New England - "Under PINE, he reminds us that in the seventeenth century all the noble New England white pines whose trunks measured twenty-four inches or more were marked as Crown property and were cut and transported to England to be used as ships' masts, and that as a consequence it is seldom that a pine board wider than twenty-three inches is found in early New England houses. He reminds us, too, that this confiscation was one of the many causes of dissatisfaction leading to the Revolution."

And, about the first named variety of apple in America, the Blaxton's Yellow Sweeting: "was introduced around 1640 by the Reverend William Blaxton, one of the best gardeners of his day, he also trained a bull to the saddle and used it to ride around Boston on his daily business."

I got to see Darkest Hour, which has brought me to pick up Boris Johnson's The Churchill Factor again.

Churchill:  "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..." Yes.

a Big Deal

Henry is so uncatlike sometimes - the other day I picked him up, holding him firmly about chest height. He is a cat, right? No, he can't be. He was so nervous at being up high, I felt sorry and put him down. 

He doesn't play, or hardly at all. He used to follow the laser light once in a while, but as for anything else, he just watches when the other two are chasing something. 

But recently he's showing an interest in a certain ball, of two bright colors and something that rattles inside. He is drawn to it and will "play" with it - for maybe five seconds, or ten. And then one of us will say, "Look - Henry's playing!", because it's a Big Deal.

unshaken and joyful

Be joyful, Mary, heav'nly queen, alleluia:

Your Son who died was living seen,

Alleluia, rejoice, rejoice, O Mary.

The Son you bore by heaven's grace, alleluia:

Did all our guilt and sin efface,

Alleluia, rejoice, rejoice, O Mary.

The Lord has risen from the dead, alleluia:

He rose in glory as he said,

Alleluia, rejoice, rejoice, O Mary.

O pray to God, O Virgin fair, alleluia:

That he our souls to heaven bear,

Alleluia, rejoice, rejoice, O Mary.

"May we, most of all when it seems madness, keep our faith in the Risen Christ unshaken in our hearts."

                                     -  Caryll Houselander

from Magnificat, May 2018

brave little tree

I say this every year, I think.

But it's working so hard on blooming.

Between this and the fireflies of summer, it's our annual enchantment.

such a difference a day makes

Oh, May 1st and it was around seventy today - tomorrow, eighty five! The warmth just changes everything; after work I decided to wash my winter gloves - not the hand warmers, mind, I used a pair this morning - but the gloves. I didn't tell myself don't bother, you've been working all day, you've done enough. Spring is in the air and I wanted to get it done. 

Now they're drying on a towel in the spare room. Yesterday I put away my tights, tying each in a knot and storing them in a tote bag. I feel like I'm getting somewhere.

The Quartet, plus a few more

"There is as much intrigue in this State House as in the Vatican, but as little secrecy as in a boarding school."

                                       -  John Jay to Lafayette, 1779,  from The Quartet by Joseph Ellis

Somebody dropped off this book at the library, and as anything by Joseph Ellis must be good, I am reading it. Aside from the fact that even then, intrigue at the Vatican seems to have been well-known, I am amazed at the state of the colonies at that time.  "In the year since the war had ended, a majority of candidates elected to serve in the Congress had declined, or just failed to show up, and on fourteen occasions no business could be conducted for lack of a quorum. More dispiriting than any clash of opinions was the pervasive indifference that rendered argument itself impossible."  The book is about how this nation actually came to be a union of states, because after the war, there was little interest in any sort of unity here. Mr. Ellis attributes the change of attitude to four men, mainly: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, with supporting roles played by Robert Morris, Governeur Morris and Thomas Jefferson.

"Before he departed for Paris, Jefferson was interviewed by a visiting Dutch nobleman, who asked his opinion of the current American government. The members of Congress are no longer, generally speaking, men of worth or distinction. For Congress is not, as formally, held in respect; there is indeed dread of its power, though it has none."

It's hard to believe, but I do.

the Paschal journey

"Almighty ever-living God,

constantly accomplish the Paschal Mystery within us,

that those you were pleased to make new in Holy Baptism

may, under your protective care, bear much fruit

and come to the joys of life eternal."

-  collect from today's Mass, the Fifth Sunday of Easter

a quiet time was had by all

I am always grateful for these peaceful cat moments. Everyone was very low key today, including me.

for the Easter season, which it still is

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,

Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid him, Love whom we had slain,

Thinking that he'd never wake to life again,

Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up he sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,

He that for three days in the grave had lain;

Up from the dead my Risen Lord is seen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,

By your touch you call us back to life again;

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

-  from Magnificat, April 2018

why we read

"...we are not reading for the mere acquisition of information but for the sake of relationships with knowledge, with words, with heroes, and with ideas."

                                         - Karen Glass


"If then, the manners and the destinies of men are shaped by knowledge, it may be well to inquire further into the nature of that evasive entity. Matthew Arnold helps us by offering a three-fold classification which appeals to common sense - knowledge of God, knowledge of men, and knowledge of the natural world."

                                         - Charlotte Mason


All from Consider This, by Karen Glass.

dreaming of pies

This is a picture of the blueberry pie I made for Easter dessert (we also had chocolates, and wonderful ice cream from a lovely place in the center of town). The blueberries were from a co-worker's freezer. She's had surgery and a slow recovery - my brother has gone over there a few times to cut her hair. He wouldn't take money, so she paid us in blueberries - so many!

Today we went there again and came away with So Many Bags of: frozen peaches, strawberries, black raspberries, and more blueberries. How exciting! Think of all the pies!

our little queen turns fifteen, the rest of us being barbarians

Our girl has a birthday today.

 And she's quite well, thanks for asking.


The other day at work I had a sudden desire to read a gardening journal of some sort. I looked through the 635s and came up with Onward and Upward in the Garden, by Katharine S. White.
She was married to E.B. White - yes, him! - and these are essays published in the late 50s through 1970. I don't think I'll glean any practical advice from them, but the first few entries are critiques of seed and plant catalogs ; I've never thought deeply when looking at one of these, but now I'm thinking I've been remiss. 

She then moves on to books and here she speaks of a Mrs. Loudon, author of The Ladies' Companion to the Flower-Garden. 

"[Mrs. Loudon] even includes a few unpopular flowers, the most invigorating of which I think is

The Squirting Cucumber. An annual gourd-like plant, with woolly leaves, and yellow flowers, the fruit of which resembles a small cucumber; and which, when ripe, bursts the moment it is touched, scattering its seeds, and the half-liquid, pulpy matter in which they are contained, to a considerable distance. This quality made it a favorite, in gardens, a century ago, when some people were yet in a state of sufficient barbarism to find amusement in the annoyance of others; but it has now deservedly fallen into disrepute, and is seldom grown.

I'm afraid I know several little modern American barbarians who would be delighted if their grandmothers would grow them a supply of squirting cucumbers."

Don't we all. I may be one of them. :D

Psalm 71

It is you, O Lord, who are my hope,

my trust, O Lord, since my youth.

On you I have leaned from my birth,

from my mother's womb you have been my help. 

My hope has always been in you.

I will declare the Lord's mighty deeds

proclaiming your justice, yours alone.

O God, you have taught me from my youth

and I proclaim your wonders still.

Now that I am old and grey-headed,

do not forsake me, God.

Let me tell of your power to all ages,

praise your strength and justice to the skies,

tell of you who have worked such wonders.

O God, who is like you?

You have burdened me with bitter troubles

but you will give me back my life.

You will raise me from the depths of the earth;

you will exalt me and console me again.

So I will give you thanks on the lyre

for your faithful love, my God.

When I sing to you my lips shall rejoice

and my soul, which you have redeemed.

-  verses 5, 6 16-22a &23

springing

I do believe that it's finally. Spring-ing.

this is just what leftovers are for

I had two leeks in the fridge, and lots of potatoes, so the other day I we had potato leek soup with BLTs. Today I planned to make minestrone for supper but mid-day felt so weary I knew it would be a mistake to force myself. 

almost minestrone

I had also defrosted leftovers early in the week, not knowing what I'd be able to throw together after work. There was some potato leek soup left, so I heated it up, added more broth and put in the remains of our corned beef dinner from St. Patrick's Day. With a few carrots and green beans also leftover, I think the potato and leek base was the perfect complement to the meat! A bit of toast and some butter - I do feel a lot better now and it was very little work.

June came by

this morning

June came by on Saturday; the temperatures were in the seventies, and how welcome that was! But she didn't stay, and April hasn't behaved like she's supposed to. Actually, April's behavior  is usually all over the place, but this year....  Let me just say that we had snow again last night and I had really thought that was behind us and I can see that this blog can all too easily descend into one long complaint about the weather.

Easter was lovely, although my brother had a cold. One week later, I came down with it, and then of course it always turns into bronchitis; it was particularly bad this time and I was home from work all last week. Thank God I'm much better but the coughing will take a while to go. Meanwhile, my brother kept getting days of tiredness and/or feeling like an elevated temp, and we realized that maybe our thing was a flu - and then on the radio this morning they said flu cases rose again in our state. And I was just saying that with all the talk of flu this winter, I didn't know a soul who'd had it.

I've spent much time on the couch near the vaporizer with a blanket and some books and magazines in between napping. But today I thought I should do more to get ready to go back to work, so I made bread (really the KitchenAid does the work) and found a nice simple recipe for potato leek soup; that was our supper with BLTs. The soup actually was kind of irritating to my bronchials while it cooked so I had to run the exhaust fan, but my hope is the leeks will drive out any baddies still lurking in our systems.

Sweetie had a birthday last week and we thought she was thirteen, but my brother saw Diane today and she said Sweetie is nine. Well, that explains her liveliness - I was always amazed at so much activity for her age. So she is our youngest one. And speaking of cats, last week I stumbled upon this lovely video on youtube . A young man in Istanbul has been taking in injured cats and paying for their treatments. He's a pianist and these cats have filled a void in his life but one cat in particular loves to sit on the piano, right in the middle, and this fellow just smiles and plays around him. The clip is five minutes - you have to watch the whole thing because it's a compilation somebody did from his videos. If you like cats, it will really touch your heart. God bless him.

Here is a picture from last April -

I wouldn't believe it if there weren't a date on the photo. That tree won't be blooming in April this year!

two quick snows and a wet cat

March went out like the veriest lamb of lambs. I had taken Holy Week off with an intention of doing spring cleaning. I've never done it this early but suddenly realized it might be a good thing to get it mostly out of the way before it became too nice out. I did quite well with that plan, but I was looking for the nicest day in the forecast to go outside and prune the roses. Saturday turned out to be the day;  it was so warm and sunny I had to remove my sweater and go dig out my sandals.

I cut some branches of forsythia and forced them in time for Easter, then stuck them in the "urn" in front.

They look as well today as they did Sunday, and considering the weather we've had... 

Monday early it began snowing, and snowed for a few hours, covering everything like this. By the end of the day it was mostly gone.

same day!

April snow. Which has been known to happen in these parts. Like again today, for instance. It snowed from late morning with big fat flakes, but didn't accumulate.  I didn't take pictures. A true spring is an elusive thing here - we really never get them properly.


We discovered that the Library Cat doesn't mind water - he sits in the sink under the trickling faucet and laps it up, not minding his wet coat.

He is lovely.

a new world

"The tomb of Jesus was the tomb of a world that had ended... In this new world, the humanity of Jesus would no longer be bound by time and space. To experience his presence, his followers did not have to look back to the old world buried in the tomb. Jesus is not found in the past as a source of inspired teachings to be literally applied to our circumstances today. 'What would Jesus do?' is not really a Christian question. Instead, the Holy Spirit makes him present in every circumstance of our lives today. Our question is: 'What does Jesus want to give to us through what is happening?' "

                                                      -  Fr. Lorenzo Albacete,  from Magnificat, April 2018

The Empty Tomb, by Mikhail Nesterov

is God asleep?

"There is a scene in the Gospel that anticipates the silence of Holy Saturday in a stimulating way and thus also appears as a portrait of our historical hour. Christ is sleeping in a boat about to sink for being battered by the sea. The prophet Elijah had once mocked the priests of Baal who were screaming loudly and futilely to their god to supply fire for the sacrifice by saying that their god was probably sleeping; they might have to call more loudly in order to wake him.. But is God not really sleeping? Does the jibe of the prophet not finally find its mark in the believers of the God of Israel who are traveling with him in a sinking boat? God sleeps while his affairs are about to sink - is that not the experience of our own lives? Do the Church and the faith not appear like a little sinking ship that uselessly struggles against wind and waves while God is absent?

The Apostles in utter despair shake the Lord and cry out to waken him, but he appears surprised and scolds them for their lack of faith. Is it any different for us?

When the storm has passed, we will recognize how foolish our faint-hearted faith was. And yet, Lord, we cannot do otherwise than shake you, the silent, sleeping God, crying out to you: Wake up - don't you see that we are sinking? Wake up, don't let the darkness of Holy Saturday last forever, let a gleam of Easter fall in our day too. Go with us when we walk despondently to Emmaus so that our hearts may be enkindled by your nearness. You who, in hiddenness, guided Israel's path, until finally you were a man among men, don't leave us in darkness; don't let your Word be drowned in the prattle of these days. Lord help us, for without you we would perish. Amen."

                                                          -  Pope Benedict XVI,  from Magnificat, March 2018

Christ Asleep in His Boat, by Jules Joseph Meynier

"these things the Lord has done"

Psalm 22

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

You are far from my plea and the cry of my distress.

O my God, I call by day and you give no reply;

I call by night and I find no peace.

Yet you, O God, are holy,

enthroned on the praises of Israel.

In you our fathers put their trust;

they trusted and you set them free.

When they cried to you, they escaped.

In you they trusted and never in vain.

But I am a worm and no man,

the butt of men, laughing-stock of the people,

all who see me deride me.

They curl their lips, they toss their heads.

"He trusted in the Lord, let him save him;

let him release him if this is his friend."

Yes, it was you who took me from the womb,

entrusted me to my mother's breast.

To you I was committed from my birth,

from my mother's womb you have been my God.

Do not leave me alone in my distress;

come close, there is none else to help.

Like water I am poured out,

disjointed are all my bones.

My heart has become like wax,

it is melted within my breast.

Parched as burnt clay is my throat,

my tongue cleaves to my jaws.

Many dogs have surrounded me,

a band of the wicked beset me.

They tear holes in my hands and my feet

and lay me in the dust of death.

I can count every one of my bones.

These people stare at me and gloat;

they divide my clothing among them.

They cast lots for my robe.

O Lord, do not leave me alone,

my strength, make haste to help me!

Rescue my soul from the sword,

my life from the grip of these dogs.

Save my life from the jaws of these lions,

my poor soul from the horns of these oxen.

I will tell of your name to my brethren

and praise you where they are assembled.

"You who fear the Lord give him praise;

all sons of Jacob, give him glory.

Revere him, Israel's sons.

For he has never despised

nor scorned the poverty of the poor.

From him he has not hidden his face,

but he heard the poor man when he cried."

And my soul shall live for him, my children serve him.

They shall tell of the Lord to generations yet to come,

declare his faithfulness to peoples yet unborn,

"These things the Lord has done."

The Raising of the Cross - Peter Paul Rubens

the best we can

At the supermarket today I ran into a man from church. He said, "I am doing the very best I can. Are you doing the very best you can?" I said, "yes!" He said, "That's all God expects of us. So, we're in good hands, and the hands aren't Allstate!" * 

My brother later told me he says this to everyone who asks how he's doing; but it stayed with me, especially struggling over an Easter week menu and trying not to leave out anything as I made out the shopping list. I was truly doing the best I could, and his silly little remark helped me to feel more settled afterward.

And then I bought some pretty jonquils.



* A well-known insurance company in the U.S, whose slogan is "You're in good hands with Allstate."

like bunny rabbits

I told myself at the beginning of Lent that I should work on the mending pile, and I have been!

But it increases when I'm not looking.

"the thought of God"

"... the happiness of the soul consists in the exercise of the affections; ... As hunger and thirst, as taste, sound, and smell, are the channels through which this bodily frame receives pleasure, so the affections are the instruments by which the soul has pleasure. When they are exercised duly, it is happy; when they are undeveloped, restrained, or thwarted, it is not happy. This is our real and true bliss, ... to love, to hope, to joy, to admire, to revere, to adore. Our real and true bliss lies in the possession of those objects on which our hearts may rest and be satisfied...  the thought of God, and nothing short of it, is the happiness of man; for though there is much besides to serve as subject of knowledge, or motive for action, or means of excitement, yet the affections require a something more vast and more enduring than anything created. .. He alone is sufficient for the heart."

                                                     -  A Mind at Peace

taking worship seriously

"Worship is not merely a therapeutic practice. In fact, worship has a therapeutic effect only on the soul of a person who takes seriously its claims of truth."

                    -  A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction,
                                                  by Christopher O. Blum and Joshua P. Hochschild

return of the tabby

After a good three months at home, the library kitty suddenly appeared this week.

He was extremely glad to see us and made himself at home, in the way of cats.

I have missed him, but I would be happier if they'd keep him inside their house.