Sally Mann is showing at Photographer’s Gallery here in London at the moment.

Her photographs oftentimes leave me with a dual sense of eternity and ephemerality all at once. They have been lingering in my mind when pottering around the house for the last week or so.

I accidentally seem to be drifting away from ye old online journal, so I decided to remedy this troubling downward spiral by quickly taking some photographs. The peeky bunny up there on top of the Vermeer is a MyPaperCrane.

The house is smothered in sunlight these days and I am settling indoors for a spot of Miss Marple on the telly. One of the Geraldine McEwan ones I believe. I love her Marples merely for her sparkly gaze which makes her look like she knows secrets. Then I am planning to have an early night after watching The Bunker of the Last Gunshots; one of the really early Jeunet/Caro wonders. We have been raising by dawn a lot lately, to go to our kitchen gardens before the hens are let out in our home garden. That way I don’t have to worry about any sly fox coming to feast on my li’l ones when I’m not around. (They are supposedly notoriously active around dawn.)

It’s free shipping allround in le petit shoppe; a little Easter gift from me to you.

Happy Easter!

The unbelievable passing of Elspeth Thompson has left me with such a heavy heart. She was a truly inspirational entity to me (and many others) and it somehow hurts to think that she would want to end her life. It makes me question my own life and even other people’s lives and what the point of them are, if one like hers was not worth living. But such is the nature of depression, I suppose; mysterious, cold and absorbing.

She showed humankind that the easy route is not always the best and it is certainly not the most interesting. She showed us that true beauty is timid and unforeseen.

On a different note, I saw another one of those pick-me-up-films the other day which I just have to share. If you are a regular reader you might remember the Genevieve post from some time back, well this one is called Blithe Spirit. It is from 1945 and it ticks quite a few feel good boxes: it features both live and dead people, the glorious Margaret Rutherford has the role of Madame Arcati, the medium and the characters don’t seem to care much if they are of the dead or the living kind, which seems to be a dreadfully healthy attitude + it lends the film a rather surrealist tone.

Now, I’m off to change my header into something a little more spring like, mes petits gourmands, I shall see you soon, o’hoy!

Chilly nights and frosty mornings are still adorning my part of the world.

Horticulture-wise it’s hard to get much done, but we do little jobs here and there, where the soil isn’t too hard, or too water logged to work. And there are some benefits to these clear and cold days…

like the hundreds and thousands of tiny white jewels dressing the seedheads…

…and the warming sun glares beaming through my work room.

By the way, the outcome of my birthday, which was spent with near and dear, was lovely and sweet (in many a sense) and included several exciting little explorations to the near countryside as well as a quicky to the centre of London. And thank-yous to my sweet fella for all his efforts to make it such a special day!

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I hope your weekend treated you alright. I spent some of my weekend sowing seeds for the coming season, but we are still in below average temperatures here in London so we will see if I shall ever be able to plant them out.

That crazy little bunny staring rather mischieviously through the seed window actually lured himself into this photo all by himself! He is the shell of a pencil sharpener from the 1940′s and he keeps me company in my work room looking terribly dashing sitting in his vegetable armchair.

My birthday is coming up and I have plenty of sweet things to prepare and several little excursions to look forward to so I am taking a couple of days off from online life to concentrate on the one here…or should I say there? Have a lovely few days!

I’ve had salads on my mind lately. We had an extraordinarily cheesy chicory gratin for dinner a few days ago. We made it with a mix of both white and red chicons and cooked it up using this, which cheeses up most things, the vegan way, suprisingly well actually, to be in powder form. And then we topped it with my favourite smoked cheddar Bute Island “sheese” for good measure, hence it became a tad heavy. But enter the humble green salad and as if by magic the meal felt just right.

This particular salad was a very leafy one coming from my hands as usually I’m more of a chunky-salad-person but for this meal it was just perfect. We used frisée lettuce and little bits of wild pink radicchio, seasoning, basil oil and really good balsamic vinegar. I’m on the hunt for some (for me) new interesting ingredients to add to my salads and I just bought some agretti which I am looking forward to try in my next one.

I hope you’ve had a satisfying week so far. I’m off to watch some indulgingly pointless evening television.

So Long, my little darjeelings, see you soon!

An auction purchase from a few months back. Old tins filled with old buttons. Hundreds of miniscule treasures!

And then came Christmas and ruined everything. The little treasures were forgotten and not until now have I had the time to take them out to inspect. Such loveliness!

loveliness

and loveliness!

I can feel a button changing party coming on… Speaking of parties, Johan has had his 30th birthday (yes I know, he’s younger than me; very unorthodox, I’m an old bag compared to him..33 soon to be) and we have been inundated with celebrators so I never got the chance to thank all of you who took advantage of my January Sale bonanza; thank you sweet darlings! There are only a few sale items left in the shop now, but do not despair. I am cooking up a new very generous offer as we speak. There’s more to come so watch this space. I hope you will all have a surprisingly fruitful forthcoming week!

Remember how I told you a while back that my lovely little Ada was dreadfully poorly?

Well, after coming home from the veterinary surgery she has been laying all sorts of worrying things, such as completely shelless eggs and she has suffered a terrible ordeal from it all. But lo and behold; this is what she came up with this Monday! A perfect, beautiful, brown speckled, magic little gift. And on top of that she has been her happy self ever since. I can’t wait til the day my clever little giver retires from her egg laying and just keeps her energy and nutrition to herself. But in the meantime I am just happy to see her running around in the garden looking a bit like an aeroplane again!

Oh, and, completely unrelated to the above rantings, there’s now only three days left on the Specific Flavour January Sale, so if you are feeling like a bargain of the flavourful kind hop over here!