Meads and Posies and Life

This post comes to you,

just because it’s spring,

A Spring ‘Blue’ for outstanding performance, to the sweet peas, hebes, phacelia, borage, forget-me-nots, alyssum, campanula, and clematis.

and flowers demand attention, with winning ways,

Clover, sweet peas, and roses have seductively winning wiles.

and because I promised Tish Farrell , Writer on the Edge, I would  photograph my mini-meadows when they flowered.

‘Oh may I squire you round the meads
And pick you posies gay?’ A E Housman

‘Ah, life, what is it but a flower?’ A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad

© silkannthreades

Preserving the sweetness of things

Our previous minister,  Rev. John Hunt, (now retired), would sometimes  offer the congregation ‘a sweetie for the sermon’. His sermons didn’t ever need any sweetening but he said a ‘sweetie for the sermon’ was an ancient Scottish tradition, and we, believers all, were more than happy to help preserve the ways of the old Kirk.  So the baskets of sweeties were passed from one pew to another and we, smiling and laughing like young ones at a birthday party, selected our sweetie and, then, spent the rest of the sermon, trying to dislodge sticky toffee from our gums and teeth. ( Perhaps we were not as young as our hearts imagined 🙂 ) Gummed up or not, they were sweet moments, and, although, I remember not a word of the sermons, I do remember feeling content and treasured and loved. Sugar it seems is a powerful  preservative of well-being.

In the spirit of ‘a sweetie for the sermon’, I  am spending time trying to capture and preserve  the sweetness of the current season. For there is much sweetness to savour.

There is the sweet fragrance and delicate tones of my dwarf sweet peas both outside

Sweetly fragrant Sweet Pea

and indoors, mingled with scented rose.

Rose and Sweet Peas

Then there is the sweetness suspended in the flowers and leaves I  am drying for my home-made potpourri.

Summer Medley with Tracy’s  butterflies

Potpourri translates as ‘rotten pot/stew’, which, hopefully, mine will not be, if I have dried everything sufficiently well.

Petals and Leaves

Clematis and Bay with Tracy’s butterfly

Miscellaneous Mixture

Additional sweetness comes in a friend’s seasonal gift of  home-made  Christmas mince pies; so delicious they are impossible to preserve except on camera.

Stars of Wonder

They are a scrumptious-sumptuous combination of melt-in-your-mouth sugary buttery pastry and ‘ barely there tartness’ of rich, fruity mince meat;   made, I am told, with the addition of apple and green tomato to the dried fruit.

Star of Wonder

Gooseberries and Blackcurrants for fun

Sweet delight of pastry and fruit mince

Merry Christmas

So those are the sweeties. Now for the sermon. Sermon? What sermon?  My mouth is too full of goodness to speak.

© silkannthreades

Floral notes at the close of day.

Keeping chipper today, in face of the continued machinations of bread and washing machines, has been an exercise in gritted teeth and grim determination. I have been for a walk and cleared my head, enough to laugh at the idea that the bread machine and the washing machine might do better if they swapped tasks …..and to remember that a couple of very beautiful scenes graced my day.

To dwell on the best of the day as it comes to an end here are…..

Daisy Fields at the University Gardens.

Look a little closer

still closer

And who lives here?

Then, up I struggled  (creak, creak, go the knees) and off I went to look at the stars in my garden. The star jasmine with its delicate scent has been out for a while but the clematis only started to bloom a couple of days ago.

© silkannthreades