ButtonWillowCottage

Hmmm...

So disconcerting to see some flowers completely blossomless due to our resident snail population.  Interestingly the average lifespan of a snail is FIFTEEN years.  Mrs. Rabbit tells me there are a few here at ButtonWillow that have lived even past that! And that they are filled with wisdom and respected for their tidy little homes (even if they never can accept visitors indoors for tea). 

We've yet to truly make an effort to get to know them... perhaps the effort should be put forth on our parts?  It seems to me that maybe we could come to some sort of a compromise... and at the very least, we shall learn exactly what sort of tea they choose to enjoy. 

We're guessing it somehow involves flower petals.

Hello Summer...

we're looking forward to spending some quality time with you.

At least we have socks...

Makes one wonder if they grumble to each other about "frozen toes" or do they just appreciate their gift of life...?

Rain...or snow for that matter!

"Consider this.  From the first few drops of gentle sprinkling, to a wind-lashing deluge, rain is a permissive pal.  Rain restores serenity to our daily endeavors because it slows us down, or it should.  It's been my observation that when it rains, no one--from the dog to the boss--really expects much to happen or get done.  This means we get to indulge in activities that would otherwise make us feel guilty--dawdling, idle converstaion with coworkers, naps.  "Gosh, isn't the weather dreadful," we mutter as our frazzled bodies and restless spirits downshift with a sigh of relief."

~Sarah Ban Breathnach-- Romancing The Ordinary

Contentment

Peace - that was the other name for home. 

~Kathleen Norris

Blankets

The finest blankets, like the best comforters, are made from the most expensive materials-- the costliest blankets are very light, very soft, and very warm.  As a general rule, the coarser the wool and heavier the blanket, the less warm it will be.

Praise

 

The leaves lay like hands upon the ground.
When the wind rustles them, they applaud softly.
- Laura E. Stevens

It's that time...

We're pretty sure it's the time of year to be baking something like this...

Caramel-Glazed Apple Cake
Edna Lewis’ The Gift of Southern Cooking via Leite’s Culinaria

For the cake

1 cup light-brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
3 large eggs
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground Ceylon cinnamon (see note)
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 fresh apples (such as Winesap or Granny Smith), peeled and diced into 1/2 inch pieces
1 1/4 cups not-too-finely chopped pecans
2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the glaze

1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light-brown sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C).

Make the Cake: Put the sugars and vegetable oil in a mixing bowl, and beat until very well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, and gradually add to the sugar and eggs, mixing just until well blended.

Stir in the apples, pecans, and vanilla, and pour into a buttered and 9-by-13-inch baking pan.

Bake in the preheated oven until a skewer or toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 1/4 hours (begin checking after 50 minutes). Remove from the oven, and allow to cool in the pan while you prepare the caramel glaze.

Make the Glaze: Melt the butter in a saucepan, and add both the sugars and the salt. Stir until blended, and cook over medium-low heat for 2 minutes. Stir in the heavy cream, and boil for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

Use a skewer or toothpick to poke holes all over the top of the cake, and pour the warm glaze over the surface. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Recipe makers note regarding ceylon cinnamon;

The quality of cinnamon can vary greatly, and most that you find on supermarket shelves is harsh and hot in flavor. Ceylon cinnamon is the exception and we use it a lot in our recipes. Ceylon cinnamon is best purchased in stick form, kept tightly covered away from sunlight, and ground in a spice mill or with a mortar and pestle for each recipe (we keep a small electric coffee grinder that we use only for sweet spices like cinnamon and clove). Unlike common cinnamon, which is thick, hard and brittle, Ceylon cinnamon is paper thin and crumbles easily in the hand. It is complexly smooth and sweet, and very refined, both in aroma and flavor. We recommend seeking it out, as it makes all the difference in a dish. If, however, for some reason you simply cannot find Ceylon cinnamon, reduce the amount called for in our recipe by half if you are using an ordinary supermarket brand.

The Wayside Flower

Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler's dower.
~William Allingham

Goldenrod

One of the last big flower shows each year is courtesy of the Goldenrod. Throughout the world, 125 species of goldenrod are known; of these around 90 are found in North America.

Just about every insect with an interest in flowers may be found on goldenrod in the autumn.  Bees harvest it's nectar in great quantities in the flower-starved autumn.  In fact, goldenrods are considered one of the most important bee plants.

Brews of goldenrod have been popular throughout time. In Europe, the leaves were sometimes made into what was called Blue Mountain Wine.  Teas have been made from many of the more aromatic species, many as medicinal brews.  In the nineteenth century many of these concoctions were exported to China where they were much admired and commanded high prices. 

The flowers of various species of goldenrod have been used to make yellow dye for cloth.  Thomas Edison even experimented with it as a source for rubber! With it's many uses, not surprisingly two states-- Kentucky and Nebraska-- have named it their state flower.

Goldenrod are commonly blamed for allergies due to the fact that large swaths of them can be found growing amongst the real culprit--Ragweed.

The Goldenrod make a pleasant scene with it's varied bronzes, russets, oranges and purples it displays which colors the fall praries and meadows.  It is a sure sign that the first frosts of the cooler seasons are not long away.

There is a calm and solemn air
Along the road, by garden fair,
By rushing stream, and ev'rywhere
The sear and yellow leaf's aglow.


The foliage is growing old;
All through the verdure gleams the gold;
The rose is turning into mold;
But golden rod stands ev'rywhere.


O'er the lea and across the mead,
And far away where the cattle feed,
There blows the yellow crested reed,
The autumnal queen of flowers.


Its golden crown along the way,
Sways back and forth, and seems to say,
'I am fair Flora's Queen today,
And the wind's my messenger boy.


'And further on the wind's low wail
Proclaims my reign along the dale,
Till the tired harvester drops his flail
And hails me queen of the flowers.'

~Samuel Alfred Beadle

 

Filling Your Field Bag

Springtime seems, for many, to be a time when everyone wants to get out and experience the natural world, but here at ButtonWillow, autumn is the season that nudges our wanderlust.  While nature is well and truly hunkering in for the seasons to come, there is still plenty to see no matter what the weather.  The life of small dwellers is constantly transforming and it's always lovely to see what changes each season bring isn't it?  A lovely addition to these excursions is a field bag.  Each should choose one that works well for them.  The bags can be a simple one pocket sewing project, or many can be purchased that have a plethora of pockets and wells to fill.

While your interests may vary from ours here at ButtonWillow, there are always a few basics that should be within the contents of any well-packed field bag...

~ A Magnifying Glass
~ Binoculars
~ A thick pad of drawing paper or your own personal field journal
~ Good pencils, a sharpener and eraser
~ Assorted field guides (Wild flowers, Birds, Insects, Minerals)
~ Small specimen containers
~ A pocket knife

Then, depending upon your personal interests or needs one can add in a variety of other items...

~ A camera
~ A portable Watercolor set
~ Colored Pencils
~ Tape or Pins
~ Small Scissors or X-acto type knife (safely encased of course)
~ Regular or double-stick tape
~ Tweezers
~ A small digging utensil (a sturdy metal spoon is ideal)

Then don't forget to add in the comfort items...

~ A flask of water
~ Mints or chewing gum
~ Insect bite salve
~ A few Band-aids
~ Lip Balm
~ A whistle (for safety sake, this is an essential item in a child's field bag)

Having a field guide sitting 'at the ready' near your cottage door will surely beckon one outdoors more often and make your impromptu rambles that much more pleasurable.

Welcome Autumn

Please unpack and stay a good long while wont you?

Farewell Warm Friend

Changes are on the wind...have you said your good-byes?

Worries...

After scolding one's cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word.

And has filed it for reference. 

~Charlotte Gray

Frolic With Cherries

Enjoying Summer's Final Chapters

"There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs."

~Henry Ward Beecher

Details

"Everything in our surroundings speaks for us, and if we accept living with a vulgar design we must pay for it.  Caring about aesthetics increases your sensitivity.  The more we care about the small details, the more in tune to beauty we become, and the more we realize how seemingly insignificant items affect us.  You discover that by taking care of every inch of your surroundings you can let your eyes wander and not be caught short.  We're free to open up to all there is in our surroundings.  I get enormous pleasure and comfort from orderly, harmonious , attractive surroundings, and I feel unhappy and disturbed when things are out of place, out of scale, or in bad taste.  Let your eye be the judge.  Train yourself to see things with caring perception."

Living a Beautiful Life--Alexandra Stoddard

The "Peter Rabbit Lady"

Sept 6th '05

My dear Winifred,Would you like a letter from the "Peter Rabbit Lady"?  I want to tell you all about my 2 bunnies, I have got them with me here.

They are called Josey and Mopsy; Josey is a dear rabbit, she is so tame; although she is only a common wild one, who lived in a rabbit hole under a hedge.  A boy caught her when she was quite a baby, she could sit in my hand.  She is 3 years old now.

The other rabbit Mopsy is quite young, but is frightened and silly; I am not quite sure whether I shall keep it; perhaps I shall take it into the wood and let it run away down a rabbit hole....

With a great many kisses, from your loving friend, Beatrix Potter

from "Letters To Children from Beatrix Potter" by Judy Taylor

Ivy's Cottage

If you close your eyes and imagine a traditional English village - it is probably somewhere just like Selworthy that comes to your imagination. It is a 'picture-postcard' village, with beautiful thatched cottages, flowers clambering all over them in manicured gardens, in a pretty countryside setting of woodlands and open fields spreading for miles across the rolling hills.

...cloud gazing

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.  ~John Lubbock

ahhh...newlyweds

Oh dear! I've been extremely remiss in telling you that these two love birds...er...mice, are to be celebrating their first anniversary very shortly.  Isn't it endearing how romantic they still remain?  The Small Dweller gossip mill tells me that he will be bringing her a hand-picked bouquet of cornflowers (her favorite blue)...

If you missed the ever-so-sweet story of their courtship, do catch up with the lovetale starting here which then progressed to this, which culminated in this!

:)

Hoping you have plans to float your cares away soon...

Richard Goodman

"I had a garden in the south of France.  It wasn't a big garden.  Or a sumptuous one.  Or a successful one, even in the end.  But that didn't matter.  It was my garden, and i worked it hard and lovingly for the few months I had it--or it had me.  This little piece of tan, clayey, French earth, nine meters by thirteen meters, (thirty feet by forty-three feet), was in fact the first garden I ever had.  it taught me a great deal about myself.  "your garden will reveal yourself," writes the wise gardener Henry Mitchell.  It did.

A Gilded Season

The dandelions and buttercups

Gild all the lawn; the drowsy bee

stumbles among the clover tops,

and summer sweetens

all to me.

~J.R. Lowell 1869

Flowers Get Hungry Too

Economizing by using your own cottage grown cut flowers for your in-home arrangements (and we think they are far more glorious and satisfying anyways!) means not having the supplied packet of commercial "food" for your blooms.  Creating your own flower food at home is easy and is beneficial.  It extends the life of the arrangement, as it both feeds the flowers and inhibits the bacteria that produce slime and smelly water.  Mix your own by adding a teaspoon each of sugar, vinegar and non-concentrated bleach to each quart of water. 

Immigrants

One (of the many) advantages to not using pesticides in the ButtonWillow garden is that it's supremely fascinating each spring to find some odd new little visitor and think..."well hello there little one, where did you come from?"

Let's hope this welcoming attitude keeps them from eating more than their share.

Fly

A Beautiful Life

The difference between feeling bored and feeling alive, I believe, lies in stimulating daily life that is elevated into a fuller experience through pleasing details.

When these small moments are handled lovingly and with thought and care, they become life-enhancing and make you capable of doing more with the rest of your life.

Living a Beautiful Life-- Alexandra Stoddard

 

A Warm Hug

The Earth has received the embrace of the sun

and we shall see the results of that love.

~Sitting Bull

A Ticket Please...

 

GARDENS ARE THEATRES;

THEY ARE THERE TO

ENCHANT, TO EXHILARATE,

TO DECEIVE, AND TO

CAPTIVATE...

White Way of Delight

"Oh, Mr. Cuthbert," she whispered, "that place we came through--that white place--what was it?""Well now, you must mean the Avenue," said Matthew after a few moments' profound reflection. "It is a kind of pretty place."

"Pretty? Oh, PRETTY doesn't seem the right word to use.  Nor beautiful, either.  They don't go far enough.  Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful.  It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination.  It just satisfies me here"--she put one hand on her breast--"it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache.