French Country Stoneware

Several weeks ago, my mother-in-law Grace sent me a box of beautiful dishes that she purchased in 1998 in Virginia. She brought them home and unpacked them and never used them. They've been sitting in her cupboard all these years.

They are the loveliest dishes I've ever seen. They are made by Villeroy and Boch, and the name of the pattern is Manoir, which translates from the French as "large country manor house". They are white stoneware, and look at home in my French Country kitchen.

Also included with the white set of dishes were 8 small dessert dishes, also made by Villeroy and Boch, called Jardin D' Alsace Auberge, which means "a garden at the inn in Alsace". They are the same shape as Manoir, but have delicate green sage centers and rose-colored rims. As you can imagine, these dishes conjure up wonderful images of sun-soaked flower and lavender fields, and burnt umber-colored brick hotels and inns opening onto narrow cobbled streets in the French countryside. I think of these things each time I take down a dish to use for a meal or dessert.

Of all the things that Grace could have given me, this set of dishes was more meaningful than anything else I could have imagined. I appreciate the aesthetic sense she possesses, and her generosity in sharing this gift with me.

Checking In on the Garden

Come take a walk with me this evening as I meander through the pasture to the picket fence that surrounds my garden. The garden gate creaks slightly as I open it and step into the garden.

The cool evening has been kind to my plants, and everything is lush and green. The corn is getting high, and the peas and beans are growing out of control, spilling over their supports. There are tiny cucumbers forming, and my granddaughter's pumpkins are coming along. There are lots of yellow blossoms that will soon be summer heirloom squash.

The hanging petunia baskets are bright purple and pink, and create a nice backdrop for the garden. The herbs are doing well, and I'll have to use some of them this week in a pasta dish. The evening is quiet, and it feels good just to stand there and take it all in.

As I head back to the house, I pass the orchard, where the apple trees are loaded with fruit. The Italian Plum trees will bear enough fruit for some jam this year. The Asian Pear has some fruit on it, but nothing like last year. However, it will all be enough at harvest time.

I love this time of year, when summer is high, and fall is not yet in our thoughts. I'll savor every moment of this month of August, and celebrate the beauty of the days in my own way.

An Angel in the Garden

Several years ago, I attended the Swap Meet at the Monroe Fairgrounds. Once a month, they have a large group of vendors congregate, and we peruse the rows and rows of merchandise and find something special to take home.

On this very chilly Spring morning, I spotted a small cement statue of an angel. I carried it over to the proprietor and paid for it, and lugged it to my car. I couldn't wait to get it home--I had the perfect spot for it!

When I graduated from college six years ago, my mother gave me a lovely stone bench for the front yard garden. It's situated under the Asian Pear tree, which creates a lovely shade garden. I placed the angel on the bench, and it was a perfect pairing.

When I graduated from Seattle Pacific University, I received a small sprig of ivy during the Ivy Cutting Ceremony. I planted it in the front yard against the white picket fence. Over the years, it has traveled at least 20 feet, and this year, it finally reached the angel. I guided the ivy vine around the little statue, and loved the effect that it created.

That corner of my yard is a special place now to stop for a moment, remember the reason for the bench and the ivy, and then be pleased that I found the perfect little figure to pull it all together and finish the tableau.

Grandmother's Farm Table

I recently inherited the farm table that my grandmother Alma had in her kitchen in Ballard for many years. Before I got the table, my aunt inherited it from her mother, and had it completely refinished years ago. It's a beautiful table, with bins for flour and other staples such as sugar. The aluminum top was removed, and the wood refinished and polished to a beautiful sheen. It now resides in my family room, where it provides a spot for my 1898 Seth Thomas kitchen clock.

It means a lot to me to have the table that my grandmother used to prepare meals for her family. My father and his sister used to eat their Sunday lunch on the two serving boards that pull out from the front of the table. I often use these extensions of the table when I am serving a buffet meals to friends and family.

Perhaps my grandmother got this table from her mother-in-law in Oregon. I am at least the third generation to use this table, and it gives me a sense of my place in my family whenever I walk by and let my hand trail over the beautiful, smooth dark wood.

Authenticity

"When we are authentic, when we keep our spaces simple, simply beautiful living takes place." --Alexandra Stoddard

I recently finished reading a book titled Restore, Recycle, Repurpose, by Randy Florke. Randy is an interior decorator with a twist--he believes in using recycled items, repurposing them, and restoring them. As he travels and transforms the homes of his clients, his guiding principles are those that his grandmother taught him. He has set out to prove that we can decorate our homes without spending barrels of money, without doing a lot of consuming, without shipping in costly materials from far-away places, and without adding to the piles of refuse as the nearest dump.

Decorating can have a serious impact on the environment, both inside and outside a home. Randy believes you can still go 'green' without sacrificing aesthetics.

As I paged through this beautiful book with lush photographs of redecorated homes, I marveled at the beautiful interiors and the character of the pieces that had been saved or repurposed or restored. It is a great inspiration to me, and I'm looking for ways to continue to buy only things I need, and to buy something old and with character when I need to re-do a room or change something in my home.

Sunday Afternoon at the Farmer's Market

This afternoon, we headed to Lake Forest Park for their Sunday Farmer's Market. The day was cool and overcast, and we wore jackets for the first time in weeks. This Sunday market is well-attended, and we had to park the truck and then walk to the event.

It's a wonderful market with locally-grown produce from Monroe and Duvall farms, and I am always amazed at the colors of the fruits and vegetables in mid-summer. They are beautiful! There were varieties of turnips and tomatoes and peppers I had never seen before, and cherries and aprocots and all types of berries, even red huckleberries. It was difficult to choose what we wanted to take home, but we carefully made our selections and will be consulting our Farmer's Market Cookbook when we get home.

I'm going to make a salsa from the heirloom tomatoes I found today, and we'll probably eat the Bing Cherries on the way home. Perhaps I can make one more batch of freezer jam out of the apricots...

We stopped at the Harvest Bread store on the way out, and sampled the Cinnamon Chip loaf and the Country White bread. Mmmm.....yummy!

Shucking Corn and Picking Raspberries

each ear gives up its clothes reluctantly

overlapping folds hiss when pulled apart

together were a rich green but peeled

the undersides are white, and deeper in

their outsides are as well, the stem snaps off

decisively, fine silk the last reserve

hiding awkward rows of white and yellow

kernels, their manufacture imprecise

in parts not interchangeable, the lines

imperfect like these now remembering

toweling my small son’s damp corn-silk hair

after a bath, his firm creamy skin clean

as tomorrow’s world eager to arrive

the raspberry patch nears its end of yield

in early August, offering only

a hand-full now instead of pints and quarts

I search among the leaves to find a few

small red globes of lined kernels circling stems

much like corn kernels, imperfect mirrors

each of each, together being berry

a like wholeness eludes us even now

at the slow turn of the season, nothing

lacking except release and belief

which would be Life were they not mistaken

for withholding, wish, and expectation

--Don Brandis