Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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Egg Cups, the Beginning

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Another rainy day. That’s all I’ll say about that.

I saw one of the Carolina wrens this morning. Or rather, I heard him first and turned to look out the den window. There he was, perched on the top branches of the hydrangea, singing away. I haven’t seen any robins yet. When they first appear, they’re usually in a group. Maybe traveling north? We seem to be a favorite stop on the way, Anyway, I’ll alert you when they make their presence known.

I probably should have taken more than one photo for the beginning of the egg cup tour, but my plans to take them yesterday were scuttled as I was deep into solving a jigsaw puzzle. I haven’t done one in a long time. This one’s theme is Japanese wood blocks. It’s beautiful.

You’ll see it soon. I hope to finish it today.

The first group of egg cups, chosen randomly.

On the left, one of my favorites. I found it on eBay when I first started collecting. I love the designs where a chick or a duck is either holding up the egg cup or, as in this case, hiding on the other side of the cup. They’re so playful and charming. There’s a pale pink marking around the top of the egg cup. A chicken/rooster is pecking at food and a chick is on the other side of the cup.

Center: I’d say this one is in my top five (I’m not counting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They’re in their own category.)

Again, found early in my collecting journey when beautiful cups like these were easier to find. It’s very difficult to find them these days. The bunny as artist. He’s wearing an artist’s smock with a bow, a pair of pants, and is holding a palette. He subject is the egg itself; he’s transforming it into a smiling face.

Right: A darling egg cup that was a gift from my friend, Linda (who you know from this blog.) The sticker says “Our Own Import.” You can’t see the tail, but it’s a salter. There are holes in the tail and you pull it out to salt your egg. Ingenious!

Oh, there are a lot more to go! I suppose it’s time to pull out the fabric eggs, as well.

In other news, I’m plunging ahead with Wolf Hall  (only about 150 pages to go) and have already ordered Bring Up the Bodies  (the next book in the trilogy) from the library. In a rare instance, it’s actually on the shelves at my local library branch. Two of my favorite authors, John Connolly and James Lee Burke, have new books coming out in May and June and I’m on the hold list for those as well.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

 

 

Books and the Change in Winter

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Another library walk yesterday. After we had finished, I ran in to return The Year of the Locust and checked out the New Books on the shelves. I knew of Olga Tokarczuk’s book, The Books of Jacob. It has been written about a great deal on my IG book feed, so I grabbed it. She wrote it in 2014, but it didn’t get translated into English until 2021. From Penguin Random House’s site: The Nobel Prize–winner’s richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe.

Sounds fascinating!

Also on the shelf: Everyone on this Train is a Suspect  by Benjamin Stevenson, an Australian author. The blurb said that fans of Anthony Horowitz and Richard Osman would love it. Sounds like a nice palate cleanser.

Our library is so small that I rarely check out a book there, anything I see there that I find interesting I’ve usually already read. I get books through the inter-library system instead. So it was refreshing to come up these books.

I’m reading Wolf Hall, of course, and caught up on my assigned reading yesterday. It’s fascinating, but at heart, I’m not a fan of historical fiction, so I’m never fully on board, if you know what I mean. I know a lot about the Tudors already, through my education and a lifetime of immersion in Shakespeare – they sort of go hand in hand. I’m on the fence as to whether I’ll read the other books in the trilogy. As I’m going to read more at a time (ignoring the schedule for the readalong) I might end up feeling differently.

Today is rainy so a walk might not be on the docket.

It’s very warm out there, unseasonably so. And it looks like it will continue, save for a couple days here and there. It’s rather eerie. Both Don and I have wondered if  “Winter” has changed forever. Yes, we still get snow, but not that much. It’s the end of February and my day lilies are emerging, as well as the daffodils. At the library, we saw new growth everywhere. Is this the new winter? On one hand, it’s nice not to have deal with so much snow and ice. On the other hand, we need winter and we miss it. We may still get some snow in March, but it will be short-lived.

What has this winter been like where you live?

Okay. Have to make our second cup of coffee.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

 

 

These Boots Are Made for Walking

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Well. I should have known it. Harper saw the boots and knew immediately just how they should be worn. That girl!

Monday morning. Cloudy. We had a lovely sunny day yesterday and we atoned for only one walk earlier in the week. It was very cold, but we did it. Winter is tricky. The weather determines our walking days. So we haven’t been able to do it as much as we like, but when we do get one in, we feel so much better. I think we’ll go today, as well.

It was a low-key weekend. I finished The Year of the Locust last night – I didn’t read it for a day or two because I wanted to delay finishing it. But last night in bed, I finished. Truly a wonderful book. I couldn’t put it down, all 787 pages of it. Terry Hayes sure knows how to write a tight, engrossing, and whirlwind of a plot. Now, of course, I’m spoiled and nothing will look as good. I’ll get back to Wolf Hall  and catch up. Wolf Hall  is wonderful but I think I would like it more if I read it like I read The Year of the Locust, rather than a chunk a week. It’s so well written, but I lose the thread. Not the book’s fault at all. When it was War and Peace, I was reading a bit each day, so I was clued into the evolving plot. Not so much this way, as the assigned pages are not daily, but weekly. So I have to get back into it. I may just keep on reading and finish the book. Then when Bring Up the Bodies, the next book in the trilogy, is ready to start – sometime in April, I think – I’ll read that.

These are quality problems.

Movies on the weekend: We watched Laura  again. Don didn’t like it. He’s not a fan of Dana Andrews to begin with and he said that he didn’t really care about anyone. I get it. It’s stylish but there’s not a lot of substance. Then we finally watched Wuthering Heights, and I didn’t like it. It was beautifully filmed, as was Laura, but I had no patience with Cathy. Or Heathcliff, for that matter. It’s a gothic romance/ghost story and, though I read only that kind of thing when I was a young teen, this one didn’t do it for me. A young Geraldine Fitzgerald was the best thing in the movie. She was so real, so present.

I much prefer Jane Eyre, where the longing is repressed and the characters are not wallowing in it, which makes for a much more interesting story.

My humble opinion, of course.

Oh, the sun is trying to peek out from the clouds!

Do you have spring fever yet? I confess, I do.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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