I can see the weekend from here!

Camera : Canon EOS 550D

Focal length : 300

F number : 7,1

Exposure time : 1/500

 

Artemis surveying my garden from his favourite vantage point. From here he can see the weekend coming, keep an eye on his girls and make sure nobody is doing anything untoward!

 

Artemis likes being on top of things! From here he can keep an eye on all the girls who are scattered all over the garden, much to his consternation.

Artemis surveying the world while Hettie contentedly scratches in the compost heap.

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A niche to dream in

"Plain shelves filled with good editions in good bindings are more truly decorative than ornate bookcases lined with tawdry books."
- Edith Wharton, 1902



Adults love inviting nooks just as children do; such spaces seem protective, made for the imagination. A place apart, where you can gather notes, thoughts and plans. It's simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Creating a corner where that silence can happen - even in the busiest of households - calls for beauty like the shelf above.

Setting up a reading nook or dreaming niche for yourself is as exciting as building a new house! Lovingly storing your favourite books and stationery in one place where you can relax with a cup of coffee, snuggling under a warm throw, is one of life's blissful pleasures.

Reading is one of the great pleasures of life and an important part of nurturing our soul, gaining knowledge and finding pleasure in fiction. As such, we must make special time for ourselves to pursue our pleasures and make it high on our list of priorities.

Whether you are lucky enough to have a library filled with books and comfortable couches or choose to use a bay window area, filled with light, or a special corner in your bedroom, your reading nook will be YOUR private hide-out where no-one is allowed in except by invitation.



Your first consideration should be a comfortable chair or chaise lounge embellished with all the luxuries like cushions and throws. A coffee or side table will come in handy for a reading lamp, tea pot, some fresh flowers, reading glasses and some extra books.

Incorporating some shelves or a bookshelf for storage of your books and favourite collections is next on the list. Be creative and innovative with your bookshelf - fill blank spaces on the shelves with candles (in case the electricity goes off!) and some of your favourite photo frames. Fill a vintage jug with some pens and pencils for making notes and have a dictionary at hand for reference.

Some extras like a footstool and magazine rack always come in handy and a soft rug underfoot adds a luxurious touch. Also give some attention to the wall colour - find a soothing theme and hang some of your favourite paintings and artwork as a finishing touch.


A corner in the living room used as a reading nook.


A bookshelf and a comfortable chair on one side of the dining room denotes this as someone's dream corner.


Storage for some favourite books


A perfect reading nook
- image from decor8

So settle in with a creamy cup of coffee, your favourite book or your daily journal and enjoy the simple pleasures of life - don't get to the end of your life and find that you have just lived the length of it. You want to have lived the width of it as well.

 

Melkkos

Serves 6
Low carb
Vegetarian, easy, great value, kid friendly
Prep time : 10 minutes
Cooking time : 20 minutes

Ingredients: 

8 cups milk 

1 cup flour 

1 t salt 

2 T ground cinnamon

1 t baking powder 

2 T butter

2 T milk

Cooking instructions:
In a deep saucepan over a medium heat, heat the milk with the sugar until warm. In a mixing bowl, combing the flour, salt, cinnamon (or cassia) and baking powder.
Rub the butter into the mixture, then add the 2 T milk and combine until the mixture has a crumbly consistency.
Add the buttery flour mixture to the warm milk and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve hot in tea cups or small bowls, sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon.

Time flies and Snoodles is growing up

Time flies, but the memories collected along the way can never be replaced. 

- Ashley Tisdale

It's almost the end of November and Christmas is just around the corner! Can you believe how time flies?!

And Snoodles (the dustbin chick straight of the egg) has been growing just as fast. One of these days she will be joining all the other girls in the chicken coup. No more sleeping in a basket in front of my bed - already it's difficult to get her to settle down at night, she is not content with sleeping under a towel anymore, looking for something to roost on - and she's waking up earlier and earlier every day, virtually taking her cue from Artemis when he starts crowing at 4am! Here are a couple of pics showing her progress.

Snoodles taking her first sand-bath

Snoodles just a couple of weeks ago

Snoodles on the lawn early this morning

Listening intently to Artemis crowing

Snoodles at the pond. Very alarmed, she saw Torti, my Leopard tortoise going past

What on earth is that? I'd better get out of here!

Snoodles just 5 weeks ago!

They say time flies when you're having fun, so here's to another fun-filled year ahead of us!

::

I've lost my Chi-Chi!

Day 1

Seven and a half months ago I found Chi-Chi outside, virtually abandoned by her mother and very weak, couldn't keep up with the family. So of course she was brought inside, put in a basket with a hot water bottle and lovingly pampered over the next few weeks.

Chi-Chi at 2 weeks old

Chi-Chi at 5 weeks old

Chi-Chi at 8 weeks and just starting to sport her little hat 

Chi-Chi at 6 months old and getting the nesting urge

Chi-Chi fully independent

After spending six months with me, following me everywhere and often having sojourns outside to the garden and mixing with all the other girls, Chi-Chi has finally left home. She's independent. She's left me. She's fully integrated into the flock now. Her pecking order has been established - she's not right at the bottom of the ladder, that is reserved for ChickyBoo and Micky, but at least she's somewhere in the middle, with the older girls like Kiep, Hettie and Megs still ruling the roost.

She's still very loving and lets met pick her up, carry her around and have some cuddles, but other than that, she's a flock member now. Even laid her second egg in one of the nest boxes in the coop (the one that seems to be favoured by EVERYBODY - they'll stand in queue for hours cackling and fighting about that one nest box and there are nine!), the first egg was laid in the nest I have in my studio (pic above).

And she takes her duty as a flock member very seriously. She dutifully runs up to Artemis when he calls with a tit-bit, stays well out of Meg, Kiep and Hettie's way and also partakes in pecking and chasing ChickyBoo and Micky every chance she gets. It's hard work being a flock member, you have to constantly be aware of what coop politics are taking place currently and keep up with all the latest news. Like the fact that Micky is broody and even though she's the flock's scape-goat, broody time is no time to be messing with someone wanting to sit on eggs.

Micky, the little black hen on the left, keeping an eye on Chi-Chi at supper-time.

I miss having my little Chi-Chi around but I am also extremely happy that her integration into the flock was so effortless and that she's finally no longer an outsider.

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Meal-size salad

If you are trying to 'lighten up' your evening meals without missing out, a substantial salad is the way to go. Packed with the right ingredients, it will be surprisingly filling and of course packed with all the right nutrients.

Start off with a classic salad (think Greek or green) and add a couple of ingredients you don't normally associate with a salad as a side, and voila, you have a main.

INGREDIENTS THAT BULK UP A SALAD

Beans, lentils and chickpeas : full of fibre, protein, B vitamins and all low-GI, so will keep you full. Soya beans are the only complete protein, i.e., provide all 9 essential amino acids needed for a million processes, including energy production and mood regulation.

Grains such as pasta, rice, couscous, barley wheat and quinoa: all provide important carbohydrates and quinoa is wheat and gluten free, low GI and a good source of iron and calcium.

Eggs: a poached egg is all the rage, but there is always space for a good 'ol soft-boiled egg. Fried egg does the trick too! Eggs contain naturally-occuring Vitamin D and their high sulpher is great for hair and nails.

Cheese: Feta comes to mind first, but blue cheese goes exceptionally well with cabbage, or try a slice of goat's cheese with beetroot, shaved Parmesan over iceberg lettuce, mozzarella - legendary with nectarines or tomatoes and basil pesto or Cheddar or Gouda sliced into small blocks and tossed in a salad with baby leeks and red onion.

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The calcium is essential for healthy bones and teeth and the other essential minerals, such as zinc, for skin health and to support the immune system.

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TIP: You can also turn any salad into a main meal by wrapping it in tacos or tortillas, adding cheese and sour cream or mashed avo if you like.

The pleasures of life!

A cup of coffee and one of my Nature Journals – two of the great pleasures of life! I’ve been journaling since child-hood, when I wrote about and sketched little things I found in the garden, about my pets, and important dates like friends’ birthdays and little poems I would add to birthday cards I made for them. When I became a teenager, my journals were my solace for broken hearts, my miseries and joys and ‘important’ happenings in my life, always accompanied by sketches, collages and leaves and grasses I found in nature.

In later life my Nature Journal recorded dates and sketches of my animals, the plants and insects in my garden and any interesting info I learnt along the way. I found the coffee to be important during ‘thinking’ spells, always reaching out for the cup when I paused in thought. And oh! how many times don’t I put my paint brush in my coffee in stead of the water bowl, adding a bit of interest to the sketches!

Snoodles, the dustbin chick

Little Snoodles reaching up to take a tit-bit from my fingers

This is Snoodles, the little chick I pulled out of the egg after rescuing it out of the dustbin (read the full story HERE.) She has grown in leaps and bounds over the past six days and is a real little treasure! Over the past week I have tried several times to put her back with Mommy, who is quite keen to take her, clucking and calling, but unfortunately little Dusty has already imprinted on me and would stand there calling until I answered, when she would run her little legs off in the direction of my voice.

Imprinting is "A rapid learning process by which a newborn or very young animal establishes a behaviour pattern of recognition and attraction to another animal of its own kind or to a substitute or an object identified as the parent." When rearing a newborn animal, it is very difficult to avoid imprinting as it takes a lot of effort of not letting it hear your voice or not letting it see your hand, for example, feeding it. In the wild it is therefore always preferable to let nature take its course and not to interfere and pick up fledglings that have left the nest and landed on the floor. Normally the parents are close-by and will feed it until it is able to fly. That is how they grow strong and learn to fly.

I know predators are always a worry, but unfortunately that's how nature is. Once you "save" it (we all have that instinct), releasing it back to nature is always difficult as it has not learnt the necessary survival skills to ensure it makes it in the wild, where it will then probably perish anyway. The other alternative is then spending the rest of its life in a cage, definitely not an ideal situation.

Investigating everything on my desk

 Little Snoodles showing great interest in the seeds I offered her

Aaah, that was a nice meal!

A full tummy and feeling very sleepy...

::

In the noisy confusion of life...

… keep peace in your soul

It’s been so long since I’ve taken the time to just sit and read.
Curl op on the sofa with a nice cup of tea and just read.
I’ve realised that it’s a choice I made and that I now have the choice to rectify this.
Just another gift to be grateful for.

::

Wishing you a week filled with time to read.

Is a bookshelf just a bookshefl?

Beware of the person of one book. 

–Thomas Aquinas

Is your bookshelf “just a bookshelf”? Somewhere for your books to be shoved into together with some other odds and ends you don’t have place for?

How about beautifying your bookshelf? Books are objects of beauty and look great displayed with some of your favourite objects. It doesn't matter what sort of bookshelf you've got, it doesn't have to be an expensive wall-to-wall creation, but what does matter is what it looks like. Newly married in the early 70's and with not much money, a large, fancy bookshelf was out of the question, but my books needed a home. They were suffocating in the boxes. A few wooden shelves and some bricks solved the problem and also provided space for some of my treasures that I'd collected as a young girl.

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Show off the things you love and a plant goes a long way to enhancing the look of your bookshelf. And something green and living gives your books someone to talk to! lol! (Just remember to put a holder under the plant so that no water leaks onto your shelf!) A few well-placed baskets with lids look beautiful on the shelves and also solves the problem of all the stuff we need to put down somewhere until it can get sorted out.

Books are a thing of beauty, almost sacred in my eyes, and shoving them around is similar to crumpling up money in your pocket or purse - how can the Universe supply if you have such disregard?