Spring

Our front garden is well into the lupines-and-poppies phase, and is a bit of a show-stopper on sunny days -- which we've had quite a number of lately.  Spring is definitely here! 

I bought a packet of seeds of just this California blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) this year, and am more than rewarded -- it was sweet here and there last year, but in drifts it is delightful.

Penstemon "Margarita BOP", even more intensely blue-purple in real life.

California figwort or California bee plant (Scrophularia californica), one of my three new plantings this year.  The flowers don't get much bigger than this, but they are a pleasing dark red which adds a hint of color, and the bees are quite happy with them just as they are.

I had thought this was a goner, a new desert willow tree (Chilopsis linearis), as it turned into a stick barely hours after I brought it home in November and stayed that way for months -- I knew that it is deciduous, but it was so sad for so long that I had almost given up hope, and then suddenly there were tiny buds.  The artemisia behind seems almost to be caressing it!

Lacy phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia).  This is I confess my least-favorite in Theodore Payne's wildflower mix, as it gets leggy and dull soon after blooming, as well as elbowing everything else out of the way and flopping down on top of them, but the new whorls are charming.

Autumn sage (Salvia greggii), not really a California native, but it was an unexpected gift, and makes a striking pop of deep magenta all-year round.

Climbing penstemon (Keckiella cordifolia).  This had been thoroughly trampled on last spring -- by that lacy phacelia -- so I'm happy to see that it has leapt skyward this year.  It will have long tubular red flowers, a bit more orangey-red than I quite like, but if it blooms fairly soon it will be striking against the purple arroyo lupines, and whatever its color the bees will be happy!

An early mountain garland, playing hide-and-seek amongst the poppies!

And something of the full effect, albeit with the unmistakable tinge of suburbia in the background.

Indoors, I am racing through a reread of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series -- have just started number 19 in the series, The Hundred Days -- no less rewarding than reading them all for the first time.  I pass silently over the occasional sentence fragment for the joys of things like this, Jack reproving a young midshipman, from Master and Commander (as part of their studies, midshipmen took noon observations to calculate or "work" the ship's position, written, preferably neatly, on a piece of paper and given to the captain) --

“Mr. Babbington," he said, suddenly stopping in his up and down.  "Take your hands out of your pockets.  When did you last write home?"
Mr. Babbington was at an age when almost any question evokes a guilty response, and this was, in fact, a valid accusation.  He reddened, and said, "I don't know, sir."
"Think, sir, think," said Jack, his good-tempered face clouding unexpectedly. "What port did you send it from?  Mahon?  Leghorn?  Genoa?  Gibraltar?  Well, never mind.  Write a handsome letter. Two pages at least. And send it in to me with your daily workings tomorrow. Give your father my compliments and tell him my bankers are Hoares."  For Jack, like most other captains, managed the youngsters' parental allowance for them.  "Hoares," he repeated absently once or twice, "my bankers are Hoares," and a strangled ugly crowing noise made him turn. Young Ricketts was clinging to the fall of the main burton-tackle in an attempt to control himself, but without much success.

Or this, from The Ionian Mission -- Jack, as it happens plays the violin and Stephen the cello, and one of their deepest pleasures is to play of an evening when there is no great-gun practice or other such man-of-war business --

"Oh well," said Jack: and then, "Did you ever meet Bach?"
"Which Bach?"
"London Bach."
"Not I."
"I did.  He wrote some pieces for my uncle Fisher, and his young man copied them out fair.  But they were lost years and years ago, so last time I was in town I went to see whether I could find the originals: the young man has set up on his own, having inherited his master's music-library.  We searched through the papers -- such a disorder you would hardly credit, and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees -- we searched for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find.  But the whole point is this: Bach had a father."
"Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me.  Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case."
"And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles and piles of musical scores in the pantry."
"A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees, do they not?  Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?"
"I mean the piles were kept in the pantry.  Mice and blackbeetles and cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great passion according to St. Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well, and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some for both together.  It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age, crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern taste, but I do assure you, Stephen, there is meat in it.  I have tried this partita in C a good many times, and the argument goes so deep, so close and deep, that I scarcely follow it yet, let alone make it sing.  How I should love to hear it played really well -- to hear Viotti dashing away."

I decided to make a batch of ship's biscuit, using the recipe and method from the Aubrey/Maturin cookbook of the world, Lobscouse and Spotted Dog.  The method involves repeatedly folding the dough and beating it thin with a mallet or rolling pin for a half-hour, I kid you not.  I'm not sure why -- and I admitted defeat, dripping with sweat, after seven minutes and got out the given alternative, a pasta machine, to finish it, but it makes a beautifully smooth dough.

Ship's biscuit is a component of lobscouse, a sort of meat stew -- presumably the crushed biscuit serves as a thickener.  The recipe sounds intriguing enough for me to want to try it, though I will have to wait six months or so for the biscuit to be properly hard enough to stop a musket ball.

(I thought I should get a head start on Julia's quilt, so I asked her the other day what she would like.  "Sheep," she said promptly.  "Or kelp forest."  Ummm...)

I am stitching a bit most days on Laura's star quilt, finding it a bit plodding, I must say -- though I was heartened to see that although from the top it looks like I've managed very little, when I turn it over and see nothing but quilting lines, I'm actually a tolerable ways along.  This photo may not give the proper effect, but I certainly take heart from it! --

 

Comments

[Carol]

Lovely pictures. Delightful post. Your quilt is going to be great. We are reading Winter Holiday outside in Michigan in 81 degree weather.

[Brittany]

I have been reading Patrick O'Brian too! They occasionally speak of a "comforter," something to wear in cold weather - I think Louisa Wogan knits one for Stephen when they are sailing through the high forties. I wonder if you know what kind of garmet it is?

[Jeanne]

Brittany, perhaps unsurprisingly I did some digging around when I was reading "Desolation Island"! I couldn’t find an actual pattern or even a description, much less a picture, but I'm pretty sure it's a scarf, possibly what was later sometimes called a chest protector, a short scarf whose ends were laid over one’s sternum and chest for extra warmth.

If you're interested, the blogger at One More Stitch (who, alas, has not posted in years) is also an Aubrey/Maturin reader and has knitted miniature (!) and full-sized versions of some of the garments mentioned in the books --

http://historyknits.blogspot.com/2008/

And though it's from the 1830s, there is this one in double-knitting (the kind that makes a tube if you do it right) --

http://christianregency.com/blog/2014/11/03/gerards-red-and-black-scarf/

and the date isn't really that far off. This one might be thought of as "new and different" from the common garter stitch kind, which could be why Miss Watts thought it worthy of including in her book.