Red Maple flowers and gleaming blue skies in Maine

These last few days in Maine have been stunning - bright polished clear blue skies - narry a cloud to be seen - and the burgeoning buds and flowers glowing all around. The last 2 days I have been enamoured of what turns out to be Red Maple male flowers - I didn't know what they were until I did a Google search - and behold they are that most Maine of trees being all beautiful and bright.

I have to admit I do like the way the backgrounds have turned out - smudgy and out of focus in a nice, painterly kind of way - thank you little camera mine :)

I am going to attempt to wrangle these images into an allover surface print for my Spoonflower shop where the design will be offered as fabric, wallpaper, decals and most recently, wrapping paper - wish me luck, I am not sure yet how large scale of a repeat I will be able to make as my camera files are not that big it being an older camera and not so fancy but I will make a valiant attempt and keep you abreast of my efforts - I know for sure I can offer some of these images on smaller fare such as iPhone cases, cards and other things apropos for this format.

May the gleaming days continue!

Welcome Spring 2013 and Mr. Bluebird too!

Spring 2013 arrived yesterday at 7:02am and then yesterday afternoon, as if on cue, this lovely spritely male Eastern Bluebird alighted in our old apple trees to suss the spots for nesting, I assume. What a little beauty he was and hopefully we will see more of him as the weeks go by.

Just the day before we were in the midst of our latest snowstorm named Ukko meaning paternal grandfather in Finnish, which graced us with about 10" of light, fluffy beauty - I wonder if this will be the last snow of the season?

The tenacious birch leaves are still clinging to the branches providing a welcome splash of colour in the whitened landscape.

An empty nest, burgeoning green and lupines!!

Does this constitute dappled?

Maine is an amazing place in more ways than one but one of the most amazing things is how winter lasts forever, spring is barely recognizable as such, nothing is growing, nothing is growing, no leaves are out, there's just a hint of a bud here and there, it's cold and dreary and then BAM it's wildly green, the grass is a foot high and the world is blindingly GREEN - chartreuse, glowing vivid bright green!! Today was the day IT happened and today was the day our little robins flew the nest and started on their new adventure - our nest is empty - bye bye little guys - safe travels - all four of them took flight and we wish them well - so sad looking out the kitchen window and not seeing them there but maybe they'll be back next year?

Awwww - it's empty!!

 Is this green enough? SOOO many ballerina poppies to come - just one is showing a little of her tutu right now - when will we see the other layers - I LOVE these poppies and am so glad to be on the side of looking forward to them once again - yea!!!

I've never really paid mind to these Bachelor's Buttons before but today their colour just glowed against the humming greens - what a splendid pallette above - I should do a textile design in these colours - now that would stand out but I don't know how I would create that ultraviolet!

 How elegant - it looks like a thistle!

 

And the lupines yes the lupines - they grow wild everywhere - hello friends!!

 

And last but NOT least the poor maligned dandelion - how can you not like the flowers which give us these wonderful dandelion clocks! You tell the time by how many puffs of breath it takes to send the little parachutes on their merry way!

Sedgemoor Easter "Cakes"

CAKES??? Quoi?? Don't know why these are called cakes because they are made like biscuits/cookies and they end up like such!! They are good though, and I can't wait to dunk one in a steaming hot cup of tea.....James said they taste like Christmas in a cookie, which may be because the recipe is the old English standby of various, sundry and seemingly unending combinations of flour, sugar, better, eggs, dried fruit and candied peel. I searched high and low for a more elaborate Easter recipe to do but honestly the only other one I came up with that is traditionally British is Simnel Cake which I did last year...(you can do a search up in the left hand corner for this, I tried to do a link here but it didn't work)....it was LOVELY though and again a combination of the heretofore mentioned ingredients....make them both I say!!! Cookie cakes and a cake!!
Here's todays easy and quick recipe:
"Sedgemoor Easter Cakes" from a recipe in "Good Things in England" by Florence White...a great compendium of wonderful old English recipes...recently republished and available through Persephone Books

White flour 8ozs/2 cups
Butter (salted for me please) 4ozs/1 stick
Fine sugar 4ozs/1/2 cup
4ozs/1/2 cup plus a little more currants/raisins/white raisins/sultanas...whatever you prefer...I prefer sultanas because they are juicier
2ozs candied peel...I made my own and did orange and Meyer lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
(I personally am not that keen on mixed spice and cinnamon so I put in 1 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, my fave!)
1 egg whisked
2 tablespoons of brandy (I didn't have brandy on hand so I used maple syrup so I wasn't missing out on this amount of liquid)
1. Rub the butter into the flour
2 Add sugar, dried fruit, candied peel and spices..and gently mix in
3. Add brandy, or in my case maple syrup!, to the egg, mix and then mix into the dry ingredients.
4. The mix/dough is very sticky so blend as well as you can and then just tip it all onto a well floured board and gently squush together until it is ready to roll out...I actually didn't even use a rolling pin...I just used the flat of my hand and pushed it into the shape I needed...a 1/2" deep round.
5. Cut out circles of about 3" diameter...you should get about 5 or 6...transfer to a cookie sheet.
6. The recipe says bake in a moderate oven which I translated to 325F for about 25 minutes...I actually turned mine over when I could see they were getting quite brown on the bottom and were not done on the top...and I think I overbaked them a little, which I have a tendency to with cookies/biscuits, follow your intuition...they should be nicely golden brown.
7. Ta dah!! Let them cool and munch away!!

The 'cakes' before and after...

The first daffodil.....right on cue!!! Well done little flower and welcome!!

More daffs on the way and some lovely bright crocus...hello!!

And a picture of what we call the enchanted forest next to the house...plenty of daffs here...hooray!!

I'll be with you again on Sunday...just to say "Hi"