Back to the wild green jungle!

After the carefully tended, symetrical gardens of England, it is a shock to return
to the wild green jungle of home. Our flowers are beautiful, but it is all so out of control. But good to be back to what someone described as "the easy charm of Missouri"!

Tea?

How I wonder, just what is a "champayne cream tea with Frank Sinatra recorded music and a tea dance"? Saw a poster advertising this in a village north of London.

"The United Kingdom and the United States of America: two countries
divided by a common language."

Exploring London

I went to have coffee at a flat nearby with the mother of one of Susanne's friends. Doreen and I share a love of books and writing. After visiting for awhile, we took a bus down Oxford Street to find Charing Cross Road. . .site of a famous book by American author Helen Hanff , "84 Charing Cross Road." 84 is now a pizza place, but on the outside wall is an identifying plaque about the 1970 book, a New York City-London conversation about books.
Charing Cross Road was once a "book village" with shop after shop of old and new book stores. Presently there is a Borders, Blackwell's (a big British chain), many restaurants and a few antiquarian book stores. We browsed through old books then went for tea in the undercroft of the National Portrait Gallery. Doreen told me about being evacuated from London as a child during the WWII Blitz. I was deeply touched by stories of sleeping in the tube stations at night
and listening for Doodlebugs, unmanned aerial bombs which made a buzzing noise--if they suddenly became silent, you ran for cover because it was going to explode right where you were standing. To make a day of it, we visited a wholesale jewelry shop on our return home!

Rushton Hall

On the way to pick up my son-in-law, Jens, at the Kittering train station, Susanne drove the rental car into a small village, Rushton, in North Hamptonshire.    We were looking for a place to have coffee as we were early for the train.   Saw a lane marked "Rushton Hall Hotel and Spa" and found a huge manor house and estate with immaculate grounds.   We were shown into the great room, 

a lounge furnished with overstuffed chairs and sofas in a number of seating areas, a fire in the huge fireplace and oil portraits on the walls.  It was breathtakingly beautiful and I stood there with my mouth open, gawking  until Susanne whispered to me, "Stop acting so rural."   Humorous, since that is what I used to say to the girls when they were children and we went to Kansas City.

After we finished our coffee lattes, we drove a short distance and saw Triangle Lodge, a small building with triangular rooms and windows.    Sir Thomas Tresham, of Rushton Hall, also built this curious little house for the keeper of his rabbit warren, a money-making proposition in medieval times.   On one estate, a fifteen acre fenced rabbit warren produced 29,000 rabbits a year which were sold for meat and skins.   Rabbits brought from three to ten pounds per hundred depending on their size and coloring.  

We retrieved Jens and went on for a quiet country week-end at Peacock Cottage behind the National Trust Property ruins of Kirby Hall.

Timelessness

The memorial service for our 92 year old friend, Berneice, gave me a sense of the mysterious "wholeness" of life.   Berneice was a thoughtful and creative teacher of fourth and fifth graders whose students thrived on warmth and praise.  She went to college for her teaching degree at age 45, finishing at  48 and going on to get advance degrees later.    

Berneice's husband died of a heart attack at 58, her only child died in a car accident at 37, her daughter-in-law died in her late fifties.  Yet this lady maintained a positive attitude toward life and believed that she was greatly blessed.   Her grand-children, Molly and Ryan, were in constant contact with her and made her long life satisfying.  In their twenties, they are in that phase of life which requires intense effort to reach goals, yet these two maintained a close relationship with their grandmother.

At her memorial service, Ryan spoke of the  quality of "timelessness" in  her dealing with others.   Over the years, her personality attracted loyal friends of all ages.   In her last days, she was not alone.   To fracture an old saying, "God could not be everywhere and  so he created" . . . friends like those who were committed to Berneice.   

Spring

Through every window, a watercolor scene of trees and grass. Dogwood, redbud, prairie crabapple trees in full bloom. What a joy!
Rains and cool weather have made for a spectacular midwestern spring.

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf's a flower, but only for an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost

Spending the Stimulus Money

This week I spent my "Stimulus Check" patriotically! I bought a Spitfire kayak
at Cabella's. . .a plastic sit-on-top that is short, light-weight, and sturdy. Inspired by my cousin Gayle in Tennessee, I have shopped and shopped for just the right one at the right price.

We took it to the farm pond and put on the life jacket, taking turns paddling
around. What a joy! A heron and a visiting duck left promptly, but we could get close to interesting birds. What a "stimulus" to experience the fresh air, the wind, and the sounds of nature!

I do hope my investment helps keep a job for someone. God bless us each and every one.