Score! indoors and out...

Grey, drab sort of weather, not very cold, no sunshine, oh well.  So I thought a trip to the thrift store was a good idea, taking in several sweaters I can part with, and seeing if there was anything nice there.

And there was.  A lovely little bamboo handle teapot, perfect condition, a cashmere Saks sweater, a quilted tote bag, also perfect condition, and a summer crocheted purse, not sure what the fabric is, but it's very like a bigger one I use for stitching projects, and that one is woven paper. 

And the young man at the counter lovingly wrapped the teapot in a Spanish language local paper.  An international experience, all in all, the bags from China and from somewhere in South America, the teapot with a Chinese, I think, imprint on the base, and the sweater from wherever cashmere grows.  After I've finished in here, I'm going to brew a pot of tea in my new pot.

Then once home, it was still so early, that I figured this was a good day for lugging and digging and generally manhandling stuff outside.  There are three cherry bushes out front -- you saw the giant harvest of about 15 cherries one year in here -- which sticks up annoyingly and doesn't fit the decor.  So now they are happily living on the patio where they will give me a bit of shade, since I won't prune them back all the time as I had to out front, and maybe some fruit, too, if I get there before the birds.

cherry bushes in situ before surgery

cherry bush during, while colleagues are being dug up
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cherry bushes in new home on the patio Speaking of the birds, they have decided all this digging is the nicest thing I've done for them in ages, disturbing all kinds of insects and bugs and exposing seeds and other edible things. Anyway, they're out there in flocks digging and fussing away and having a lovely time.


> So now to make a pot of tea, with a nice warmed piece of hot biscuit, recipe from the Silver Palate, except no vanilla, all olive oil, much lighter, very good stuff.  And I'll browse through Nigel Slater's Diary cookbook, which is hysterically funny.  He tosses off comments such as "only two of us to feed today, just right for a pheasant"!!  Reminds me of Barbara Pym's comment about some male cooks seeing dining alone as a good opportunity to cook a small plover!!  Since Nigel seems to eat a lot of specialty food obtainable in the UK, including meat, which I don't do, this book may be strictly an anthropological adventure reading for me.  But he does have a couple of good things I might go for.  It's all good.