Lavender, Lovely Lavender

Ladies fair, I bring to you
lavender with spikes of blue;
sweeter plant was never found
growing on our English ground.
~ Caryl Battersby

Lavender Shortbread

This recipe is for a rich but not too sweet shortbread cookie with a hint of sweet lavender fragrance and flavor. Serve with tea or with lemonade laced and garnished with fresh lavender flowers. These shortbreads are wonderful to share with friends and family in pretty boxes or tins lined with lacy paper doilies, lace napkins or hankies. Don’t forget to write out this recipe to include with your gift!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups (2 sticks) butter (no substitutes!), at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons very finely chopped lavender flowers (fresh or dried)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
2 1/3 cups flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 325°F.

Cover bottoms of two baking sheets with parchment or brown paper. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, lavender, and mint with an electric mixer. Mix until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add flour, cornstarch, and salt and beat until incorporated. Divide dough in half. Flatten into squares and wrap in plastic. Chill until firm.

On a floured board, roll or pat out each square to a thickness of 1/2 inch. Cut the dough into 1 1/2 -inch squares or rounds. Transfer to baking sheets, spacing cookies about 1 inch apart. Prick each cookie several times with a fork. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until pale golden (do not brown). Cool slightly, then transfer to a rack. Sprinkle with lavender powdered sugar, made by putting 4 or 5 springs of lavender flowers in a sealed jar with powdered sugar for a day before using the sugar.

Makes about 4 dozen.


An Antique Margaret Armstrong Decorative Cover from Cassandra's Collection

Here’s your sweet lavender
sixteen sprigs a penny
that you’ll find my ladies
will smell as sweet as any...
~ Lavender Sellers’s Cry, London England, circa 1900

Hanged up in houses,
it doth very well attemper the aire,
coole and make fresh the place to the delight
and comfort of such as are therein.
~ John Gerard, 1597

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,
When you are King, dilly dilly, I'll be your queen,
Who told me so, dilly dilly, how can I know,
I told myself, dilly dilly, love told me so.
~ Traditional Song, circa 1680

MORE Beautiful Old Books

When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. ~ Christopher Morley

Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. ~ Judah Ibn Tibbon

Treasures in Indianapolis' Woodruff Place

In 1877 a prominent Indiana industrialist, James Orton Woodruff, established a 77 acre “residence park" near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Currently 240 homes, built between 1875 and 1917 and encompassing many architectural examples, such as Queen Ann, Eastlake, Victorian, Edwardian, Classic, Colonial Revival, Bungalow and American Foursquare, are aligned on three prominent esplanade drives adorned with handsome urns, fountains and statuary. The ornamentation was - and is still - made even more beautiful under the hushed canopy of mammoth, age-old trees.

Woodruff Place was once considered to be one of Indianapolis's more affluent neighborhoods before beginning a gradual decline as the automobile led to the development of newer upscale subdivisions beginning in the late 1910s. By the 1950s many of the grand homes had been subdivided into apartments. The neighborhood reached its lowest point in the 1960s, prompting community organizing in the early 1970s to encourage neighborhood revitalization. The 1980s and 1990s saw extensive neighborhood rehabilitation, and Woodruff Place is now considered a highly desirable historic inner-city address. The area was finally annexed into the City of Indianapolis in 1962 and was added to the National Register of Historical Places in 1972. Woodruff Place was the inspiration behind Indianapolis native Booth Tarkington's successful novel, The Magnificent Ambersons.

I hope you enjoy the photos I took on Mother’s Day weekend of some of Woodruff Place’s lovely 138 year old cast iron urns, fountains and statues...

Peak Perfect Peonies...

(All photos taken during my trip Mother's day weekend to my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana...)



















This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
~ Mary Oliver

Beautiful Butterflies

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly. "One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
~ Hans Christian Anderson




Please enjoy these butterfly poems and quotes illustrated by butterflies from my collection of antiquarian books and ephemera...

A butterfly lights beside us, like a sunbeam...
and for a brief moment its glory
and beauty belong to our world...
but then it flies on again, and although
we wish it could have stayed,
we are so thankful to have seen it at all.
~ Author Unknown

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
~ William Wordsworth

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged - a Summer Afternoon -
Repairing Everywhere -~ Emily Dickenson

Without Design - that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers - understood
~ Emily Dickenson





















As the Lord had finished creating the earth, something was missing so he chose pieces from all the flowers, threw them into the sky and blew life into them and the butterflies were born. ~ Author Unknown





















Butterflies are self propelled flowers. ~ R.H. Heinlein





















Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. And everyone deserves a little sunshine. ~ Jeffrey Glassberg





















Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love is like a butterfly: It goes where it pleases and it pleases
wherever it goes. ~ Author Unknown

I've watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! Indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless! - not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!
~ William Wordsworth

Flowers and butterflies drift in color, illuminating spring. ~ Author
Unknown


We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~ Maya Angelou

Free the butterflies-
I'll be there
to see them soar
upon the air.
Know my spirit
is on the wing,
feel my laughter-
hear me sing.
Forever in your dreams
always in your heart.
~ Fran LeMasters

Happy Mother's Day!

"It's the bits and pieces put together year after year that count. Sometimes we don't see meaning in the little things and we are not conscious of how it all works together to create a powerful image. The little things we do at home...putting wildflowers in a vase...an old photograph tucked into a frame, a lullaby each evening by the bedside...are the putty that holds the mosaic together." ~ Ingrid Trobisch

A Field of Buttercups

Reach for the sky my yellow buttercup;
Towards the sun spread your petals wide.
Let its warmth and vitality blossom you;
To your Creator, spread your happy glow in pride.
Amid the clouds you stand in brilliance,
Growing without the aid of human hands.
Beaming like a sun blossom on the ground;
Flourishing colorfully in green grass you stand.
Author Unknown



Yesterday afternoon while rushing around doing errands I happened to pass by a field full of bright yellow buttercups, genus Ranunculus. I stopped to gaze upon the cheerful sight, remembering how I, as a child each spring, would gather bouquets of these sunny spring weeds.

Once home, I did a little research and thought it interesting to find out that, in the U.S. and Canada, there are 36 wild-growing buttercup species and that all buttercups are poisonous when eaten fresh by cattle, horses, and other livestock. Their acrid taste and the blistering of the mouth caused by their poison means they are usually left uneaten.

Today is Straw Hat Day!

Straw Hat Day is the unofficial start of summer and the official start of straw hat season - if you were wondering about when you could begin wearing yours! The exact date of Straw Hat Day varies somewhat in the United States - the dates of April 24th and May 15th are often cited. In my family, it was always said that May 1st is the first proper day to don a straw hat (and white shoes) and Labor Day weekend in September is the last. I hope you enjoy viewing the straw hats below as well as wearing your straw hats throughout the coming four months!

















Cassandra's Favorite Straw Hat!

The First of May...