Celebrating Spring on Polyvore

I have  been going to a writers group for a couple of years. Last year I finally came up with the seeds and general outline for a cozy mystery. It's about a café owner who ends up solving a mystery using her intuitive abilities, and the web savvy of her best friend. I have the first few chapters, seemed to have stalled.

This past year I rediscovered Polyvore, and found there an avenue for my creative impulses. I collected images for the characters, their clothing and moods, and I created a "set" portraying the café.

Morning Glory Café

I haven't done much more writing, but have found an avenue for creative expression, and to keep those creative juices flowing. And hopefully I will return to the writing when the time is right.

I have really enjoyed creating sets expressing the seasons, though I do also create fashion and interior sets as well. Here are some of my spring sets.

Thanksgiving Memories

The last two Thanksgivings we have joined Steve's Uncle Kenny & Aunt Joyce and her extended family. They gather at the Bethany Presbyterian Church. They take over the basement social hall and there is a wonderful pot luck luncheon.

Bethany Presbyterian Church

Each family brings food to share and gathers at one of the tables in the room. There are multiple generations and people come from near and far. As you can see, no one goes hungry. There are appetizers, salads, side dishes, turkey, and lots of deserts. After the meal ends, one of the families gets their kids together and assembles a gingerbread house.

Thanksgiving 2011

This year, the church had purchased the house next door, the David Wilder House, so the gathering was held there. The David Wilder House was built in 1809, and originally used as a tavern. It retains a beautiful rustic charm and was decorated for the season.

The David Wilder House

The fireplace in the kitchen has the date engraved on it.

The tables were set up and decorated in the living area which had large wooden beams, and another fireplace.

The food as usual was delicious and bountiful. However, I discovered that though my cranberry sauce was very good, next time I will adjust the recipe and use less sugar and less liquid.

After the meal, I went outside and explored a little, and discovered the graveyard behind the church.

All in all it was a wonderful day, with food, family, good company, and time for contemplation.

Preparing for Thanksgiving

Once again, autumn has come upon us. Here in Pennsylvania, the trees have lost most of their leaves, and the remainder are bronze and golden and pale orange, waiting for a strong wind to float the leaves down to the ground. The days are crisp, but we have only had one snow day so far.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and my husband and his son and I are travelling north to the Poconos to the town where he was born and raised. We will gather with his extended family in the basement of a church and have a wonderful pot luck buffet with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, side dishes, salads, appetizers, and of course dessert. This will be our third time going there, so I hope that I will remember the names of more people.

My mother-in-law always makes something to bring, but I have wanted to bring something to contribute. I found several cranberry relish recipes that had ingredients I liked and developed my own recipe. It has cranberries, pomegranate, pineapple, pecans and sugar. It looks beautiful and is delicious, at least from what I tasted when it was mostly cool.

Cranberry Pomegranate-Pineapple Relish

12 oz bag of cranberries

1 pomegranate

16 oz can of pineapple

1 cup chopped pecans

1-1/4 cups sugar

water

1. Seed the pomegranate. Discard any bruised or discolored seeds, and pieces of the white membrane.
2. Strain the pineapple juice into a measuring cup. If you use pineapple chunks, it is easier to strain, but you will need to chop the pineapple into smaller pieces. I used crushed pineapple, and after a bit of work I got a cup of juice.
3. Add enough water to the pineapple juice to make 2 cups of liquid.
4. Put the liquid, the sugar, and the cranberries into a large saucepan on a medium heat, and stir to mix. The liquid will froth up, so use a bigger pan than you think you need.
5. When the mixture comes to a boil, add the pomegranate seeds. Be sure to stir frequently and to watch the pan.
6. After about 10 minutes, or when all of the cranberries have popped, take the pan off the heat.
7. Spoon the mixture into a large bowl, add the pineapple and pecans, and stir well.
8. Place the bowl into the refrigerator to cool uncovered for 2 hours.
9. Cover the bowl.

Walking through time

A few weeks back, when the weather was warm but not yet oppressively hot, we took a walk down to the Langhorne Coffee House. That stretch of street is lined by historic homes ranging from the mid 1700's to the early twentieth century. The flowers were still in full bloom, not yet wilted by the heat, and the leaves were all deep green. It was the prime of summer.

On our way back, I took a few pictures of my favorite houses. The first is prim and proper, a crisp white with a white picket fence and gate, but with deep purple shutters and an exuberance of foliage covering the fence and gateway.

The second home is a cross between a wedding cake and the Addams family home. I can picture Morticia in her back garden, snipping off the red roses from their sharp thorny stems, and Lurch waiting at attention to respond to the ring of the front door. In reality, I think it's either an apartment or boarding house.

Our home is a Dutch Colonial, lacking the charm of the others, and a relative newcomer, built in the 1920's. It has a huge expanse of front lawn, anchored by four large shade trees in the corners, and patrolled by two or three robins in the spring and summer.

Harvest homes

About a week ago, a few of the trees decided that it was time to start turning color. Trees of bright red began appearing. And now, only a short week later, the others are following suit with golden leaves, orange and brown. The leaves are just starting to fall, so they decoratively line the sides of the streets.

Of course, Halloween is on its way, so our neighbors are decorating their homes. The one across the street has gauze draped here and there on the wrap around porch, with mini-chandeliers behind them, and strings of orange lights. At night, it makes a wonderfully spooky sight. (In the spring, they hung brightly colored umbrellas of all sizes around the porch.)

My husband has trouble finding parking if he goes out at night; we live right across from the historical library and in October they lead ghost tours. All the ghost hunters park on our street.

I love the architectural variety on the streets in the borough. There's one just down the street that looks like the Munsters could have lived there. About half of the houses have plaques proclaiming the year they were built. The wonderful cafe about a block away, Langhorne Coffee House, is in the Edward Hicks house. If the name isn't familiar, his most famous work should be: Peaceable Kingdom. That's the one with wild and domestic animals living peacefully together.

Blue birds and greening trees

Spring is on its way. After Groundhog's Day (February 2), known to the Celts as Imbolc and to Christian traditions as Candlemas, I begin looking for the first signs of the return of spring. I wasn't sure what to expect here in Pennsylvania. The week afterwards, I realized that birds were singing and I later spotted robins gathered at the side of the road.

Mother Nature seemed reluctant to give up on Winter however, and the cold weather continued. Last week we had a six inches of snow and the temperature was in the teens and twenties. Finally on Friday, the weather started turning. Saturday morning, I spotted an Eastern bluebird perched on our fence outside the kitchen window, and my husband saw a blue jay harassing the other birds in the yard next door.

This morning, we went out without even a light jacket on, and the tree next to the driveway had tiny greenish brown leaves just starting to burst forth. I have enjoyed the cold and snow, but now I am excited to experience spring here. I cannot wait for the greening to begin in earnest.

Transitions

This year was one of transition for me. My husband was laid off from his job of 23 years last December, and I was laid off from mine of 24 years in August. He had always wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, where he was born and grew up, and I was more than glad to leave California. That is not to say that I don't love California - I lived there since I was five and got to know and love the subtle signs of the seasons there. But the economy there was not good, and I longed to go someplace where external trappings were not so important.

So, less than a week after my last day of work we had cleared out the townhome and gotten it ready to rent, got my car on a trailer behind Steve's truck with both packed with computers and other things we didn't trust to the movers, and were on the road across the country with no place to live and no jobs secured. Actually, he had had a series of very promising interviews, but no job offer yet.

We rented an extended stay apartment in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, and Steve started his new job in September. I started seriously looking for a job, and ended up with two offers. I took the one that was closer, with fewer responsibilities and with less pay. We found a house to rent about two miles from each of our jobs, and moved at the beginning of October.

At the end of October, I started my new job in a hospital less than three miles from where we are living, which makes a nice commute. The hospital buildings surround "healing gardens" and the office I'm in looks out to one of the gardens.

The house we are renting is in the historic part of Langhorne, an historic borough about two miles from each of our jobs. The city was founded in 1680 at the crossing of two Indian paths, which are the current Maple Street and Bellevue Street. Our house was built in 1920, so it is one of the newer homes. Many of the houses have historic plaques with the date they were built. Homes go back to the 1800's, 1700's and a few from the 1600's. The architectural styles vary from stone colonials to Victorian, Edwardian and many others.

Ours is a Dutch Colonial, which means it is shaped like a barn, and is white with dark green trim. It is two stories, with an attic and a basement. Neither is finished, but they are good for storage. There are three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and another bedroom and bath, the living room, dining room, kitchen, and an office downstairs. The closet space is limited, but we got an armoire to put in our bedroom so that I could unpack my clothes. We have a huge front yard with four large trees on the edges.

We had weather almost up to 70 degrees last week and today it is 17 for the high. We've had snow, sleet, freezing rain, wind and sunshine. The autumn leaves were beautiful, but are all gone now. We put out 35 bags of leaves last week, and still have maybe 10 bags to fill still.

Matilda, my cat, is quite happy. She has three beds to choose from, and lots of places to hide. She can sit by the front door and look out to keep track of what's going on outside. She got used to sleeping in her carrier when we drove across country. So that makes things easier at night. In fact, she will come and sit in front of us when she's ready for bed.

The borough of Langhorne is small, but very tight-knit. There is a coffee-house a block away that we walked to for breakfast on the weekends, but when the sidewalks are icy, we drive. They had a harvest festival, a scarecrow contest, and a tree-lighting ceremony with Dickensian carolers, free hot cider and chocolate. All of the houses are decorated for whatever the season is.

I absolutely love being here, where they don't regard trees as objects to be pruned into submission, and open space as a challenge for developers. When we came it was still summer, and the trees were lush and green and the air was thick and humid. Then autumn came with the breathtaking array of colors on the trees and carpeting the ground. And now, winter with its own austere beauty. The trees are stripped to their bones and the landscape seems to be in black and white only.

Bucks County, Pennsylvania is beautiful, historic, I feel close to nature, and I experience changes in weather and seasons. I feel happily at home.