Recommended reading: "London in Bloom" by Georgianna Lane

A lot of travel plans have gotten canceled for this spring and summer, so if we want to go abroad, many of us must settle for being armchair travelers for a while. I can't help thinking about that as I've gazed longingly at the beautiful pages of a new picture book that recently arrived, London in Bloom by Georgianna Lane. Lately, I find that I can consume only so much of the news before I get antsy and want to move on to more pleasant thoughts. And I can't imagine having anything but lovely thoughts while looking through this charming book.

Since the topic was London, I wasn't terribly surprised to find a teacup pictured in the book.

I was, however, surprised to see such a great collection of chintz wares!

And oh, how I'd love to go visit this petal-pink telephone booth! Wouldn't you? This book is brimming with roses, which I'm quite passionate about, and if you are, too, you might want to get a copy. Outside of Mother Nature herself, this book is absolutely the prettiest thing I've looked at in months. What about you? Where are you going these days when you need a beauty break?

Salada's Citrus Medley Green Tea

Now that a trip to the grocery store has become the retail equivalent of a day at the mall, I simply had to find a new box of tea to try when I was in Ingles on Saturday. I'd often thought about trying Salada tea, so I purchased a box of their Green Tea Citrus Medley blend. I'm not bothered by caffeine, but this flavor of Salada tea happens to be decaffeinated, which may appeal to those of you looking to avoid caffeine.

I'm always happy to see tea bags in individual packets. If I like the tea, I can share it when sending cards to tea-loving friends.

When I sipped the tea, I was expecting just lemon and orange flavors, so I was surprised to discover a bit of a sour taste. Then I looked at the box and realized that I'd overlooked the lime. And then I read the ingredients, which include grapefruit juice concentrate, so perhaps that's the sour note I detected. It was fine as a hot tea, but I suspected I would like this tea even better over ice. Instead of making a whole pitcher of iced tea (which involves a bit of a commitment), I've started putting a single tea bag in a glass of water in the refrigerator to cold-brew overnight. As I suspected I would, I liked this tea even better over ice, and this will be a nice spring and summer tea to have on hand. I believe this was my first time trying a Salada tea. Are any of you familiar with this brand?

Inspired by Flea Market Garden Style magazine

I hope all of you had a nice Mother's Day weekend, even though I suspect many of the celebrations were a bit different this year. On Saturday, Alex and I went to visit my dad and Aunt Jane for the first time in two months, and I was so happy to see them. We picked up Chick-fil-A from a drive-through on the way, and when we got there, the two of us ate at one end of their huge dining table in the formal dining room (a holdover from my late mother), and Daddy and Aunt Jane ate at the other end. We had planned to just sit on the porch and visit, but the weather was in the fifties, which is considered "freezing cold" to lifelong Georgians. Still, it was a relief to get a visit in with them and my sister, who stopped by, and see that everyone is doing well. On the way home, I ran in Ingles for a few groceries for the week, and I was thrilled to find a magazine I didn't think I'd be able to get my hands on this year, the annual issue of Flea Market Garden Style.

Most years, I find at least a few tea-inspired ideas inside, and that was the case this year as well.

One of the prettiest pages in the whole lovely issue was this one, where they've used tea tins as flower vases. I've done that before but not in a while. I'm waiting on a particular pink rose to bloom, and then I think I'll dig out just the right tea tin for it!

Reading that magazine reminded me that I'd been meaning to try a decoupage fix-up for an old watering can that had a faded design on the front. Now, I must confess I'm chintzy about using these pretty tea-themed napkins (a gift from my friend Joy, I believe), but with a little Mod Podge, it took only one of them to cover up the faded design on my watering can and get a little more mileage out of it.

Ta-da! So now I'll keep using this watering can until it fades again, and I'm loving the vintage look from this decoupaged paper napkin. Also this weekend, I made a sourdough starter, so if that works, maybe one day soon, I can truly use one of my tea-and-toast sets for … tea and toast! 

Afternoon tea with the nurses

These days, my morning prayer time begins with a petition for the protection of all the nurses and health care workers. I guess I think of "nurses" first because I have three first cousins, a stepdaughter, and several friends (one recently recovered from the coronavirus) who are all RNs, and I know how much they appreciate being in our prayers. And since it's National Nurses Week, which runs May 6-12 this year, I thought I'd share a new-to-me vintage photo I found on the Library of Congress website.

The photo, a gift of the American Red Cross, shows a group of French and American nurses sharing afternoon tea in Belgium in 1918. That date caught my eye since, as we all know by now, that was the first year of the great Spanish influenza pandemic, also known as the "Spanish Lady," according to a book I'm currently reading about the pandemic.

I love so much about this photo, from the blurred movement of a couple of the nurses to the uniforms to the tea wares on the table. And note that nurse who is looking straight into the camera here. What is she doing with her hands? Is it just me, or does she look like she's talking on her not-yet-invented cellphone?

If you're a nurse or know a nurse or love a nurse, I hope you/they are having a very happy National Nurses Week!

When celery is hard to find …

Have you had trouble finding any particular groceries during this pandemic? All-purpose flour is about as prized as toilet paper in my town, but my husband found some self-rising flour that has served us just fine. Like all the other wannabe Martha Stewarts out there, I've been reading about old-fashioned bread baking and am eager to make a sourdough starter. Alas, I cannot find the whole wheat flour it requires, but it's on my list for whenever I next spot a bag of it. The missing item that gave me most pause, though, was celery. When Alex came home from Publix one day last month and said they were out of celery, I couldn't believe it. Celery? Celery? I *need* celery to make some of the soups I enjoy, not to mention the most beloved tea sandwich spread of all time—chicken salad.  (This week, we have celery once again, so I was able to use up some extra chicken and turn it into a dill chicken salad for lunch.)

But that got me to thinking, what if there's a celery shortage one day? Can I grow my own celery? And then I remembered being in a garden club years ago with a woman who could have rooted a popsicle stick and made it grow. She said she didn't throw away her celery root when she was done with the ribs but simply planted the root. So I'm not sure I should have done it this way, but I plopped my celery root in a pot of the only soil I've got lying about and, well, something is coming up in the middle. What do you think? Is there hope?

Fortunately, I came across a new book at just the right time: Regrow Your Veggies by Melissa Raupach and Felix Lill. I've already learned that I should have started the celery in a jar of water first (next time!), and thanks to this book, I didn't throw away my last onion root but plopped it into some dirt as well. I've heard that just as we had victory gardens after World War II, many of us as a result of this pandemic will be starting home gardens after seeing the very practical value of growing some of our own food. Have any of you rooted onions or celery before? All tips are welcome!

(Review copy courtesy of NetGalley)

Weekend crafting with Stampin' Up

Much as I love making cards, I am very bad about actually sitting down to complete them by the time a friend's birthday rolls around. But since I have two close friends with a birthday this week, and I'm still not ready to go hit the stores just yet, I knew I needed to make a few cards this weekend. This one is for my friend Ruth, who is turning 81!

The colors are a little off on my computer, but in real life, the pinks blend beautifully, and I think Ruth will like this card. I enjoyed stamping and die cutting all the little rose buds to fill this teacup. And I wanted to mention that if any of you want this stamp and die set, it appears to still be available from Stampin' Up online, but since they release a new catalog in June, you might want to look at this now. (And if you don't have a demonstrator, you can use my friend Kathy and find the stamps and dies on her Stampin' Up page here. She didn't ask me to say that, by the way, but I always like to be able to make a purchase without having to find a demonstrator, and some of you may feel that way too.)

And since I had those teapot and teacup stamps handy, I went ahead and tried an idea I found on Pinterest, which was to stamp the designs onto patterned paper. I liked the result and decided to go ahead and make a thank-you card while I was at it.

And I don't think the friend this card is for is reading the blog lately (she works in the medical field and has had her hands full, to say the least), but I enjoyed making her a paper "cake" since she is well-known for making cakes for others. (If you like that "Happy Birthday to You" stamp set, it's sold out at Stampin' Up, but you can find it for sale from a few eBay vendors at the moment). So in addition to card making this weekend, I knit a dish cloth, worked on a needlepoint pillow, took several nice walks, and enjoyed some Chinese takeout.

By my count, I'm entering my eighth week of "sheltering at home," and while I know the country has to get back to work sometime, I'm enormously grateful I get to work from home. So how about you all? Going stir crazy yet? Making cards or knitting or taking long walks? I like hearing what you friends are up to!

Some seeds that were 'mint' for a tea lover

Earlier this year, tea friend Susan B. in North Carolina sent me a lovely card and tucked inside of it a little packet  of mint seeds as a gift. I'd almost forgotten to plant them but came across them this week and decided I'd best hurry up and get them in some dirt! But check out that artwork on the package. If you look closely, you'll see that the teapot is painted on a tea bag by the talented Ruby Silvious, whose unique book of tea bag art I reviewed here a few years back.

This package design is charming, and I like that it tells about both the plant and the artist.

Who knew that mint seeds are so tiny? Wish me luck, as I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be enjoying fresh mint in a few months. The seeds, by the way, are from the Hudson Valley Seed Company, which says it is experiencing "unprecedented demand" for seeds right now. I guess I'm not the only one spending some of my days playing in the dirt. (And thanks to the kindness of Susan, I already have some of these sought-after seeds!)

Daffodils and teacups

I'm way overdue for pulling out one of my favorite spring teacups, this cheerful design from Royal Ardalt that features daffodils and iris, which happen to be what is blooming at my house right now.

Flowers have definitely been on my mind this week, as I was inspired to cut some of the mini daffodils growing out front. I'd never cut any of them to display inside before, and when I did, I was delighted to find they have a lovely light floral scent. My husband said they smelled very "clean," which I think is his way of saying they don't smell overly perfumey. I even plopped some in a little glass vase on the kitchen windowsill.

They're a charming addition to the house, and I love that even when they go the way of all the earth, I will *always* have a flower garden waiting in my teacups. I used this one to sip some Timothy's Green Tea Orange Jasmine, and the light floral taste was the perfect blend for this cup. I've been drinking a lot of unflavored green tea lately, and I'm about ready to shake things up and search for some new floral blends. If you know of a good one, please share!

Turquoise and the tea trolley

Much as I love pink, I had grown weary of seeing the same pink rose tea wares on the tea trolley and decided to give it a makeover this weekend.

I was also reorganizing my office and realized I was using a vintage tole tray to hold scrapbooking papers, but it's really so pretty that it ought to be out where I can enjoy seeing it. So I started looking for turquoise things and had enough to pull together a new look for the tea trolley, which *almost* felt like shopping.

Have I ever mentioned what hangs over this tea trolley? It's a large framed picture of Alex's late uncle Roy Green, who I gather was a character. I have always loved this antique photograph of him as a child, and that's probably because of the turquoise tint as much as the image of Roy himself.

On a practical note, I also needed a place to plop the avocado plant I've been growing for almost a year now! Last year, I made some loaded guacamole around Cinco de Mayo, and I'd been rooting the pit in the kitchen windowsill. Over the weekend, I tried to find a pot with drain holes so that I can water this periodically, but all I came up with was an old plastic pot from the nursery. I really want a simple clay pot with a liner, but until I feel it's safe to go out and about again (and I'm not there yet), I'll make do. At least I had a teacup planter on hand!

It turns out I had more than enough turquoise teacups to fill the teacup stand. In fact, I have another one left to drink out of!

Now I had been thinking of sending this particular teacup on to Goodwill, because it has a manufacturing flaw near the rim (looks like lipstick up top, but that's paint). Lately, though, I've been watching the Instagram videos of Shabby Chic founder Rachel Ashwell, and she has reminded me that there is beauty to be found in imperfection, so I decided I liked this teacup once again. It reminds me of a saying that a friend shared when we were in junior high, and it went something like this: "If we cannot have what we like, then maybe we can learn to like what we have." A good motto for anytime, but especially right now, eh?

And see these dried flowers? When I spoke to the Marietta Daisies Garden Club back in February (which seems like a *lifetime* ago now), they gave me one of their live floral arrangements in a pretty yellow teacup. That arrangement lasted for, like, two weeks or something, and when I finally took it out because I wanted to use the teacup, I realized the dried flowers were still quite lovely, so I've been letting the things traipse from teacup to teacup. I'm sure I'll toss them one day, but not yet.

My favorite tea tin happens to be turquoise, this Celebration Blend Tea tin I got at Fortnum & Mason on my 50th birthday trip to Europe almost six years ago!

I was surprised to realize I don't own a turquoise teapot (yet!), but a cream one will always serve me well. This is a little cheap one I got years ago, probably at T. J. Maxx, and I still love the roses on the handle and lid.

The jury's out on whether that avocado plant gets to stay there, but I'm enjoying the new color palette. Have you done any reorganizing and/or redecorating while we've been staying at home? I hear it's a popular pastime!

Clara Barton, the American Red Cross, and a five o'clock tea

Did you know that Clara Barton was fifty-nine when she founded the American Red Cross? Now that I'm firmly in my fifties, I'm even more interested in women who were trailblazers in midlife, and I was delighted to learn a bit more about the famous Clara Barton. I was on the board of the local American Red Cross many years ago, and I continue to donate blood when one of their bloodmobiles rolls my way. The American Red Cross has a Facebook page where they've been sharing some good tips to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and I'm especially intrigued that they are asking for blood donations from those who've had the virus and recovered, in hopes that others can be treated with this "convalescent plasma," as it's being called.

So what does all that have to do with tea? Not much, except that I was browsing the Library of Congress website this week and found this 1889 invitation to a "Five O'Clock Tea" that Clara and the General Field Agent of the Red Cross were giving in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The American Red Cross had been founded as a battlefield relief organization, and the Johnstown flood of 1889 marked the first peacetime relief effort for the American Red Cross. I love how the invitation reads, "Your presence will be esteemed a favor." I may have to borrow that!

And finally, I thought you might enjoy seeing the Clara Barton Chapel in Glen Echo, Maryland, part of the Clara Barton National Historic Site. The home at this site is where she spent the last fifteen years of her life, and her home also served as the first headquarters of the American Red Cross. I'm looking forward to being a blood donor again soon, and afterward, I'll be sure to lift my cup in honor of Clara Barton!

(All photos courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Happy Birthday, Queen Elizabeth!

If I'd planned a little better, I would have made some Coronation Chicken Salad yesterday in honor of Queen Elizabeth's 94th birthday. Instead, I just pulled out my Paragon teacup commemorating the Queen's coronation as I privately saluted her and wished her a happy 94th!

I'm a regular reader of the Daily Mail online, and I was happy to see lots of lovely tribute photos to her. It was also through the DM that I learned that Buckingham Palace had released a brief video of some archive footage in honor of the Queen's special day. Click here if you'd like to see it too!

Backyard roses and a thrift-store "vase"

Are any of you Zooming your way through this time of quarantine? In the last month alone, I have used the Zoom video-conferencing app for a work conference call, I have Zoomed for Sunday school, and on Saturday, I was online for six hours while I enjoyed Zooming with crafting buddies in Newnan and Savannah. We had all agreed it might be fun to gather for a "virtual" craft day, so I set up all my card-making supplies and colored and created cards while I visited on-screen with friends who were working on sewing and paper crafts of their own. We were told that Zoom would kick us off after forty minutes and we would have to re-join the call, but it never did, which was awesome. I didn't realize how refreshing it would be to connect with friends in this way, and it truly did feel like visiting in each other's homes! So I was in quite a lovely mood that evening and thought, you know, I'm going to go cut some roses.

A yellow rose bush was growing behind my house when we moved here in 2006, and it has produced flowers every single year, unlike the finicky David Austin roses I planted in front of the house. I've never done a thing to this yellow rose bush, and yet these pretty blossoms keep coming back. I knew we were predicted to get more storms on Sunday, so I wanted to rescue a few blossoms and bring them indoors. I have no idea what type of rose this is, but the fragrance is yummy!

And while I do have vases I could use, I have been plopping flowers into this "Sweet Tea" glass I found at a thrift store last year. I'm pretty sure I found this for something like fifty cents at Goodwill or another store, and I thought I'd blogged about it here, but I looked through my old blog posts and can't find that I did. (If you remember seeing this glass on here before, would you kindly let me know? I can't find it under "sweet tea" or "glass" or "Goodwill," and I can't imagine how else I would have described it.)

I would dearly love to have more of these glasses, and the bottom is stamped "Home Essentials," so that was helpful. I found the glasses on Amazon, sold out, and apparently the glasses sold from 2015 on. I found reviews for them on Belk.com, too, also dated several years ago. When I get back to my thrift store shopping, I will be on the hunt for more of these cute glasses. (Ironically, I'll mostly be drinking unsweet tea out of them.)

So I Zoomed with friends and cut roses and made some banana bread. How did you spend the weekend?

Food Network Magazine's April & May 2020 issues

With more time for leisure reading lately, I've been enjoying catching up on my reading list, including magazine reading. I had not even read the April issue of Food Network Magazine when the May issue arrived, so this week, I spent a little time delving into both magazines, and they delighted me for different reasons. The April issue, at left, features a gorgeous lemon pound cake on the cover, and I'm eager to make it the next time I go to the store and get some fresh lemons.

That issue also has a nice article on how to make various flavors of macaroons (not macarons), and as a coconut fan, I find this idea quite enticing.

The May issue of the magazine, though, is the one that really has me lusting to make a new sheet cake! I've only ever made chocolate sheet cakes, but these flavors sound so good: PB&J, Chocolate-Hazelnut, Cinnamon Apple, S'mores, and more. They're the subject of this month's pull-out booklet in the magazine, and cut into bite-size pieces, these cakes would be right at home on a tea tray.

So I was already thinking "tea" when I turned the pages of the May issue and saw a feature on places to enjoy Tea Time! I realize our magazine shopping is probably going to remain limited for a while, but if you're at the grocery store and see this issue at the register, you might want to take a copy home with you!

On watching "Belgravia"

(Photo courtesy of ITV)

Okay, friends. So who has started watching "Belgravia" on Sunday nights? I have, and boy, am I glad I did. All I knew about it was that it was created by Julian Fellowes of "Downton Abbey" fame and featured actress Harriet Walter (I've been hating on her wonderfully nasty characters since "Sense and Sensibility" days). So that was enough to get me hooked, but I did not realize that Anna, Duchess of Bedford and her newfangled afternoon tea would be featured in the first episode! What a treat!

And if you have a little extra time for viewing (and who doesn't these days?), click here to watch this video on "How To Make a Proper Cup of Tea."

I'm not going to mention any spoilers—yet—but I'd love to know who is watching "Belgravia" with me? Any fans?