FuoriBorgo

Corner View - birds

Corner View is a weekly appointment - each Wednesday - created by Jane, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. If you'd like to join in, please leave a link to your Corner View post in the comments below, and be sure to visit other participants too.

Many thanks to :) for the theme today!

Any little birds out there who could tell me where our Corner to Corner is?  I confess, I've lost track of it ... Thank you!

Some bird-related Italian design: cuckcoo clocks Cucù by Diamantini&Domeniconi (there's also a Cucù Low-Cost, sans bird!)

The theme next week is "one day in my life", and comes from Kristin.

Happy Corner Viewing! 

an aromatic salad of spring blossoms

Although I spend 676 hours in the kitchen a year, my favorite culinary time is when I'm out the house, in the garden.  Looking at what grows there in all the particulars - the texture, the colors, the aromas, the beauty of the plants at different stages of growth - always fills me with a special cooking creativity, and desire to be in the kitchen that I never experience when I open my fridge, or shop at the grocery store, or leaf through a cookbook.

I was in the garden the other morning, surrounded by the pink and blue blossoms of my herbs in bloom, when I suddenly had the impulse to taste them, and make something edible with them right now.  So, I picked a few blossoms of each: borage, thyme, savory, chives, rosemary, a clump of jasmine and some lettuce leaves.  And at 10am, I made myself a salad of spring blossoms (with olive oil, of course, salt and a dash of my berry-infused vinegar).

Are your herbs flowering right now?  If they are, give it a try: an aromatic salad of fragrant spring herbal blossoms is a celebration of Springtime.

scarlet fever

The other week, Rebecca got scarlet fever: she woke up not feeling her best, and by evening her ears and throat were aching so much that she wouldn't take a sip of water even though she was running a high fever.  The following afternoon she broke out in a rash.  By then, I'd already heard the doctor's diagnosis.

We've seen illness in this family, and hospitals.  I've seen this child of mine in intensive care struggling to stay alive, and I've seen her through countless sicknesses, to a point where, at times, I feel my whole life revolves around disease.  Yet when the doctor diagnosed scarlet fever, I panicked.  Or almost panicked, because panicking isn't a luxury that mothers of children with chronic disease can indulge in too often, especially me being alone with the kids, and Tom six thousands miles away.  But as the doctor was examining Rebecca, I felt fear rising inside me like an ocean wave, threatening to drown me.

This deep fear came from seeing the tears in my grandmother eyes, each time the subject of her three-year-old daughter came up, who'd died of scarlet fever before my mother was born.  I'd seen the black&white photos of the little girl with wavy fair hair, and looking at them I'd often imagined a scene where the little girl was dying on the sofa in the living room, my grandmother crying, holding her hand and stroking her feverish forehead.

So scarlet fever has always been a fatal disease to me.  Even after Rebecca's doctor had said "Scarlet fever is totally curable!" I still felt that fear deep inside.

Naturally, the doctor was right: 24hrs after starting a course of antibiotics, Rebecca had already improved miraculously - I've never seen a cure work so effectively and rapidly.  I couldn't help thinking of the three-year-old girl in our family's past, Rebecca's great-aunt, who was taken by a disease that my girl shook off in just a day with the help of antibiotics.  I couldn't help hugging my girl tight, and feeling grateful for antibiotics.

And I couldn't help thinking how senseless we are, throwing so carelessly away the good things that man has made: the antibiotics that save lives, and that are now used widely in agriculture creating the perfect breeding environment for "super bugs" - as antibiotic-resistant bacteria are called.  A recent article in the New York Times indicated that for ways to treat super bugs we should consider how infectious diseases were cured once upon a time before antibiotics, and "raid grandma's medicine cabinet".  But first and foremost, why not stop abusing antibiotics to the detriment of our own health?  Because "grandma's medicine cabinet" doesn't always contain a remedy.  Just ask that three-year-old girl with wavy fair hair, who was taken by scarlet fever in 1934.

taking a better look at it

I dragged my salvaged dresser out into broad daylight, and discovered that "dresser" is actually a pretty fancy word for this little table with one small drawer.  Still, if I saw off the legs to make it a touch shorter, if I clean it and sand it, if paint it (white?) or polish it, if I get two cute drawer pulls, and then if I move the wicker chair and Rebecca's toy basket out of the living room and the sofa backwards a bit ... if, if, if ... maybe it could become my sewing table!

Happy weekend!

May wreath

A jasmine and lilac wreath this month, as a tribute to the magnificent sweet-scented flowers blooming everywhere these days: Spring is truly in the air!

Happy May!

I'll be making a wreath a month this year, using some spur-of-the-moment inspiration on whatever nature offers me at that moment.
February wreath
March wreath
April wreath

Corner View ~ music

Corner View is a weekly appointment - each Wednesday - created by Jane, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. If you'd like to join in, please leave a link to your Corner View post in the comments below, and be sure to visit other participants too.

Many thanks to Bev for the theme today!

Sharing music.

The theme next week is "birds", and comes from ":)".  Kristin, would you please choose a theme for the following Wednesday, and email me?  Thank you!

Happy Corner Viewing! 

ambitious

Remember when I said I was on a yarn-frugal spree?  I was.  Well, I still am.  Sort of ...  

In fact, after making two sweaters from stashed yarns (the little bear and the rose, gray and lilac cardigans), and one from exchange yarn (Rebecca's Langston), I gave in to the temptation of new yarn.  And who wouldn't buy yarn when you're strolling in the streets of Florence, and the most amazing yarn store reaches out and snags you?  Who wouldn't send their family on ahead, promising to join them in a minute, so you could take a peek inside that store?

I did join my family ... eventually.  Together with new the yarn I'd bought: thirty-one balls!

It's an ambitious project.  Deep breath, exhale, repeat.  I can do it!

What's the most ambitious crafting project you've tackled?  How long did it take you to complete it?

while at the sewing machine together

"We should really also give her something store-bought," said Rebecca, breaking a long concentration spell during which only the irregular stitch-stiiitch-stitch sound of the sewing machine, which she was learning to operate at a slow speed, could be heard.  

"But why?" I replied. "Nothing we buy could be as precious to your friend as this nightdress you've spent the better part of the morning making for her with your own hands."  I was pleasantly surprised to see that she seemed convinced.

"She's so lucky!", continued Rebecca. 

"Why is that?"  I asked out of politeness - because I also think the birthday girl is very lucky: they live in a house right on the beach, and where their terrace ends, the sand begins.  But Rebecca wasn't thinking house-envy thoughts.

"She's lucky because her hair is long", she explained.  Ah, long hair envy ...  I found my voice of wisdom, and reminded her that she should wear her hair in the style she likes, and not echo someone else's.  Besides, it's not the length of our hair, but what we've got inside, that matters.

"But also, her hair is curly", she went on.  "No, I'm afraid, you can't have natural curls," my voice of experience explained. "When you're older, you might want to try to have your hair permed, but it will never look naturally curly.  It'll look like straight hair that's been permed."  And because she didn't ask the question I feared, "How old do I need to be to have my hair permed?", I concluded with my voice of wisdom: "It's important to learn to accept and be grateful for what you have and who you are."

"And her hair is BLOND!" she finally blurted out.  Well, ...

I told her that her own hair is a beautiful color, the color of ripe chestnuts, the color of her Daddy's and my hair.  I didn't add that at this point in life I too begin to envy blondes, because they don't show white hair as easily!  I didn't tell her, because white hair wasn't what my six-year-old had in mind when she was thinking her blond-hair-envy thoughts.

Then we went back to the sewing machine, and as we sewed our envy evaporated.  And together we made a very special present for the (lucky) birthday girl - together, and by hand.  

Pattern Notes: this is the first time Rebecca really used the sewing machine.  With my guidance, she was able to do all the straight seams and the hems by herself (though naturally, not all the stitching is perfectly straight), and she enjoyed it immensely.  The pattern is a very easy one, and easily adaptable, from my favorite French sewing book, which I've previously made into the original Chemise de Nuit, a summery nighdress, and a blouse as well. 

someone's trash, my treasure

We got woken up the other weekend by strange noises.  It was our elderly neighbors' daughter and her sons in law, clearing out the old barn.  The barn full of treasures?  That really woke me up!  Like the true village woman I've become, after spying through the closed shutters, I opened the windows, leaned out, and asked what they were up to.  "We're clearing out the barn," was the cheerful answer.  Clearly, I'd asked the wrong question.  I should have asked, "Why are you clearing out years worth of outdated and randomly accumulated junk, forgotten by all but the spiders?"

Unfortunately, Tom had also been awakened, and when he saw the familiar sparkle in my eye, he gently reminded me that we live in a small, cramped house, and that more stuff might actually suffocate us.  Needless to say, suffocation wasn't what I had in mind that Sunday morning.

All day long, they burned ancient wooden casks and old doors with chipping paint, they discarded dozens of demijohns, piled up rusty tools ... it was so sad that I had to look away.

At the end of the day, Tom carried away a small dresser that our neighbors had custom-made sixty-five years ago when they got married.  Never mind that we don't have the space for it:  I've saved one little piece of trash that's part of those two peoples' history, and it has become my treasure and my memory.

Corner View ~ bridges & backroads

Corner View is a weekly appointment - each Wednesday - created by Jane, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. If you'd like to join in, please leave a link to your Corner View post in the comments below, and be sure to visit other participants too.

Many thanks to Joanne for the theme today!

We only found the bridge because we were following the scent of the wisteria.  I crossed it - it took to a little backroad from where the view of the wisteria in full bloom was stunning.

The theme next week is "music", and comes from Bev.  ":)" would you please choose a theme for the following Wednesday, and email me?  Thank you!

Happy Corner Viewing!