Monday, June 17, 2013

Cinnamon Biscuits - Definition:  A super-quick way to fake people into believing you slaved in the kitchen to make something fancy to go with your coffee!   Roll out biscuit dough (anybody can make biscuits.....), spread a little butter, sugar and cinnamon on, slice & bake at 425* for about 10 minutes, then throw on a bit of icing and VOILA! 
 Whilst you are waiting the ten minutes for them to bake and you have already whipped out a dab of icing, you can start a pot of COFFEE (essential ingredient in any happy gathering.....)

“A cup of coffee, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream…such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.” – H. W. Beecher
 Remember all those pineapples we canned?  Well now we've used a jar to make pineapple cupcakes!  No, we don't live on dessert, but it sure does look like it here, doesn't it????
 I've cleaned and repaired about 3 old Singers in the last couple days.  I've still got a couple on the bench, but the sunshine was calling and I've been weeding & transplanting, mowing & raking....
 This is the chalk board above the goat milking stanchions in the barn.  Got any favorite 'pain' sayings to add for this week's outdoor theme?
 This is our most benevolent cat, Baby Deeds.  She sits around the farm, here & there surveying the scenery & life as it goes along.  Usually she is smiling.  Today she is wondering why I don't just fill the dishes with cat food and goat milk and put the camera away....
 As a child I dreamed of living on a farm.  I ached to live on a farm.  I wanted it more than anything in life.
I love this farm and praise God every day for the blessing of being the ones chosen to work this piece of ground for this time in history.  Thank you God for answering those childhood yearnings with such a fabulous blessing!
 If you look closely, you'll see the goat kiddies waiting at the gate by their bucket feeder, waiting (and hollering LOUDLY) for us to get the milking done.  Clawdette sat for the picture for a moment, but she hates the other cats and will run away presently.  (There, now do you hear the baby goats hollering?)
This picture that heads down to our valley reminded me of Robert Frost's well-known poem....








The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1874–1963


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


I had no idea until I copied this poem today that Robert Frost was still alive during my childhood!  He died in 1963!   I also found out from reading about him (googled it) that many people in his family suffered from mental illness.  He himself suffered depression (a form of mental illness?).......Do you think all creative people/people who write/people who write blogs suffer from mental illness?  (Not to make light of mental illness, but do you think there's a correlation?)

Well, I'm off.........(take that how you will.......)


4 comments:

  1. I love this, Ruth. Thank you so much. I have been at that Y in the road many times in my life. Thank goodness, my road has been pretty good. Not too many bumps, or bruises.

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    1. I think our bumps & bruises along the way shape us into who we are and help us to appreciate in no small way the road when it smooths out :-)
      Thanks for your comment - come back anythime!

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  2. I am a bit older than you, and I remember Robert Frost reciting from memory his poem "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in January, 1961. He had written another poem especially for the occasion that he intended to read, but the brightness of the sun blinded him, and on the spur of the moment he recited it from memory: "The land was ours before we were the land's..."

    I thought that particular poem fit your post today very well. He was describing the entire country, but I think it applies to you and your little corner of it as well:


    The Gift Outright
    By Robert Frost

    The land was ours before we were the land’s.
    She was our land more than a hundred years
    Before we were her people. She was ours
    In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
    But we were England’s, still colonials,
    Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
    Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
    Something we were withholding made us weak
    Until we found out that it was ourselves
    We were withholding from our land of living,
    And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
    Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
    (The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
    To the land vaguely realizing westward,
    But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
    Such as she was, such as she would become.

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    1. How wonderful to remember not only Robert Frost(I love the poem!), but the inauguration of President Kennedy as well!
      I think my earliest memory of a major event was when Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin first walked on the moon. We were not desensitized by amazing computerized fantasy back then, so we were awestruck to watch them, knowing that they somehow, seemingly impossibly, were walking around on the moon above our heads in the sky. I also remember my grandmother scoffing and saying that it was a fake and they filmed it in the desert - man couldn't possibly get to the moon.
      Thanks for your comment, my friend.

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