The Keeping Room: Man's Best Friend

Showing posts with label Man's Best Friend. Show all posts

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Happy News...

Miss Bowles

by Sir Joshua Reynolds

"But if the while I think on thee dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end."

Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

Earlier this week, we received the happy news that the pathology on the section of bone removed from Gracie's mandible showed very clean margins, free of cancer. While her prognosis remains guarded, this result was more than reason to celebrate! The Colonel and I opened a bottle of claret and drank several toasts: the first to Gracie who is healing well and reached her 9th birthday on the the 18th, the second to all our other pets --Lucy, Paddy, & Deusey, the third our veterinarians, and finally to the extra wing we have probably added to the AU Vet. School!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Where can you find a Bernese Mountain Dog?

Generally lying across your feet!
Meet my therapist: Gracie the Wonder Dog.
She enjoys petting people, reclining on the garden
bench, and greeting her family with much tail wagging
and robust barking. She is nearly eight years old, but loves her long walks and rides in the car. She does have a powerful bark; Lord Byron would surely have liked her..... Click on photo to enlarge.

" 'Tis sweet to to hear the watch-dog's honest bark

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home;

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark,
Our coming, and look brighter when we come."

from Don Juan by Lord Byron

Here is what I often call Crumbly Gingerbread

I found the recipe on a postcard I sent home to a friend when I visited Grasmere in 1986. This is very close to the gingerbread sold at St. Oswald's church there in Grasmere. This is marvelous with your hot tea. The real secret is adding the sugar at the very last-not blending it with the margerine. I use either a fork or pastry blender to "rub" in the margarine with flour and oats. I have copied it as it appeared on the postcard and added my American interpretation of measurements for certain ingredients.

9 oz brown wheatmeal flour
(1 rounded cup wholewheat flour)
3 oz porridge oats
(1/2 cup Three Minute Quaker oats)
3/4 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 level tsp cream of tartar
3 level teaspoons ground ginger
9 oz hard margarine
(1 to 1 1/2 sticks od Parkay-the less you use, the more crumbly the texture)
9 oz soft brown sugar
(1 rounded cup)

Set oven to 325 degrees or Mark 3. Well grease a shallow tin 14" by 9". Put flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, and ginger in a bowl. Add the margarine cut into small pieces. Rub in well with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Put into tin and press down firmly with a floured fork. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until pale brown. Cut into squares whilst warm and leave in tin until completely cold. Keeps well in airtight tin.

The Secret Heart

Here is my Valentine to every parent who remembers looking on a sleeping child...and lingering in the moment....
Enjoy & linger,
Firelight

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.

May 20th is the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets: Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Happy News...

Friday, March 13, 2009

Where can you find a Bernese Mountain Dog?

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