earthly delights

"That first spring we moved in, it felt as if a love letter was being delivered every day in the form of a different color or bloom. Week after week, a new verse of planting would unfold. "

Garden Romance: Bella Pollen's English Countryside Home, by Bella Pollen (x)

the world is quiet here

For me it's back to studying this month as I have a ton of exams at the end of January. As a result, a lot of time will be spent hurriedly eating oatmeal in the morning (prepared the evening before), making tea to-go & fighting for a seat in the university library.

Study prep:

1. Get Shit Done - An Academic Mix: for a calm, scholarly atmosphere.
2. Blueberry Oatmeal | I add walnuts, flax seeds & frozen raspberries.
3. Stocking up on green tea, new notepads, a green (for headings!) & a black pen.
4. Having the best friends on speed dial, in order to whine in unison about how horrible everything is.
5. Libraries as photographed by Christoph Steelbach and Candida Höfer.
6. This is a library.
7. Librarian wisdom: “Pause every once in a while, remove your glasses, think about that last great sentence you read, sigh, sip your tea and then get back to it.” (x)

"It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home."
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
"If you feel . . . that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good."
The Slippery Slope, by Lemony Snicket

toast

 

"On those balmy lilting evenings he would read

T.S. Eliot to her as she lingered languid in a

bath overflowing with bubbles, pausing only to

feed her toast and Cooper's marmalade."
The Man with the Dancing Eyes, by Sophie Dahl

in love lately, part i

1. All Things Beautiful, by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis | Instrumental music to study to.
2. Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter, by Antonia Fraser | Told through various diary entries, this is such a lovely & smart portrait of the literary couple.
3. Clearly Corrective Dark Spot Solution, by Kiehl's | I have relatively good skin, but do get spots every now and then & this stuff is pure magic.
4. Belted equestrian rain boots, by Burberry | Saving up for these boots right now, hoping they'll still have them in about a month.
5. Cold green tea | At this time of the year, just pop the steaming teapot on the windowsill & et voilà!
6. Call the Midwife & Bomb Girls | Two shows, one British, one Canadian about a bunch of wonderfully empowered ladies back in the 1940s and 1950s. Oh, and Bunheads is back. 
7. Simple & Beautiful Party Make Up, by Lisa Eldridge
8. A Royal Affair's Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | If you are a fan of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, definitely watch this.
9. Silver Linings Playbook | Not sure I get all the Oscar nominations, but it was a wonderful movie. Jennifer Lawrence, in particular, was fantastic.
10. 10 Tips for Healthier Eating, by Calgary Avansino
11. Stella McCartney & Chloé Pre-Fall 2013 | Both the settings & the clothes.
12. American Pastoral: Miranda Brooks and Bastien Halard's Brooklyn Home, by Chloe Malle

"In the evenings, Halard will pull down the projector screen and let the girls watch their favorites—National Velvet for Violette Grey and anything ballet for Poppy (she is particularly fond of Nureyev). After supper, it’s up to bed, where they are read one English story and one French story each; then Brooks and Halard will cross the garden again and return to work for several hours in their respective offices. (...) They both use the carriage house as an office and rarely venture out except for daily runs to the girls’ French primary school, one subway stop away, and summer trips to Van Leeuwen for chocolate and Earl Grey Tea ice cream."

simply stella

  

"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."

While Rome Burns, by Dorothy Parker

“I have a terrible weakness for collecting snatches of other people's conversations, and occasionally I'm rewarded with unusual fragments of knowledge. My favorite of the day came from a large but shapely woman sitting nearby whom I learned was the owner of a local lingerie shop. 'Beh oui,' she said to her companion, waving her spoon for emphasis, 'il faut du temps pour la corsetterie.' You can't argue with that. I made a mental note not to rush things next time I was shopping for a corset, and leaned back to allow the waiter through with the next course.”

Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France, by Peter Mayle

landscape

"The first step ... shall be to lose the way."

Harriet Richardson, a Student Organizer at Pennsylvania's Juniata College, presses a cloth to the wounds of Galway Kinnell, 

who was then Poet-In-Residence at Juiata, Selma, Alabama, 1965.

"...it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing..." 

Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell (x)