Snowdrops and Pancakes

Raindrops on roses

If I were to rank order Maria von Trapp’s list from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favourite Things I would place at the top:

Silver white Winters that melt into Springs

….which is why it has been lovely this past week to to see snowdrops on our walks – appearing, like magic, in the week when I also discovered a new way to make pancakes. Yes, Shrove Tuesday, it must be the start of Lent:

“And every man and maide doe take their turne,

And tosse their Pancakes up for feare they burne.”

(proverb from 1619)

Well, this year, no Pancake Bell summoned me to be “shriven” (absolved of my sins through confession) but I still appreciated the symbols:

• Eggs (creation, fertility, eternity, the world itself)
• Salt (purification, seasoning and wholesomeness)
• Flour (the staff of life, domestic frugality and hard work)
• Milk (purity, abundance, the primal food)

and tried a new thing (actually a medieval trick) of gradually making a paste with everything except the egg whites and then folding the whisked egg whites gently into the paste…. Reader, I made them. Fluffy, or what? The collage above includes a picture of one of the more well-done ones (As I Like It) and includes a dollop of stewed rhubarb (cos I is from Yorkshire) and some coconut yoghurt (cos I is a bit tropical.) Oh, and look, there’s the latest completed puzzle. Oh, and there’s me having had my first Covid-19 vaccination…. And after all these months (the first recorded Covid cases in the UK were identified in York on January 31st 2020) I reflect that I have spent the greatest part of the year in the company of one person, so under the collage is one of My Favourite Poems in tribute….

A Marriage

by Michael Blumenthal 

You are holding up a ceiling

with both arms. It is very heavy,

but you must hold it up, or else

it will fall down on you. Your arms                                           are tired, terribly tired,

and, as the day goes on, it feels

as if either your arms or the ceiling

will soon collapse.

But then

unexpectedly,

something wonderful happens:

Someone,

a man or a woman,

walks into the room

and holds their arms up

to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get

to take down your arms.

You feel the relief of respite,

the blood flowing back

to your fingers and arms.

And when your partner’s arms tire,

you hold up your own

to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this

for many years

without the house falling.

Top left, Michael Blumenthal