Katharine Tree

Are those Baby Boo pumpkins? Are they any good?

Quality secondhand clothing is the bomb.

A gold and silver torc that was discovered in south-west Norfolk in 2003 on the surface of a ploughed field. Iron Age in date, the torc is now part of the collections at Norwich Castle.
📸 My own. #FindsFriday #IronAge #NorwichCastle

'80s kids: do you remember that episode of Wild Kingdom? 😭

On the tree. Small, full of worms.

Apples

A dead bee on a fabulous pink chrysanthemum

Goodnight, sweet lady.

Baths used to be more fun.

watercolour painting of a yew tree over a river

Art vs reference 🌿

"Yew tree on Lothrie Burn", original watercolour available.
everydayoriginal.com/artistprofil...

Peter Dinklage showed up on The Lowdown and he was exquisite, as always. He and Ethan Hawke make quite a duo.

Sticker book page: smiley faces, horses, dinosaurs, rainbows, cute animals.

Sticker book page: "I was a good girl," Michael Jackson, big sparkly heart

Sticker book page: lots of dinosaurs, My Little Pony, and McDonalds. A scratch-and-sniff Strawberry Shortcake sticker that still smells.

Good stuff. What the 80s looked like to a five year old.

A sheet of Charlie Brown halloween stickers from the 80s. One has Joe Cool leaning on a jack-o-lantern and saying "Have a Groovery Halloween"

A page from my 80s sticker book. In this one, Joe Cool is dressed as a wizard and standing in front of his doghouse... but is still saying "Have a groovery halloween"

F-book showed me this sheet of stickers from an 80s nostalgia account and I thought, "hmm, looks familiar." Not perfectly familiar, it turns out, though I did have a lot of Charlie Brown halloween stickers in my sticker book.

My right hip, in particular, is trashed. The pain is on the outside which is apparently good--means it's a strength problem not a bone problem.

I've been shoveling dirt and scrubbing my house all summer, but Bloedel Reserve's 2.1 miles of gentle inclines kicked my ass. I am ruined for the day.

A beautiful fern glade in dappled sunlight

A banana slug

The great Pacific Northwest

The first week of the first English class at my university was this. Reading copies are for YOU. Mess them up. The paperback is not the book.

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access. Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said. Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said. A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said. "The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there." Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

A 60m-long Viking-Age wooden hall reconstruction in Lejre, in green surroundings

A 60m-long Viking-Age wooden hall reconstruction in Lejre, in green surroundings

A decorated internal archway in the Viking-Age wooden hall reconstruction in Lejre

The main internal space in the Viking-Age wooden hall reconstruction in Lejre, with various furnishing surrounding a central firepit.

Checking out the Viking-Age hall reconstruction in Lejre, Denmark

Don't have chickens but I do have compost.

My child has just discovered that they're shortbread, and she hates shortbread so much that she refuses to decorate or eat the cookies.

Welcome to the gratifying wonder of raising children.

Cut, put on parchment-lined baking sheets, and chill again while your oven preheats to 375F. Bake 10-12 minutes (I did an extra 4... I'm beginning to suspect all cookie recipes want you to use the convection setting? Though they don't say so?)

I don't remember where the recipe came from, but in your mixer combine:

2.5c AP flour
3/4 c sugar
1/4 t salt

Then add:
2.5 t vanilla
16 T butter, softened
2 T cream cheese, softened

Beat until dough forms. You might need to add a couple teaspoons of water.

Roll between parchment sheets & chill.

A cooling rack full of undecorated pumpkin-shaped cutout cookies

Kiddo and I are doing pumpkin-shaped cookies this afternoon. I hadn't done cutouts for years because it seemed so difficult and demoralizing... but somehow this afternoon, it was a snap and they even held their shapes. Weird.

Christmas lima beans are white with crimson stripes. A generous handful is spread out on a beige kitchen towel.

With my cutting board and big knife out and my kitchen a wreck, I set to butchering a melon... which to my joy was too far gone. Onto the compost it went.

Christmas lima bean time! There are more to come, so I'm letting these dry out. Yay! I'm done!

Four cupcake pans full of shredded zucchini, being slid onto freezer racks

Next the zucchini, omfg. I had six more on the countertop. They all lost a little volume to seedy middles being scraped out, then I shredded them and they are now freezing in single-serving pucks. We eat them in ramen soup.

This task was a messy pain in the ass.

Scalloped orange slices of acorn squash on a roasting pan

First, the acorn squash. I sliced them and now they're roasting in the oven with a bit of salt and oil. I am roasting them hard so they caramelize and get sweet and scrummy. I will eat these as the main component of my lunches all week.

A black tubtrug full of lima bean pods, two acorn squash, and a zucchini with strictures that make it look like a green cartoon poo.

I swanned out to my potager to pick some of the bounteous harvest! Now follow me for the unfun part: dealing with it 🤬 🧵

(that zucchini, though)

PSA: Thrift shops do not launder garments. Nope, they don't. Please donate them CLEAN and not smelly, and when you buy, launder the garment as soon as you get it home.

afternoon deep in woods, in the patch & scatter of light & dark - goldfinches & long tailed tits, treecreepers & woodpeckers all avoiding the camera to glitch into dapple - haze to the horizon, sky above cloudless & clear

Madder pigment in an oyster shell

Dried madder roots in a bowl on some scales

Madder pigment being mulled on a glass slab

Madder pigment surrounded by examples of dried paint on paper and parchment

Homegrown madder pigment. It's wonderful to create medieval pigment from something grown in your garden #bookhistory #medievalpigments #medievalsky

Dahlias and sedum

Dahlias and sedum

The borders are looking great in October. Almost better than they looked in the summer.