A Solar Eclipse, Vintage Postcards, and Victoria Sponge for the First Day of Spring

Gentle Reader ~~~ 

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SPRING!

Yes, Happy First Day of Spring, my friends, and we are celebrating in style with a Solar Eclipse here in the UK. Where I am, in the Shire, it was only a partial one, but amazing and an awesome reminder of the timing of our existence in our wonderful universe.  I did my best to capture some images, but we had, once more, sea haze that hampered clarity, but here are my two best shots. It is not worth the risk to anyone's sight to look at the sun without proper protective glasses, so I just aimed my camera and clicked ~~~ 

During the time of the eclipse, the bright, early morning sunshine began to dim, quickly, more quickly than twilight sets in of an early Spring evening.  It fell eerily silent, birds stopped their morning chatter and looked toward the sky in confusion and began to roost as they were lulled into a false sense of time, a strange calm fell across the land as the shadows of the false evening deepened and lengthened, and I allowed myself to feel that sense of the fear experienced by our ancestors who thought the sun was being stolen from the sky.  As the morning darkened, the eclipse deepened, the day that just a few moments earlier was warming up dropped into a sudden chill that increased with the growing eclipse. Then, an hour later, as quickly as the dark descended, the light and warmth returned to us and all is well, once more, with the world.

I hope you will like these following images ~~~ and I promise, as the weather is improving so will the reports on what I'm up to in the garden! I keep saying that, don't I? I am incorrigible, but it is still chilly in the wind Little by little I'm squeezing in a few hours out there ~ but even after two hours on my hands and knees weeding just one border, it looks as if so little has been done. Oh, and I am aching in muscles I didn't know I had ~~~ please, stop giggling, yes, you, in the corner, stop giggling!

I am not a fastidiously tidy gardener in that I do not remove all the dead seed heads in the Autumn, oh, no! I leave them all for the birds so they can keep on foraging for their food as long as the weather permits. This is a good thing for the birds, because if we feed them too much over the Winter they can become lazy, relying on us to find their food for them.  Of course, I am the first to put out plenty of seeds if the weather turns bad, and I keep the feeders filled during breeding season too, to help them get plenty of food for their babies in the nests. So the first order of work is to start with some general tidying up of everything!

In the meantime, I have some vintage postcards to share with you. My Godmother passed them to me, and she is uncertain how they came in to her hands, and has returned them to me.  I am thrilled she did as they are all sent between my Grandmother and Grandfather, her sisters, brothers, and my mother. I don't know much about them, except that the majority of them were sent as birthday greetings. I don't know if this means that greetings cards as we know them were not readily available, or if these were available as an alternative, but you will see that many of them are purposely printed with birthday greetings ~~~ here they are ~~~

There is a cryptic message on the back of this first one which leads me to believe the sender was making a tounge~in~cheek reference to my Grandmother and her future husband ~~~ for she was tiny and he was a tall man ~~~

I think it was quite common to create compositions representing literary characters, and this is captioned Little Nell ~~~

A picture postcard of Little Haven, Pembrokeshire ~~~ 

The back of one of the cards, complete with postage stamp ~~~

{The James who signed this was James Nicolas who went on to become one of Wales most notable Archdruids and poets. He was a wonderful man}

And more birthday wishes ~~~

A picture postcard of Llandudno Promenade ~~~ the dress looks quite Victorian, don't you think?

When I am gardening, I love to take breaks to drink plenty of tea and eat fortifying slices of cake. Here is my recipe for one of my most favourite cakes to eat, whether when gardening or not.  It was a favourite of Queen Victoria herself, indeed it was made for her and named after her ~~~ Victoria Sponge ~~~ here are two versions, the one I learned in school, and the one I use most of the time.  This is a picture of my cake, with the book Mary Berry's Baking Bible in the background showing Mary's version ~~~ I think I did good!

First, the recipe I use most of the time by Mary Berry, because it is the easiest and most successful one I've ever used, you will find it here on the BBC website, and it is a very good bake.

My old recipe, this is the one I learned in school, many decades ago, is only a little more complicated in that you have to weigh your eggs!  There are other small differences too, such as beating by hand! 

For two six inch round cake pans take the weight of two {room temperature} large eggs in butter, self raising flour, and caster sugar.  
Because you are weighing your eggs, the weight actually varied from sponge to sponge!  This is why I prefer Mary Berry's recipe.

Grease and flour well two six inch cake pans.  Light a moderate {gas mark 5} oven. 

In a mixing bowl, beat the butter with a wooden spoon {yes, that is how we made them in the 1960's} until the butter becomes pale in colour. Add the sugar, and cream together until the sugar is incorporated to the butter. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and add a little at a time {to avoid curdling} until they are incorporated into the butter and sugar.  Next, sift the flour and with a stirring motion {no more beating} gradually add into the mixture.   Batter needs to be a dropping consistency, and a little water or milk may be added to achieve this.  Spoon into waiting prepared pans and bake for about 20 minutes, or until cake is coming away from the sides of the pan and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I like to listen to see if the cake is still 'singing' and the skewer method best.

Cool in the pans for a few minutes, then turn out to cool completely on a wire rack before filling with strawberry, raspberry, or apricot jam.  Cut into slices and enjoy!

For larger pans, weigh three eggs for seven inch pans, and weigh four eggs for eight inch pans. Increasing baking times slightly.

Here is a single layer cake I made, filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries ~~~

So, Gentle Reader ~~~ you now know what I will be using to keep up my flagging energy levels in between the digging, and the weeding, and the sowing of seeds ~~~