Skip to main content

Story book cottage (1 of 2)


This looks like something from those English storybooks we read as children before the era of Australian children's literature. All it needs is some smoke from the chimney.

Musing:
The Cottage by Eleanor Farjeon -- my favourite childhood poet and story teller (very English)
"When I live in a Cottage
I shall keep in my cottage
Two different Dogs,
Three creamy Cows,
Four giddy Goats,
Five Pewter Pots,
Six silver Spoons,
Seven busy Beehives,
Eight ancient Appletrees,
Nine red Rosebushes,
Ten teeming Teapots,
Eleven chirping Chickens,
Twelve cosy Cats with their Kittenish Kittens, and
One Blessed Baby in a Basket.
That's what I'll have when I live in my Cottage."

Comments

  1. Sans baby, I agree with EF. I have this dream: to retire to just the place she describes.

    This is an eye-popping photo, JE. Reminds me of a painting in AG-NSW ... darn cannot find it ... winters morning or morning light.

    This is a damn fine austraian landscape just so well defined by attention to curve and slope.

    Bravo!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The cottage is wonderfully captured in this shot Joan Elizabeth, and I can almost imagine the items in teh poem within and around it (I'd keep that baby)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful composition. Lack of smoke in the chimney - deserted?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love the colours! A true painting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gorgeous pic. Would love it framed on my wall.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It does look like rolling English countryside, but in some ways it does not look so English. In the farm buildings, there would seem to be a lot of wood construction. And, at least in my storybook version of England, the metal fence would be replaced by a hedgerow,

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coolibah?

Is that a Coolibah tree beside the abandoned house? Every Australian knows about Coolibah trees because the bush ballad Waltzing Matilda is nigh on our unoffical national anthem but most of us live nowhere near the inland where they grow. Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.

The end

I retire from the workforce this week and to celebrate have decided to retire my current blogs and start afresh with a single consolidated blog -  My Bright Field  - to record the delights of my new life adventure. If you are interested follow me over there.  I will still be Sweet Wayfaring and collecting Royal Hotels.  The delights I discover along the way will appear together with my gardens and towns where I live.

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I gave my husband a thick book on the history of Australian Art for Christmas. It documents just how long it took the artists to paint what they actually saw -- at the hands of early artists our wild Australian landscapes looked like rolling green English countryside. Today's photo has "that look" so I have referenced words from the poem describing England. It was Christmas Eve. We were camped by the Tumut River in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. A shady spot planted with exotic trees from the "old world" and with the soft burble of a swiftly flowing stream. Bliss after a hot afternoon drive. But the old world dies slowly, a hot roast for Christmas dinner followed by plum pudding is one of those traditions that just won't die. Knowing we were going to be on the move on Christmas Day we settled for having our traditional hot meal on Christmas Eve this year.