WHAT DO WE LIVE FOR…

 

“What do we live for if it’s not to make life 

less difficult for each other.” 

~George Eliot~

“Mary Ann Evans (November 22nd, 1819 - December  22nd, 1880), alternatively Mary Anne or Marian, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there.” More can be read if you click on her pseudonym George Eliot underneath the quote.” 

MONDAY MORNING RECIPE POST - HEARTY TORTELLINI SOUP - SERVES 6

Last week we had a cold snap. It didn’t last but this recipe had been saved for such a day. We love a good hearty soup. I have another one on my blog at this link, which is also excellent, but there are a lot more ingredients. This one, not as many, faster and delicious. I found it at Charm Recipes and the original recipe is here.

Hearty Tortellini Soup - Serves 6

From prep to table, approximately 30 minutes.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 carrots, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

4 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth (I actually used beef broth as it was what I had in the pantry)

1 can (14.5 ozs) diced tomatoes (undrained)

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 package (9 ozs) fresh or frozen cheese tortellini

2 cups fresh spinach or kale

Grated Parmesan cheese for serving

Fresh parsley, choped (optional for garnish)

In a large pot heat the olive oil over medium heat. 

Add the chopped onion, garlic, carrots and celery. Saute for about 5 to 7 minutes, or until the vegetables are softened.

Pour in the vegetable broth (or substitutes - i.e. vegetable or beef broths) and add the diced tomatoes, also their juices. Stir in the Italian seasonings, salt and black pepper.

Increase the heat and bring everything in the pot to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer.

Add the tortellini to the pot and cook according to package directions (usually about 3 to 5 minutes for fresh tortellini, or 7 to 10 minutes for frozen.

In the last couple of minutes of cooking, stir in the fresh spinach (or kale) and cook until wilted.

Once everything is cooked through, ladle the soup into bowls and top with grated Parmesan cheese and fresh parsley, if using.

We thoroughly enjoyed this soup. We will probably have enough for meals the next couple of days. 

It is a very versatile dish so you can add your favorite protein. Suggestions were sausage, shredded chicken or ground turkey. 

The same with favorite vegetables. I thought mushrooms would be a nice addition.

Next time I would add 1 extra can of diced tomatoes.

Other tips can be found at the original recipe link.

I always add a cup of red wine when we add the broth and diced tomatoes. We both think this makes the broth even more flavorful.

I used spinach and not kale because I already had the fresh spinach in the fridge.

We served it with a roll toasted under the broiler after sprinkling grated Parmesan cheese on top. Left it in there until the top turned golden brown.

Full website address for this recipe is below, in case you prefer to copy and paste instead of using the link at the beginning of the recipe.

https://charmrecipes.com/hearty-tortellini-soup/

Thanks for looking, have a great week and Bon Appetit!

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYONE - SHARING A BLUE JAY TAKEN BY...

our son on a walk near where he lives. I am always grateful to him for sending his photos as I haven't taken any birds lately. I share some facts about them below.

They are known for their intelligent, noisy nature and are important for planting oak trees by burying acorns, many of which they forget, helping to spread and plant oak trees. 

Their striking blue color is an illusion created by the feather structure scattering light, not pigment, a phenomenon known as light interference. 

 Many notice that Blue Jays, who are fairly quiet during the spring and summer, are noisy little neighbors during the fall. In spring and early summer, when they are nesting, they tend to be more secretive. Come fall, when they are scavenging for food and hawks are more present, they communicate a variety of information and warnings through their calls. Blue Jays can also mimic the calls of other birds, including hawks.

They use their crests to communicate mood and aggression, with a flattened crest indicating relaxation and a raised one signaling stress or threat. 

They develop strong social networks and have complex social behaviors. 

You can't tell the difference between a male and female Blue Jay, they look identical. 

They eat a variety of foods, including nuts, seeds, insects and even the eggs and nestlings of other birds.

They prefer deciduous or mixed forests but can also be found in suburban areas and city parks, especially those with oak or beach trees. 

Blue Jays can live for a long time; the oldest known wild Blue Jay was almost 27 years old.

Blue Jays have been known to chip at and hoard light-coloured paint, probably to stockpile a source of calcium for the spring. If Blue Jays are chipping away at the paint on your house, try providing an alternate source of calcium like crushed egg shells – this usually stops the unwanted behavior.

More information can be found at this link.

Thanks for looking and with thanks to my dear son who provided the photos for today's blog post.

Have a great day everyone!

SATURDAY MORNING AT THE BIRD FEEDER - THEY ARE WAY TOO EARLY! IT'S NOT EVEN OCTOBER!

 

The Halloween Crowd decided to drop in for a visit. Everyone tried to tell them it was way too early, but you know how that goes with some ghosties/cats/pumpkins?

The Mrs. has started feeding the birdies but they remain scarce. Even the squirrel stopped by for a few seconds and turned his nose up. Squirrel never turns his nose up at anything. We think the cleaning solution Mr. used, may be putting them off a bit. Hopefully it will rain tonight and that will take care of that.

And as we always like to say here on a Saturday Morning at the Bird Feeder, that's how it goes sometimes, or something like that.

Have a great weekend everyone.

WHAT CAN I SAY...

What can I say that I have not said before?

So I'll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it,

Stone is the face of patience,

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until it ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the 

chamber of commerce,

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf 

when you were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,

and the leaf is singing still.

What Can I Say?

by

Mary Oliver

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by wonderment at the natural environment, vivid imagery, and unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared the best-selling poet in the United States.

GREEN SPRING GARDENS - 9/18/25 - PART 3

I cropped a photo Gregg took of this bee. The eyes fascinated me.

The bee is enjoying the Autumn Sage.  I checked with Google and it tells me that this is a male Eastern Carpenter Bee. Females of this species have entirely black eyes. Males also have a white patch on their face, in contrast to the female's solid black face. Male Eastern Carpenter Bees are not aggressive. They are defending their territory by hovering but cannot sting.  Another interesting fact is that Carpenter Bees do pollinate. 15% of our agriculture products are pollinated by native bees and this includes the Carpenter Bees.

We had a carpenter bee bore holes in our letterbox post, and also a few bore holes on our old wooden deck. We treated the post and now we have a piece of modern art/sculpture, until we can replace it. When we had the new non-wood deck built (made out of Trex), we saw one hovering for a couple of weeks before it gave up. It was interesting behavior. Also, the female is capable of chewing an inch of depth per day. As nests are reused each season, the best site becomes larger and larger, giving room for more of their offspring.  

This is a website of all the different kinds of bees. It has advertisements but gives a lot of information.

In today's post I share the last of the photographs from the garden. Part 1 and Part 2 was the more exciting part of the day but as well as getting our exercise, taking photos of flowers (and bees and butterflies, moths and other insects) is what I love to do when visiting. They are our constants and were taken in between our other events. The birds were scarce because of the time of day perhaps. We arrived mid-morning. I didn't even hear them.

Not so long ago they opened the Moon Gate area. It is slowly taking shape and has a new brick walkway and new plantings. I look forward to seeing how it progresses next Spring.

I found these very interesting. They are called Leopard Plant and are non-toxic to humans and pets, and wildlife I'm assuming. When it blooms it produces yellow daisy-like flowers. Its leaves become spotted and its thought that this is how it got its name by botanists back in the day, likening them to leopards. A very hardy plant!

Red Spider Lily. All parts are toxic to humans and pets. It is native to China, Korea, Japan and Nepal. I have provided links on all the flowers, and you can click on their names to see more info.

In the next photo is a cluster of Jerusalem Artichokes flowers. I remember my mother buying the roots from the greengrocer, another childhood memory, and I always thought they were very tasty. I haven't seen them around here. According to the information at the link, they are similar in texture to water chestnuts with a nutty flavor. They can be boiled, mashed, roasted like potatoes or eaten raw.  I seem to remember mother roasting them like a potato. I never knew they had such a beautiful flower until I took this photo and identified them.

The purple flowers are Mealy Cup Sage and the yellow are Tall Tickseed.

Both very much enjoyed by the bees.

How do wild bees carry pollen? Click here to find out if you would like to know more. The bees hind legs have what they call pollen baskets or corbiculae. They are a specialized feature on female worker bees used to carry pollen back to the hive for food. Lots more information at the previous link but also an amazing amount online. What you are seeing below is a Bumble bee. It is fuzzy all over whereas the Carpenter Bee has a shiny black abdomen with not quite as much fuzz. This website tells of other differences.

I'm not sure when we will go back to the garden before everything goes to sleep for the winter, but I was happy for the chance to see these while visiting today.

Lamb's Ear 

(you can click on all the flower names as I have linked to other websites that have more information)

Tennessee Coneflower

I have mentioned the other flowers in the next photo, except for the New England Asters. I neglected to get any close-ups of those.

Autumn Sage (violet)

Swamp Rose Mallow

Ivy-leaved Cyclamen

Mexican Honeysuckle

Red Hot Poker

(All the website links have better photos.)

That's all for this visit.

Thanks for looking and 

I hope you all have a great 

day.

HAPPY FALL

I didn’t realize until I checked the date, that the 22nd was the official first day of Fall here. I am a little bit late but I found this touch of whimsy on Pinterest and knew I was going to share it today.

GREEN SPRING GARDENS - 9/18/25 - PART 2

 

Continuing from our sit-down on the bench under the shade of the tree, we took our selfie. I was wearing 'my old scruffy' as I like to call it, i.e. a very old dress that I generally only wear at home when I am not going anywhere. It's like my comfy blanky, faded from many washes and I said to Gregg, "Do you think I look okay enough to go out in this old thing?" Gregg laughs and I add, "Well, it's not like we're going to meet anyone we know!" Gregg, wearing his old 't' shirt and jeans, says something like, "You're dressed up more than me."  So off we set, scruffy and scruffy, heading to the garden.

After we had our nice little chit-chat with the couple who so kindly took our photo, and said our goodbyes to those lovely Boston Terriers, both in this post, we sat for a while longer. We had noticed a group of ladies walking across the green in a different country’s traditional clothing, which I always enjoy as you may have heard me say before, an interest since childhood. I was taking it all in. The sun was sparkling off their gowns. It looked like they were with a photographer. I said at the time it looked like a wedding party. 

 While admiring them from a distance something else happened. A young man walked along the path, stopped not so far away but still in the shade, and talked into his cell phone. He was looking in the direction of the group of ladies. He had a lovely smile and he was dressed as you see in the next photo. Gregg struck up a conversation after the young man put his phone away. After a while my dear other half asked if he could take a photo. It’s a real nice photo but it’s hard to capture the elegance of such a style of clothing, especially as we were still in the shade. (I have blurred out his face for privacy).

I surprised myself - just put it down to the fact that I am in my comfortable stage with such outspokenness in my mid-70s - at least that’s what I told Gregg later. I said to the young man I thought he looked very handsome and he accepted my compliment with another smile and a thank you. Gregg enjoys chatting to people we meet by chance, as do I, and this day had already turned into a special kind of day for that. The three of us had a very pleasant conversation, but then he had to leave as the wedding ceremony was about to start. We continued on as I was eager to take photos of the flowers.

By this time I was starting to get tired, though still taking photos along the path (always more energy for taking photos of flowers). I saw movement. Our nice young man was heading back towards us with a big smile on his face. It had been about ten minutes since we spoke to him. He said, with another big smile on his face, I have talked to my family, and we would like to invite you to the wedding! Okay, knock me down with a feather and I was in a bit of a shock but how could we turn down such a gracious invitation? Heart was full I can tell you. This had turned into a most amazing day. We followed him into the gazebo area and was guided to where we could sit. Anywhere he said. We chose the third row thinking that perhaps family were going to sit in the first two rows.

The little girl on the left had the most darling dress and wearing cowboy boots, pink and glittery and sparkling brightly in the sun. She was adorable! 

I'm afraid no photos of the bride as I didn't want to be too intrusive but we were allowed to take a few photos. The ceremony was spoken in both their native language and English. There were English-speaking friends invited also. The ceremony itself was called a Nikah. We listened to the words of the Imam and the sentiments reminded us of our own wedding by my village vicar all those years ago.

We watched as the new husband and wife walked down the steps of the gazebo and joined their family for official photos. Things were winding down.

We thought it was time to go and Gregg found the young man and we both thanked him for this wonderful invitation. We were kind of in a daze that we had been invited but absolutely thrilled to have had this experience. As we were leaving a lady tapped me on the shoulder and gave me two favor boxes to take home with us. Another gift for these strangers - 'scruffy and scruffy' I will call them and yes, I am smiling. We were a tad underdressed but this didn't seem to matter at all. What mattered was that we accepted their invitation and we made the young man very happy when we said yes. 

We were on our way to dinner at a favorite eatery, so we kept the boxes for our evening meal. Each one had the above items in it; a beef empanada, a chicken empanada, a chicken salad tea sandwich with the crusts cut off, two delicious chocolates in the pink and blue wrapping and three small wedding cookies. We thoroughly enjoyed our supper. I'm glad we waited as it allowed us to think back on our day.  We guessed the boxes came from a catering company. I wish we knew from where, as we would highly recommend them. Everything was delicious and it was a fun and out-of-the-ordinary supper for us.

That's the end of our day, and what a day it was. Right off the bat we met that nice couple who took our photos at the Moon Gate, then there was Oreo, Apple and Linguini. Lastly, the lovely young man who extended the best kindness with such a gracious invitation to his family's wedding. We will always remember. 

Years ago we went to a Jewish Wedding Ceremony, an invite from one of Gregg's young petty officers back in our navy days, and all these years later we were invited to a Muslim Wedding Ceremony. Amazing! We still talk about that other wedding very affectionately, and I know we will be talking about this one with just as much affection.

I have photos of flowers which I will share next time.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day everyone!

MONDAY MORNING RECIPE POST - OVERNIGHT CINNAMON ROLL OATS - 1 SERVING

Having enjoyed a bowl of hot oatmeal for breakfast since as far back as I could talk, I have never tried overnight oatmeal. My association is oatmeal/winter/cold weather food, but I thought this recipe would be ideal for eating oatmeal in the warmer months right out of the fridge, and so I gave it a go. I found it on "Eat.Drink.Love" hosted by Stephanie, and the original recipe can be found at this link. She has a lot of other recipes I am eager to try, one being the Potato and Cheddar Egg Bakes, a Starbucks copycat. 

For now, I am sticking with the overnight oatmeal. Need not say it is nothing like an actual cinnamon roll? But if you like an oatmeal that you can make up the night before, and get you or your kids out of the house with a no-fuss nourishing, healthy breakfast, you might want to give this a go.

Overnight Cinnamon Roll Oats

Notes from Stephanie: "If you have never had overnight oats, I can tell you that some people can’t handle the texture and the fact that its cold, but I am totally down with the overnight oats!

I recommend using old fashioned oats over quick oats for overnight oats. Quick oats end up being softer and mushier.

You can also try different types of yogurts. I like vanilla but plain works too!"

Overnight Cinnamon Roll Oatmeal

Yield: 1 serving

Calories: approximately 372

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Additional time: 4 hours

Total time: 4 hours 5 minutes

 

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup skim milk (can also use soy, oat or almond milk)

3/4 cup plain or vanilla Greek yogurt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Pinch of salt

2 teaspoons light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

For the cream cheese topping (optional):

2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

2 teaspoons powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a jar or container, stir together the oats, milk, yogurt, cinnamon, salt, brown sugar, and the vanilla extract until thoroughly mixed. Cover and chill overnight. 

To make the optional cream cheese topping, stir together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract with a fork until smooth. Spoon desired amount on top of oats. If prepping ahead, store separate from the oats so that the topping stays thick like frosting.

How did I like it? My dear other half is not a fan of oatmeal, hot or cold, so I made this for me. I enjoyed it very much but the next time I was glad to add the cream cheese topping for just that little bit of extra sweetening.

Even though this said it was for one serving, I ended up dividing it into two 8 oz. jars. I have this type. I found it more than enough to divide and eat the extra the next day.

I served it with blueberries, strawberries and almonds.

On the whole I enjoyed but I have to get used to it not being hot. I am a creature of habit and this recipe on my blog is still my favorite. I will be making this one again and will also try other overnight recipes as I do enjoy a change. With the colder nights around the corner however, I will be making my old standby, Cranberry-Apple Crockpot Oatmeal (previous link) and save this for the warmer months. 

Below you will see my choice of yogurt. I always bought the low-fat version, but I read recently that full-fat probiotic plain yogurt can be a better choice for several reasons, including increased satiety, better nutrient absorption and fewer additives. (I also prefer organic.) If you are taking note of such things, the higher fat content would add to the nutritional value. I am not an expert and you can obviously use your own favorite and what makes you feel the most comfortable, considering certain dietary restrictions your doctor might have you on also. I always buy the larger container as I eat it every day, whether is a spoonful with cereal or a half a cup on its own with a piece of fruit and a few nuts  

I use almond milk instead of regular dairy. I sometimes also use oat milk.

I have added the full address below for you to copy and paste.

https://eat-drink-love.com/overnight-cinnamon-roll-oats/ 

I think that's about it but as always, if you have any questions, leave them in the comment section and I will do my best to answer them.

Thanks for looking, enjoy your day 

and Bon Appétit!