March 18, 2014 by anexpatreturned - 3 Comments

What to Do When It’s Raining (or Snowing) in Fredericksburg, Virginia

Anyone who knows me knows that two of life’s greatest pleasures for me are books and coffee – and I have a definite weak spot for any place that can combine both. Whether they be neighborhood coffee shops with shelves of second-hand books for customers or bookshops with couches and caffeine on demand, be they big or small, sophisticated or down-to-earth, it’ll be hard to drag me back out of the door once I find them. In any town I’ve ever visited or city I’ve ever lived in, I generally found them all within a matter of days or even hours. And what better and cozier thing is there to do on a snowy (or rainy) day?

Sidewalk temptation

As you can see, when I first discovered the Griffin Bookshop and Coffee Bar, we were at the tail end of summer. The trees were still cloaked in brilliant, living green and, if anything, I was looking for a place to escape the heat of the late-August sun. Still, on this snowy March day, I would love to be curled up in a corner of the Griffin with a steaming cup of coffee, surrounded by its seemingly endless shelves of books. The front room has tables devoted to subjects ranging from new fiction to local interest. In the back, behind the coffee-bar, a further two rooms are stuffed to the ceiling with shelves where books are arranged alphabetically and by subject-matter, as neatly as in any library.

Yours Truly enjoys two of her favorite things in the world: a cup of coffee and a nearly endless supply of reading material.

The feeling, however, is more as if I’d wandered into the private reading rooms of some wealthy intellectual who has, inexplicably, given me the run of his home for the day.

The smallest reading room at the Griffin looks more like a private sitting room than the back room of a coffee shop

A garden for fair-weather reading, a most excellent pastime

They also have a little, brightly colored and carpeted nook of a room off the main reading room where everything – from the decor to the size of the furniture to the choice of reading material – has been chosen for the very youngest of readers. Seeing it was enough to make we wish I’d had a chance to be a kid in Fredericksburg. And the Griffin’s not just a welcome refuge when the weather’s bad, either. Their tables out front and the marvelous back garden make this a perfect place to spend a leisurely afternoon in the springtime. A soon as this snow melts, I think I’m going to have to head back for a day. Call me strange, but I’ll drive an hour and a half for a good coffee shop any day…

Here’s wishing you all somewhere as cozy to wait out these last days of winter.

Until next time, stay warm and keep a good book close to hand!

– Jennifer

March 17, 2014 by anexpatreturned - 2 Comments

Three Days until Spring and Too Early for April Fooling

Yes, we really got all this snow overnight and, at two in the afternoon on March 17th, it still hasn’t stopped.

I never would have thought, when I moved to Virginia (it is, technically, the south, after all) that I would have more occasion to use cross-country skis than my bicycle. Go figure! I’ll just keep waiting for spring. Meanwhile, has anyone got some snowshoes I can borrow?

A little something official about our wacky weather: Winter storm blasts U.S. mid-Atlantic days before spring (trust.org)
What a fellow expat-returned (to England, in her case) is doing to get ready for spring on the Other Side of the Pond: Spring Has Sprung…I Hope! (putthekettleonblog.wordpress.com)
And an transplanted English gardener’s opinion on what our snowfall will do to the early blooms: Tommie crocus shocked by a St Patrick’s Day snow (beforeyougarden.com)

Will our crocuses hang in there? I’m crossing my fingers! In the meantime, with the fireplace lit and the prospect of a cup of hot chocolate, it’s beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas than St. Paddy’s Day.

Wishing you all good cheer and some Irish luck!

Until next time,

– Jennifer

March 13, 2014 by anexpatreturned - 2 Comments

A Hint of Spring and a Memory of Winter

Yesterday, when I saw these flowers that had sprung up through the dry grass and coat of winter leaves lying strewn across a neighbor’s yard, I could hardly believe my eyes. After such a long winter, I had become so accustomed to seeing nothing but shades of brown that the bright yellow and lavender of these blossoms came as a shock. I had to stop and take a picture.

The first spring colors after a long, long winter

Looking at them, it’s hard to believe that I took this next picture just 6 days before the other!

Garden owl, snuggled into the snow next to what remains of last year’s lavender, waiting for better weather

I am actually a great fan of the winter, the cold weather and the snow. This season, however, has been a little too long even for me. I am looking forward to spring. My bicycle is in the garage looking sad and bored and the woodland trails I love are a muddy morass. Bring on the spring, with its its bright greens of new growth and its warm, soft grass to lie down on. It will be coming soon. Until then, however, here is a little encore for the winter: some pictures from our last two big snowfalls, one a week ago and one two weeks before that.

Two in the bush: a male and female cardinal wait their turn at the bird feeder

Two in the bush (so to speak): a male and female cardinal wait their turn at the bird feeder

Waiting his turn

Vying for position

Under the bird feeder, the ground feeders clean up the fallen seeds

Following the hoof prints through the snow…

Can you see them all huddled together? I tried to count them, but there were more than a dozen of all sizes and ages.

As I stood watching, a flash of red caught my eye. Never before had I been lucky enough to see the neighborhood fox, but there he was, in broad daylight, prowling right past the herd of deer. They watched him but gave no sign of alarm at the sight. He was bright red and bigger than I would have imagined – he came up higher than some of their knees. I could see the white tip of his tail as he made his way up the hill behind him, slinking sleekly through snow. I couldn’t catch him in a picture, but I won’t soon forget.

This straggler and a couple others were busy stripping the bark from trees. It’s been a hard winter for our local deer.

The deer won’t the only local animals to have a tough time this winter. We’ve done our bit for the birds, as well as for the squirrels.

Squirrel prints on the snow. They’ve discovered the pile of peanuts we put out on the porch before going to bed last night.

Here they come!

Action shot! The squirrels don’t so much run as leap in bounds across the surface of the snow, braving the hawks that circle about the yard and the nearby woods

Well-earned snack

On that note, I’ll close, hoping that I’ll have no occasion to put up any more pictures of snow until next November!

Ah, Spring! (visionviewpoint.wordpress.com)
Changing times, changing clime (diggingri.com)

Thanks for stopping by!

See you next time.

– Jennifer

March 2, 2014 by anexpatreturned - 5 Comments

Surprise Migration from Florida… (well, sort of)

What to do with a sudden overnight snowfall of over a foot? Walking through my neighborhood the day after our most recent catastrophic snowstorm (after some serious shoveling), I saw a variety of impromptu lawn decorations, from snow forts to snow people of all sorts. This, however, takes the blue ribbon for most original post-snowfall lawn decoration.

For the delight of tacky lawn-ornament aficionados and tongue-in-cheek ornithologists: a flock of rare pink Arctic flamingos graces my neighbors’ lawn the morning after our last big snowstorm

We’re supposed to get another flash snowfall of a foot tonight. I can’t wait to see what they do next time…

You’ve Been Flocked! (wbbands.info)

And, for those of you interested in things even stranger than the common front-yard dwelling suburban flamingo:

Yard Sale: Revel in grassy kitsch with these awesomely odd lawn ornaments (metro.us)

Lastly, for those of you who just love flamingos (I know you’re out there):

Flamingo Fantastic! (letliladecorate.com)

See you after the blizzard and thanks for stopping by!

Jennifer

December 11, 2013 by anexpatreturned - 9 Comments

Ice Garden

The scene I saw from my window when I opened the blinds on Monday morning…

View from an upstairs window

… was a garden of ice, a magician’s fantasy, the masterpiece of some mad glassmaker.

Each blade of grass has become a blade in truth

Every leaf of every bush is has been set in a crystal bauble

The trees shiver under an overcast sky that promises more snow to come

Memories of flowers, frozen before berries can be born

The pines have dressed their every needle in a coating of ice

A red pendant

Sparkling winter green

A cluster of berries hang enshrined in crystal like a bunch of garnets on some art nouveau bauble

On a morning like this, I could just about believe this was a Narnian lamppost

Even the most mundane things are made beautiful.

A rusty nail…

A gatepost…

A chain-link fence…

A suburban street…

Not a soul to be seen

The ice may be beautiful, but it has done its share of damage.

The wintry silence is broken only by the occasional sharp crack and whoosh of a frozen tree limb snapping and falling to the ground. The branches could not bear the weight of so much frozen water.

Boughs of glistening glass overhang the street and sidewalks. I almost expect them to chime in the wind.

It’s time to go inside for hot cocoa with marshmallows.

“What are those marshmallow things, anyway?” That’s a question many of my European friends have asked me. What can I say? That they are confections of sugary delight? Perhaps that’s a little too ornate of a description. I hadn’t had cocoa with marshmallows in years until this very cup in the picture. I do freely admit that our American cocoa cannot even approach the heights of deliciousness attained by the thick, dark, creamy chocolate I have drunk in Vienna or Milan, but there is something about the humble and rather silly marshmallow that makes American hot cocoa magical. It evokes memories of coming in wet and caked in frost and snow from sledding, snowball fights and snowman building, of childhood Christmases and visits to grandparents’ houses, playing games or reading in front of the fire while the snow came down thick and white outside the windows.

The next morning when I woke, it was snowing in earnest…

Overnight, the ice had been covered over in snow

I’ll close with a wish that you all are able to fit in at least one snowball fight in between bouts of grumbling about power outages and shoveling the driveway. We grownups have to deal with the problems winter poses, but its important not to lose sight of the magic and fun it brought us when we were kids. Enjoy the snow if you can, even when it’s doing its worst! If you have a hard time with that, well, hot cocoa with marshmallows might help. Our high temperature tomorrow is going to be about 18 F (that’s -3 Celsius), so I’ll certainly be making another cup.

Thanks for stopping by! Stay cozy.

– Jennifer

Homemade Marshmallows Recipe (instructables.com) This one’s for all my European friends who want to live the marshmallow experience (and all my expat friends who can’t get them at their local supermarkets).
Cocoa Local: Top Spots for Hot Chocolate (redtri.com)

I know what I’m having this afternoon in place of my five o’clock coffee. The problem is, which of these lovely recipes do I try first?

Hot Cocoa Recipes – CHRISTMAS EDITION! (amplearabia.com) Exotic, rich and extremely tempting
The Best Hot Chocolate You Will Ever Have (chelseyhardy44.wordpress.com) A very American cup of cocoa

And, for my local readership:

Cocoa Local: Top Spots for Hot Chocolate (redtri.com) A list of great places in D.C. for a cup of chocolate goodness on a cold day…
…and my post from the previous day, when the snow first started to fall here in Northern Virginia.

To conclude here’s a link to a pair of “winter berry” earrings made by a fellow blogger, expat and jewelry maker who lives in France. I was reminded of them when taking the photos of my own ice garden. I love her creations, inspired by the nature that surrounds her beautiful new home:

Enjoy!

December 9, 2013 by anexpatreturned - 1 Comment

First Snowfall

Snow on red berries by my neighbor’s fence

Wrong day for scooters (Rome, winter of 2010)

Flora in the Villa Borghese park gets a rare taste of a colder sort of winter (Rome, winter of 2010)

Days ago I heard that the area of Virginia where I live was in for some winter weather yesterday: temperatures in the 20s (that’s as cold as -6 Celsius), some snow in the morning and freezing sleet and rain in the afternoon and overnight. For someone who’s lived in a clime that is relatively tropical for the last seven years (well, Rome is tropical in comparison with Moscow, Prague, Bucharest and Bavaria – places to which I am more accustomed – so bear with me), this rather bland weather report sounded very exciting.

While I was living in Rome, I was lucky enough (well, I considered it good luck, though many of my Roman friends felt it to be quite the opposite) to be there for the first snowfall the city had seen in about thirty years. It appears that was the beginning of a trend, though, for it snowed twice more in the two following years (once for each winter). Still, one meager snowfall which barely sticks to the ground long enough to take a picture of it (these are a couple I was lucky enough to snap on those occasions) doesn’t really satisfy the longing for real winter weather that resides in the heart of a girl who spent the winters of most of her formative years in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Palm trees with a light dusting of snow on them were a rather magical sight, but what such scenes mostly did was make me nostalgic for the winters and Christmas holidays of my childhood.

You can imagine, then, how I felt when I woke up this morning, opened my blinds and found these scenes awaiting me through the upstairs windows:

Snow-dusted roofs in the early morning

A hint of white and a promise of more to come

I hurried to make myself a cup of coffee, throw on some warm clothes and head outside with my trusty camera to document the first real winter snow I’d seen in a very long time:

Frosted foxglove, caught by surprise

This morning saw a pitched battle between the resident family of sparrows and some bluebird invaders. The outcome is not yet clear.

Our garden sleeps until spring

Hardy rosemary

The neighbors have strung up their Christmas lights

Wearing their holiday finest

Bare tree fingers rake the frozen sky

A little help for our friends

The snow continues until mid-afternoon when the weather report is proven right and it turns to a sort of freezing rain. Still, the snow and ice are not going anywhere. We don’t expect the temperatures to get back above freezing for several hours. Until tomorrow, at least, I can enjoy my winter wonderland.