It's a Classical Life

 "Whether you're single and living in your first apartment, a young couple buying your first home, a married couple with a few children, a single parent, a single solo adult, or baby boomers moving towards retirement, you can create a simple home that won't burden you financially or emotionally. When you build a comfortable and nurturing home, you'll feel like you've sailed into a safe harbour, that you're where you can be your best."                                                          Down To Earth ~ Rhonda Hetzel I first became interested in the notion of 'homemaking' when I was on parenting leave with my first baby and homemaking blogs were becoming all the rage. People who spoke of their family, their homes, their cleaning routines, their meal plans and everything else that goes with being a homemaker suddenly held new interest for me. Although in the intervening fourteen years I have worked part-time outside the home (I am a teacher, curr

LEISURE What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like stars at night. No time to turn at Beauty; glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.                              W.H. Davies  This stirring poem by Welsh poet W.H. Davies was first published in 1911 yet its message, I believe, is still just as important today. I have talked about past-times on the blog before but having read Sense and Sensibility last month, I wanted to look in a bit more detail at some of the leisure activities that these early Victorian women got up to. The reason for doing so, is because most of them are free and easy to achieve yet

"Perched on its summit was a palace, built round a fine, spacious courtyard, and containing loggias, halls and sleeping apartments, which were not only excellently proportioned but richly embellished with paintings depicting scenes of gaiety. Delectable gardens and meadows lay all around, and there were wells of cool, refreshing water. The cellars were stocked with precious wines, more suited to the palates of connoisseurs than to sedate and respectable ladies. And on their arrival the company discovered, to their no small pleasure, that the place had been cleaned from top to bottom, the beds in the rooms were made up, the whole house was adorned with seasonable flowers of every description, and the floors had been carpeted with rushes." The Decameron, (Introduction: First Day) ~ Boccaccio  The passage above describes the sanctuary that a group of young people living in Florence fled to during the horrific and devastating time of the Black Death. It is a sanctuary in a true s