The Sunday porch: Trondheim, Norway

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The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: Norwegian hotel, ca. 1900, Library of CongressFossestuen Hotel, Trondhjem, Norway, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900, a photochrom by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Click on the photo to get a better look at the building’s green roof and outdoor restaurant seating divided by planters and latticework.

 Nestled in the mountains near the lower tier of the Lienfoss waterfalls, the Fossestuen Hotel drew many foreigners to this picturesque region of Norway. Built in 1892, the hotel was actually a restaurant that served dinner and refreshments to tourists. The building reflects the traditional wooden architecture of Norway, with the sod roof a source of insulation against the harsh winter cold.

— from the image’s page on World Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress.

The aforementioned woods

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Stuttgart woods with wood anemones, by enclos*ureA little while ago today. . .

Stuttgart woods with wood anemones, by enclos*ureThe forest behind our house carpeted in wood anemones or Anemone nemorosa, a small white flower native to Germany.

Stuttgart woods with wood anemones, by enclos*ureI just noticed that little black bug on the flower petal. It looks like a tick. I feel itchy now. . . .

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king…

— Thomas Nashe

On the windowsill, this morning

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I looked out the upstairs window yesterday afternoon and saw that the woods behind our house were carpeted in wood anemones or Anemone nemorosa, a native flower.

When I went out the back gate, I also found yellow primroses — Primula vulgaris, I believe — along the fence.

Except for the little white flowers and some ivy, the forest is still mostly brown and beige, but that will change very quickly now that daytime temperatures are in the 60s° F.

Flowers in a vase
or strewn in mad profusion
across a meadow. Choose

— Tom Disch, from “Memoirs of a Primrose“

Vintage landscape: Edo blossoms

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Cherry blossoms in Japan, Library of Congress“Higurashi no sato jiin no rinsen” (Temple Gardens, Nippori), 1857, a woodblock print by Andō Hiroshige, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The view is from Ueno Hill of Shūsō-in, one of three Buddhist temple gardens known as Hanamidera or Flower-viewing Temples. This print is one of fifty in an album of Edo (present day Tokyo) by Hiroshige.

Detail of print above.
Detail of print above.

There’s a nice essay on cherishing the brief beauty of the cherry blossoms by Diane Durston in today’s Washington Post, here.

Detail of print above.
Detail of print above.
The cherry trees in our neighborhood here in Stuttgart have just begun to bloom this week.

Life in gardens: colored eggs

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chicken fed food color, Library of Congress“Possible now to color yolks of eggs “red, white and blue” by feeding hens different feeds,” April 7, 1939, by Harris & Ewing, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Washington, D.C., April 7. . . . Charles A. Denton, Junior Chemist, poultry nutrition laboratory of the National Agriculture Research Center, Beltsville, Maryland, feeding a hen a certain food to produce a definite colored yolk.

— from the original Harris & Ewing caption

Blue eggs and ham?

More photos of the Department of Agriculture in action in the 1930s here and here.

. . . Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear. . . .
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist. . . .

— Naomi Shihab Nye, from “Boy and Egg“