A Celebration of a Garden - A Teeny Tea...

Greetings to you, All Dear Friends of The Tearoom!

I'm happy to welcome you, once again, to a Teeny Tea!

It's a beautiful day and all of the summer sun has been at work on the porch garden, so that we may have our tea there again today.

The pansy garden is decorated festively with a tiny bunting! (As always, don't forget to click on the images to see them larger.)

This is Mistress Oiseau and she floats over the garden. She is a paperdoll designed by Alex of The Ragged Caravan on Etsy. (To find out more about her, please see the end of this post)

We seem to have a shy and curious visitor in the garden today.

I love days like this so much.

We live all winter long for a handful of days this bright and warm.

Today reminds me of one of my favorite paintings "Souper à Deux" by Mildred G. Burrage, 1912 (Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine)  I've only seen this painting once in person (although it is part of the PMA's permanent collection), but it has stayed in my head since the early 90's and it feels like it has influenced so much of how I approach creative projects on days like this.

One our lovely bees

And so, we begin our day and set the table for our tea!

Ah!  Brownie has arrived!  He likes to arrive before everyone else to make certain his piano is properly tuned.

To all of my friends who are doing their best to keep working and creating, in spite of illness or injury, please allow Brownie to help inspire you.  Recently, he developed a problem with his hip and I was not able to see how to repair it, so I have made for him the very stylish pair of brown velvet trousers he is wearing.  They allow him to stand again, as well as sit, so that he can continue to play his beloved piano.  Sometimes it takes a lot of courage, as well as additional forms of creativity, in order to keep moving forward.

Our shy deer visitor is coming closer, in order to hear Brownie playing.

And look who is making his way through the tangle of plants!  It is our friend Eadwig!

Mr. Bear has arrived and is so happy to see Eadwig!

Some more guests have arrived!  Please say "Hello!" to the Jacobobs!  They were created by my friend Kit Lane!  (For more information about the Jacobobs, please see the end of this post.) Brownie, Eadwig and Tulip are so happy to see them today!

It's such a warm day, so we are all grateful for a large glass of iced tea to sip before we begin!

We have our choice today of either Brambleberry or a combination of Awake and Earl Grey. Turbinado sugar and freshly-squeezed lime juice are available if you like one or both in your tea!

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is always so helpful at serving everyone.  It's my pleasure to serve her.  She likes her black iced tea with extra sugar!

Dear Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is getting ready to begin to serve our tea as everyone begins to take their seats.

Our menu today is a Celebration of a Garden...

And here is Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, with the first of our sandwiches!

Lovely slices of mixed grape tomatoes and yummy fresh mozzarella,  with just a smear of pesto is such a favorite of us all.

Here is another favorite sandwich for our teas, cucumber and watercress mousse, so cool and refreshing on such a warm day!

Our next sandwich today is reminiscent of a favorite French combination:  lovely crisp slices of Easter Egg radishes, in their bright colors, accented with a compound butter of finely chopped nasturtium leaves and white pepper!

And finally, something new and delicious!  A pesto, made from peas, olive oil and parmesan cheese.

(We were hoping to use the micro-greens we grew on the porch, but, sadly, the slugs enjoyed them first.  Mr. Bear has made growlings at the slugs.)

It's definitely time that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle took a rest and had her sandwiches!

You might notice a new pair of tongs we have!  Everyone is delighted with these strange but fun bird claw tongs, which we ordered from our dear friend Laura.  (Please see more information about Laura's Etsy shop at the end of this post.)

Thursday and Hyacinthe have been looking forward to these fresh veggie sandwiches all day!

Mr. Bear is mesmerized by the colors, but not so mesmerized that he would consider not eating them!

As usual, Mr. Mookie and Teddy have a few more sandwiches so they can help to feed Baby Hoobert.  

And, near the piano, our teenier guests are also enjoying their tea and sandwiches...

For our dessert today, again, I have taken something traditional and given it just a few changes. Summer in New England means certain things to me and one of these things is strawberry shortcake, but rhubarb is also part of my summer memories, as I remember how my parents (who were both raised in Maine) made it and still stands as my favorite: as a simple compote.  So, I have combined both of these summer fruit desserts and our sweet today is a Hibiscus Rhubarb Shortcake.

As is traditional in New England (as well as popular in some other parts of the U.S.), our favorite way of making shortcake is starting with a really lovely biscuit.  For my friends outside of the U.S., our biscuits are similar to a scone, but perhaps more buttery and more fluffy.  Many people here in the States start their shortcake with a small, yellow spongecake, which you can always buy in the produce section of the supermarket, but it's not our favorite.  My mother always made them with biscuits and I do the same.  I found a really lovely recipe for biscuits on the King Arthur Flour site and you can find it here.  We like them a lot for their very mild buttery and less baking powder-y flavor, which I do prefer to my mother's recipe.

\

Next, since I don't grow rhubarb myself, I was very lucky to have been given a nice, generous handful by my neighbor!  And when I stewed it, I followed a tip by my friend Jill Colonna, who recommended that in order to make the rhubarb a more pink color, simply add a hibiscus tea bag! Brilliant!  I did not have any simple hibiscus tea, however, but, as usual, I found a way to use something I had, with good success.  Tazo Tea makes a really wonderful, flavorful herbal tea called Passion.  It is made up of hibiscus, rose hips, lemongrass, orange rind, licorice bark and a very small amount of cinnamon.  Using this tea made the rhubarb a lovely vivid pink-red shade and all of those different flavors in the tea really make it special.

Of course, we top each shortcake with a dollop of whipped cream...

...and finish with a sugared viola!

If you have ever wanted to make these, don't wait any longer.  I found the recipe in the Spring 2019 issue of Sweet Paul Magazine and it really couldn't be easier.

I'm not sure if the print version of this magazine is still available, but you can always buy the digital version for your iPad or iPhone (the Issuu app is required to view it, available in the App Store).

I made these from the violas and pansies from my porch garden!

I think they are a pretty spectacular result for my first try and 

could make such a beautiful decoration for so many desserts.

The rhubarb is being served in a lovely new dish I found on Etsy.  But I can't help but notice that Mr.Bear is taking particular notice of it.  

He is reading that word on the side, Saccharin.  And reading it again.  And again.  But what does it mean?

He asks his dear friend Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle to take a look, but she does not know what it means either.

They ask Teddy to take a look, owing to the fact that he is the elder statesman of the family, but no luck.  He has never seen a word like this before.

So, they ask Eadwig to take a look.  He speaks several languages  (including several bug languages as well.) Although he does not know this word, he thinks that it looks like it might be French.

After some murmuring between them, Mr. Bear thinks he has figured it out!  Let's take a listen to what he has to say...

We have talked about it and have decided that the word "Saccharin" is on that new bowl because it is a souvenir from a town called Saccharin.  It's like some nice teacups I have seen from Niagara Falls or The Queen Mary (I do not know who The Queen Mary is, but she must be very important to have her name on teacups!  I don't suppose I will meet her, but I wonder if it would be OK to ask her about the teacups if I did?).  Since Eadwig has told us he thinks that might be a French word, we think that Saccharin must be a town in France, like some of the nice places we saw when we watched the Tour de France or in that movie we don't remember the name of.

We have decided that it must be a very nice place to live, so we have imagined what it would be like.

We are sure we would live in an old house with beautiful windows.  It is covered in shrimp colored plaster, with shutters like clotted cream.  Some of the rooms are small, but we are all comfortable there.

Our little diningroom is upstairs and looks out over trees, which someone told us are called linden trees.  All we know is that they smell very pretty in the spring.  From our window, we can pretend it is a treehouse when we look out.  During the summertime, the buzzing cicadas keep us company and we like to listen to them.  Eadwig understands them and sometimes he sings us their songs in words we can understand.

In the wintertime, we miss our friends the cicadas.  We understand they are sleeping under the roots of the linden trees.  We hope they are warm enough.  They would be welcome to come inside to sit next to the fire with us if they wanted.

Some nights, after our dinner, we like to go out in the backyard and read stories to each other or sing songs that we know.  Sometimes, fireflies come around too.  We think they must like our singing.

After we made our trip to the market, we couldn't wait to get back to our home and eat some of the cherries we bought from the nice man there.   The cherries are beautiful and we like to look at them a long time before we eat them.  Cherries are some of our favorites because they are beautiful and they taste nice too!

At night, we snuggle in bed and wait for the moon to come out for the night.  Looking at the moon is one of our very favorite things.

*****

Thank you, Mr. Bear, for telling us about what this word means.  I, for one, am perfectly willing to accept that definition.

As we are cleaning up from our tea today, Eadwig asks if we can leave out a plate of biscuit crumbs,

in case the shy little deer is hungry.  Of course, I am happy to do so.

Once Eadwig has left, the deer slowly approaches the plate of crumbs...

Thank you so much to all Friends of the Tearoom for attending yet another of our Teeny Teas!  xoxo

Additional Information:

Mistress Oiseau (from image 2) is a digital download paperdoll, designed by my friend Alex Wells of The Ragged Caravan on Etsy.  I printed her out, assembled her, added some wings, and some organza ribbon to the bottom of her dress.  

If you love the Jacobobs from today's tea (image 22), you can find them in my friend Kit Lane's shops on Big Cartel and on Etsy.

The vintage bird foot tongs (from Image 37) are from my friend Laura's delightful vintage shop Provoquer la Curiosite on Etsy.

The bunting decorating the garden today (image 1) was made from my own print-and-cut bunting, Vintage Floral Bunting, from my Etsy shop Velvet Revived.  If you would like to use it to make your next tea more festive, you can find it here.

***

Completely boring, but important note:  Apparently, Blogger continues to make difficulties for people wanting to leave comments.  Some of my friends are leaving multiple comments, while some can't leave one at all.  If you would like to leave me a comment on Instagram or Twitter, please feel free to do so (please indicate you would like it to be left as a comment) and I will post it to comments myself.  Thank you all, as always, for reading my blog posts!  xo