Crisp, crumbly, buttery and nutty. These old-fashioned walnut shortbread cookies are a delightful treat with milk for the holidays.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup walnuts

METHOD
1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add vanilla, beating until well incorporated.

3. Whisk flour and salt together.

4. Hand chop walnuts to medium-fine texture. (*Do not use a food processor.)

5. Add flour mixture and nuts to the butter mixture and mix until crumbly.

6. Finishing mixing with a rubber scrapper in a kneading motion until dough forms.

7. Drop onto baking sheets with a level 2 TBS cookie scoop. Roll drops into balls and then press flat. Using the tines of a fork, make three sets of holes on the tops of the cookies.

8. Bake at 350 for approximately 14 minutes or until the edges are just barely showing color.

9. Let rest on pans for a few minutes until firm, then finish cooling on racks.

Yield: 30 two-inch cookies

* The nuts must be hand-chopped in order to maintain the light and crumbly texture. Using a food processor or mechanical chopper releases too much of the oils from the nuts and will make the cookies heavy and dense.

While we tend to prefer much larger, ceiling-scraping trees, this one is just so perfect that its “miniature” stature doesn’t bother us. It arrived fresh via FedEx from Mountain Star Farms just before Thanksgiving.

The day after Thanksgiving, the family brought the tree in and stood it up in the living room. All were expecting a chore of it because of the wonderfully large trees we usually get. They were surprised by the small and light tree this year, but all agreed it was sized perfectly for the room. Well, that is debatable as there is still plenty of room between the top and our nine-foot ceilings.

On a recent trip to the garden center I was on the look out for colorful mums and varied and interesting pumpkins. After many weeks of dismal weather, the garden needed some sprucing up for fall. But it was not the mums or fanciful gourds that caught my eye. It was a gigantic pumpkin sitting inside the cold house at Dan Schantz!

This mammoth 1469-1/2 pound pumpkin has gained notoriety as the purported largest pumpkin ever grown in Lehigh County, PA. I don’t know if that claim is true, but it is incredibly large and stops everyone in their tracks as they pass by. As I stood by watching people come and go, there was not one person, young or old, whose face did not light up when passing by this curious cucurbit. I sure wish I could claim it as mine, but I have never even come close to its size!

The days have been damp and gloomy with never-ending rain. But suddenly there was a brightening. Investigating the bright glow in the sky, something eerie this way I surely did spy. What lied beyond the fence was a Halloween graveyard with a spirit glowing bright.

The days of September are cool, but the air is filled with the intoxicating fragrance of sweet Autumn clematis. Here it is growing on the arch at the medicine wheel and hais mixed in with Grandpa Ott morning glories.

But further up in the back at the driveway, Autumn clematis grows wild and scampers everywhere. It creates a blanket of tiny white flowers and fills the driveway with heavenly fragrance.

May Dreams Gardens brings garden bloggers together on the 15th of every month for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day to showcase what’s blooming in gardens around the planet.

New life is being breathed into an old Newport, RI mansion from the Gilded Age. Now known as Carey Mansion, but more famously as Seaview Terrace, this 40,000 sqft home is more widely recognized as Collinwood from the 1960s daytime drama ‘Dark Shadows.’

The house is quite unique in that it contains rooms from a French Chateau that were incorporated into a Washington DC home in the early 20th Century, but by the 1920s disassembled, packed up and sent to Newport to be reconstructed and expanded into the sprawling mansion we see today. The expansive home was ravaged by a hurricane in 1938 and eventually became housing for Army officers. In 1950 it saw new life as a private girls’ school and continued throughout the rest of the 20th Century as an education facility in different forms until just a couple of years ago.

The current owners, the Carey family who have owned it since the 1970s and had leased it to Salve Regina University, are now in residence at the grand home and have engaged in significant restoration projects to revive the grandeur of a forgotten age. The Careys must be commended for the desire to undertake such a huge task in what is turly an ultimate act of historic preservation.

Photos of the restoration and exquisite architecture can be seen at Seaview Terrace.

Photo credit: 2004-10-03 Newport, RI – Cliff Walk, Carey Mansion by QuiteLucid, on Flickr

There’s something extra special about the light on an August morning when the garden is abuzz with bees and butterflies darting about and chipmunks scurrying along the paths carrying twigs and leaves to their homes.

The dahlias are finally blooming! September Morn is a full, lovely bloom, and Bee Happy is just the bees knees of dahlia cuteness. The groundhogs have been after them all summer long and I thought they would be a total loss, but am happy to find some blooms opening up.

May Dreams Gardens brings garden bloggers together on the 15th of every month for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day to showcase what’s blooming in gardens around the planet.

Intensely blue Penny Mac hydrangeas and Stargazer Oriental lilies are stealing the show in July. Smaller, but equally lovely are the tiny star-like blooms of the flowering tobacco. The red flower carpet roses are still blooming too!

May Dreams Gardens brings garden bloggers together on the 15th of every month for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day to showcase what’s blooming in gardens around the planet.

The evening primrose is a mass of bright yellow. You can clearly see how they are also called sundrops as each bloom is as brilliant as a ray of sunshine. Started from just a small patch a few years ago, they have increased exponentially. In the background, the red flower carpet roses are also in full bloom in the peony patch.

On the bank, a carpet of thyme is lush and will soon be blooming, attracting many bees.

The rose shows continues in the medicine wheel with bright red double and pink Knockout roses. On the trellis in the background, The Impressionist is just starting to bloom.

May Dreams Gardens brings garden bloggers together on the 15th of every month for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day to showcase what’s blooming in gardens around the planet.

Flowers aren’t the only thing blooming in early summer! The sunset has bloomed in a gorgeous array of colors over the Blue Mountains, that are so aptly named.

The scene is observed through a small “window” in the woods at the edges of the medicine wheel. It gives you a view into the world that is much like as if you were peering out through mists of Avalon.

The David Austin rose Gentle Hermione is a vigorous, upright grower for me. The blooms are the perfect old rose form that is blushed with the lightest and gentlest pink. The fragrance however, is anything but gentle. It is a strong, powerful scent that fills a room much like a peony does. Heaven!

Behind it is a fading peony, Bridal Icing bloom. It may be fading, but its fragrance is still pungently wonderful.