books — Page 124

Flowering, Reading

June 13, 2018 at 8:42 am by Claudia

At the very beginning of spring, I noticed feathery leaves growing in the corral. They looked a lot like yarrow. I have some yarrow that self-seeded growing in the chicken wire fence garden, where I plant morning glories and zinnias. So I waited and watched them grow and when it came time to start mowing, I mowed around them.

Yep. It’s yarrow. I’ve tried to take a picture that shows you how beautiful they look in the corral, but try as I might, I can’t get one. This is the best I can do at the moment.

There are more plants growing along the fence line.

It’s like I suddenly have a mini-meadow. I hope they come back next year.

The lavender that I potted is quite tall now and flowers have started to appear.

The catalpa is in bloom. I’m sure the other catalpas up in the woods are also in bloom, I just haven’t seen them yet. I was on the porch yesterday and the scent of the flowers wafted my way. Heavenly.

It got windy later in the day and there are a lot of flowers on the ground. Today, we’re due for some rain and storms. And then there will be more flowers on the ground. Short lived, these blooms. I can’t rescue them, they don’t do well in a vase, but I’ll rescue my peonies if necessary.

Isn’t that a beautiful flower?

Rose update (these blooms last about two days, by the way.)

I mowed yesterday because it has to be done. I did pretty well and am feeling a bit better. There’s still more mowing to be done, but I’m pacing myself. I’m also reading the latest Lee Child on my iPad. A novel. I’ve been on such a long stretch of not being able to concentrate on anything other than nonfiction, so this makes me happy.

Meredith uses her iPad all the time and that’s what inspired me to dig mine out the other day. It had been so long that I had forgotten that I had my Kindle books downloaded there. It has a bigger screen than my Kindle (where that little piece of technology is at the moment, I have no idea) and I think it’s easier to read. Anyway, I was inspired to visit Amazon and I downloaded a few books, one of which was Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher, which was published last November. I’ve read all of them, but hadn’t read that one. Lee Child’s style is so straight-forward. It’s in the first person and Jack Reacher is no-nonsense, so it isn’t so heavily written that I might drift away, if you know what I mean. I’m more than halfway through. Maybe this will be the breakthrough I need.

I can’t even talk about what is happening to our country and our moral standing in the world, or the cages in which immigrants are being held, or the separation of children from their parents. ICE equals Gestapo. Each day brings more assaults on the principles we hold dear, the compassion we should hold dear, the rule of law – much of it being done by ‘faux’ Christians. We won’t even get into the glorification of murderous dictators. Call your Reps. Demand change. And vote.

I need an escape. I swear, there are times I’d like to move to Canada. My mom was born there. Three out of my four grandparents were born there. Maybe I could just slip across the border?

Just kidding. Sort of.

Alternatively, living off the grid sounds increasingly tempting. And that is something I’m not kidding about.

Sigh. Anyway, if I write about it, I get more angry and I need to stay calm. Breathe deep.

Happy Wednesday.

Vintage Bookshelf and a Rose

June 7, 2018 at 9:04 am by Claudia

We’ve had a couple of gray days in a row with coolish temperatures. Good for mowing, which I did a lot of yesterday, not so good for the spirits. I’m trying to do some work outside every day. Garden work, mowing, pruning plants and cutting branches – all of which I’ve done since I got home on Sunday night – allows me some respite from the sadness of the show closing.

Meanwhile, audiences love the show, stand and cheer and sing during the curtain call, as they do every performance, every day of the week. Go figure.

Okay. Have to move on or I’ll cry again.

The bookshelf in progress. (Ask me how much I dislike this carpeting.)

The lighting isn’t great at the moment and I’ll try more photos on a sunnier day, but I thought I owed you an update.

The Nancy Drews are on the top shelf. I need two more to complete my collection and it looks like they’ll fit perfectly.

A vintage Schoenhut child’s piano and an English candy tin decorated with adorable little children, along with copies of Heidi and Anne of the Island are on the second shelf.

The bottom shelf includes my mom’s editions of Anne of Green Gables and Daddy Long Legs, my dad’s copy of Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service, Don’s Hardy Boys (there are more around here somewhere) and my vintage copies of Girl of the Limberlost (two different editions) and another copy of Daddy Long Legs. And a vintage school pencil sharpener.

Underneath is a firkin that was my grandmother’s.

This little shelf was worth every penny. It’s one-of-a-kind, lovingly handmade for Martha Jane.

The first rose appeared in the Memorial Garden yesterday.

Happy Thursday.

The Dilemma

April 8, 2018 at 10:05 am by Claudia

Dear readers, it is sometimes hard to come up with yet another photograph for a blog post. I mean, how many photos of the interior of my house can I inundate you with until you begin to scream?

And the outside? Well, it isn’t all that attractive at the moment. We’re in that pocket between winter and spring. The daffodils are coming up. I see some growth here and there, but taking a photo of it would require a kneeling position on the cold grass and/or gravel and that ain’t gonna happen today.

It’s too early to clean out the garden beds as there as been mild frost the past two nights, so the leaf mulch must stay in place for a while longer. So no pretty pictures from the garden.

And really, do you want to see pictures of all the debris from the wind and falling limbs and that sort of thing that I raked up yesterday afternoon? I thought not. Actually, raking wore me out. I realize that I have to get back into gardening shape after a fairly sedentary winter. But it was so lovely to be outside on a cold, but sunny, day.

And certainly you don’t want to see pictures of me vacuuming every corner of the house, which is what I did after raking? No, of course you don’t.

This is the dilemma of the every-day-of-the-year blogger. Sometimes, life isn’t all that interesting. Or photogenic.

But I do have one little photo for you, snapped this morning in a moment of desperation.

This is where my tiny Wallace Nutting ended up. I couldn’t find the perfect place to hang it, at least not until I get a few more smallish Nuttings for the wall in the office. Then I’ll be able to insert it into a larger display. But I quite like it here on the shelf in the den, in front of the Nancy Drews. It works.

That copy of Anne of Green Gables was my mother’s. I was lamenting the loss of some of my mother’s childhood books that were also a part of our childhood one day on the blog. They had lived on a shelf in our bedroom. Our estranged sister somehow ended up with a lot of them. When Meredith read the post, she remembered that she had some of Mom’s books, so she secretly sent them off in the mail and completely surprised me. I opened the package to find Anne, along with Mom’s copy of Daddy Long Legs, and one of my dad’s books. I’ll freely say that I cried. It was like a reunion with dearly loved friends.

I have the best sister.

Happy Sunday.

Flowering, Reading

Vintage Bookshelf and a Rose

The Dilemma

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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