Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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Curtains! (Not) Foiled Again.

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Saturday was rainy, a sort of dismal day. So we stayed in and I worked on the dollhouse. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying – and failing – to add a circular shower curtain rod to the bathroom, resulting in lots of frustration and cursing. I found some florist wire at Michael’s the other day that was thicker than what I had been previously using in my futile attempts.

I managed to pull it off yesterday. It’s not perfect. But it will do for now.

I also made a shower curtain out of linen. It’s a little heavy, so I might change it out in the future. But for now, I’m rather pleased with my sincere, if amateurish, stab at getting it done.

This is a darkish photo and I’ll try to get something better later on today. These narrow rooms are always hard to capture – the light needs to be just right.

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I actually tried to make little shower curtain rings out of some wire I had in my ‘making jewelry’ stash. They were pretty gosh darned cute, but in the end, I scrapped them and, instead, sewed the curtain to the rod.

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Whenever I manage to pull something like this off, I shout out to Don and make him drop whatever he’s doing to come see it. He is always appropriately impressed and gives me lots of “I’m proud of you” pats on the back. Thank you, Don, for being almost as excited about this little hobby of mine as I am.

Also found in Michael’s the other day:

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This map of the British Isles. Caroline is an Anglophile (as am I) and she displays this lovely vintage map above her work space.

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Today, we are going to give Scout a bath in the tub. One of us will have to hold her very securely while the other bathes her. We don’t want her to feel she has to do all the work of supporting herself. She’d get very tired, very quickly. So we’ll do it for her. The old girl needs a bath desperately and today is the day. Wish us all luck!

Tomorrow is the day we’ll get our Christmas tree. It’s been moved up in our schedule because we’re due for some sort of snow event on Tuesday. The jury is still out on how much snow we’ll be hit with. Don, get ready to fire up the snowblower!

Happy Sunday.

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Chicken Wire Capital of the World

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Welcome to Mockingbird Hill Cottage, chicken wire capital of the world.

Working with chicken wire is not one of my favorite things to do. But that’s what we did yesterday when we took advantage of warmer temperatures to construct a temporary corral for Scout. We’ve worked with chicken wire before – the large corral is also made out of chicken wire and stakes.

But we must have been younger when we put that together. About nine years younger.

And now we have even more chicken wire on the property.

My patience was put to the test. Unrolling the chicken wire was a feat in itself. But gradually we found a kind of rhythm and work progressed, along with muddy jeans and misplaced tools. Why can’t I keep track of screwdrivers and wire cutters? Same thing with my scissors when I’m sewing.

Many curse words, of course. That’s a given.

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Finito. It ain’t a beauty but who cares?

Don is helping Scout get acclimated. She’s curious about it and clearly is wondering what the heck her wacky parents are up to now. We’ve decided that when the snow and ice accumulate, we’ll close off the entrance to the corral with a garden bench that can be easily moved into place. We’ve moved the little gate to a new position and now, when she can’t get to the big corral, she will have to go to the right to do her business. On flat ground. We can still exit from the side door via the gate. We’re not blocking the oil delivery path.

Roger. Over and out.

It’s small, but it will do. We can keep it snow and ice free. It’s doable. And that, my friends, is a huge relief. Because that means life will be easier for our girl.

Those benches are covering my newish hydrangea and rose bush. They serve as a reminder not to dump too much snow on the plants, as well as protection from winter winds.

Scout has also developed a fascination for cards.

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Very grainy – captured with my iPhone at night – but you get the picture. She loves watching Don shuffle the cards.

And yes, those are Mallomars, one of man’s greatest inventions, in the background.

Let’s close with a recent sunset. This beauty happened the night before the Nor’easter. I just now noticed that little sliver of the moon on the left.

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Winter sunsets are spectacular. Maybe it’s Mother Nature’s way of helping us through the cold and snow and ice and dark skies at 4 pm. It’s the least she can do.

Happy Tuesday.

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Snow, The Spontaneous Thanksgiving & P.D. James

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During the Nor’easter.

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Later.

We had quite the event here on Wednesday. The snow started in mid-morning: heavy, wet, sticking to branches, power flickering off and on all day long. Thankfully, the power never went out, though it certainly did for many in the Hudson Valley. Don went out to the shed and played around with the level of the ‘shoes’ at the bottom of the snowblower. Since we have gravel on our driveway, a certain amount is going to get thrown while operating it and the idea is throw as little as possible. Even so, half-way through snowplowing, Don had to adjust them again.

For a first time effort, he did really well! The snow was so heavy and wet that it would have been very, very hard to shovel it all. Even so, there are areas around the house and the driveway that have to be shoveled. We did that yesterday and my back, which is unused to all the shoveling after nearly a year off from that nonsense, is crying out a wee bit today.

We’re so thankful for our new snowblower.

We didn’t get as much snow as predicted and since it’s early in the season, it will start to melt in the next couple of days. Good, I say!

Someone in this house loves the snow, but all of her sniffing and exploring and adventuring has her all tuckered out:

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We had a lovely Thanksgiving. We had plans to dine at our friends’ house, but, in the end, decided to stay home because with all the driving, plus dinner, we would have been away from Scoutie too long and we didn’t feel comfortable with that. We also didn’t feel at all right about going there, eating, and then departing almost immediately, which is what we would have had to do. So we ended up having a spontaneous Thanksgiving – no traditional anything.

We watched part of the Macy’s parade just to see how it would look on the new television. We only made it through a small portion of it because, as always, it’s just a big PR extravaganza for NBC and the stars of their TV line-up. Way too commercial for my taste. I grew up watching the J. L. Hudson parade in Detroit that aired on Thanksgiving morning and I’m afraid I’ve never liked the Macy’s Parade. Hudson’s was simple and extravagant at the same time: lots of floats, lots of bands, culminating in the arrival of Santa Claus and Christmas Carol (who wore a lovely red and white outfit) on the steps of the downtown Hudson’s store. It was magical and for all of us and it wasn’t about celebrities.

Hudson’s, by the way, was a wonderful department store – beautiful in the way that all flagship department stores of a certain era were. It had a gorgeous main floor, wooden escalators, sumptuous fittings. Some idiot or idiots decided to tear it down many years ago. I’ve never recovered.

And, in this everything-is-the-same-everywhere-you-go age, it was taken over by….get ready for it… Macy’s.

I can’t go there. It’s too depressing.

Back to yesterday. We took time to count our blessings. We made a simple dinner which was decidedly non-Thanksgiving-like. We shoveled some snow. We played Crazy Eights – a card game that was played a lot in my home when I was a kid. I taught it to Don and we had the best time! We played for hours and laughed and laughed. We’re going to play it again today.

And we discovered that Netflix has old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000! Oh my goodness, I laughed so hard I was crying.

Perfect end for the day.

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This morning.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the passing of the great crime writer, P.D. James. I wrote a quick post about it yesterday on Just Let Me Finish This Page. She died yesterday at the age of 94. I read all her novels, starting with An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, which was written in 1972 and featured Cordelia Gray, who surely must have been the model for a whole generation of female police detectives to come. I had always loved mysteries, and when I was a teenager the whole gothic mystery/romance genre was very big. When I discovered P.D. James, I entered a world of grown-up crime novels, with complicated characters and plots, plots that didn’t revolve around a romance, but did, in fact, revolve around a murder or two that were never prettified, and writing that was unsparing in the depiction of the pain and loss and sorrow and anger and rage that surrounds any such death.

Many years ago, when I was living in Cambridge, I went to an event where P.D. James spoke. It was held in the sanctuary of a church. Afterward, she signed a copy of her latest book for me. She was highly intelligent, charming and funny, a wonderful speaker.

Rest in Peace, P.D. James. And thank you for years and years of reading pleasure. You set the bar for all who followed you.

An appreciation of P.D. James written by Louise Penny.

Happy Friday.

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