• It rained yesterday afternoon and into the evening, a nice gentle rain, and we’re due for some thunderstorms today. We really need the rain, so I will happily stay inside and read today, content to let the rain soak into the ground and perhaps raise a wee bit the levels of our rivers. Huzzah for some rain!

• Does anyone else out there catch their breath and/or chuckle when you see an article, say, on Apartment Therapy or Design Sponge, and the title involves the word ‘vintage’ and when you look at the photos, the furniture is the style everyone was using in your youth? I did that this morning. When I see the word vintage, I’m expecting something much older than mid-century modern – called contemporary or modern when I was growing up. So I click on the article based on the word ‘vintage’ and I end up saying, “Oh that. Vintage to you, maybe. Not vintage to me!”

If that’s vintage, then I guess I’m vintage. But it’s a good vintage, I’ll tell you that.

• This hollyhock was a volunteer and I’m so thrilled by its beauty. And its height! All of this in a shallow raised bed, and that, my friends, is a wonder. And it blocks the view of the rain barrel. (That dash of red you see at the base of the plant is a pail I have yet to move.)

• On Sunday, I did a little housekeeping on the blog navigation bar, specifically, the Dollhouse Tab. That tab used to take you to information on Hummingbird Cottage and a Source List and other dollhouse posts. I’ve now added two tabs – one for Hummingbird Cottage, one for The Studio, and one for the Source List and Tutorials. I think it’s much clearer now.

• I could write a whole post about this – who knows, I just may do that someday: What happens after you’ve been blogging for several years and you lose your mojo? Or you run out of ideas for posts? I’ve been pondering this lately as many of the blogs I used to follow seem to have fizzled out. Sometimes the posts have dwindled down to once a week, or once a month. Sometimes, and I’ve seen this a lot lately, there are hardly any ‘real’ posts anymore – just a series of sponsored posts, posts where photos copied from Pinterest or other blogs are used to create a ‘theme;’ basically, posts that have lost the author’s voice. Any blogger who has been blogging for several years will tell you that it’s hard to keep things fresh. Some bloggers, when faced with that challenge, stop blogging. Or they move on to Instagram.

There’s no rule or law that says you have to keep blogging. Or that the focus of your blog has to stay the same. Really – there are no rules at all, despite all the advice blogs that will tell you there are. This blog is my take on blogging, and it’s very personal. Not everyone wants to be personal and I get that. Not everyone wants to read a blog like mine, either, and I get that, too. But I feel a sadness when I see my preferred reading choices in blogland change and become something else, something that lacks any sort of authenticity. At the very least, they lose the voice that made them compelling to begin with.

I’ve been talking to Don about this sort of thing and I’ve made a vow that if I find I’ve lost my mojo or that my posts are becoming something that you could find on any generic blog or website, I’ll quietly fold my tent and move on.

I don’t have any answers on this one, just a plea to remember who you are and why you started blogging and what it was that drew readers to your little home on the web to begin with. That’s what your readers want to see.

There is a book review up on Just Let Me Finish This Page today. Stop by!

Happy Tuesday.