garden — Page 220

Riley’s Dish Garden

November 12, 2012 at 8:04 am by Claudia

This was Riley’s dish. That boy loved to eat and this battered, not-very-attractive dish was his version of a plate. When he was able to navigate easily, I would fill it with food and place it on the rug by the kitchen sink. It was easier for him to stand there. When he couldn’t get up and down quite as easily in the last month or so of his life, I would take the dish to him and he would chow down right there from his perch on the rug.

I can’t throw it away. It’s my boy’s dish. Just as I saved some locks of his hair and his collar, I am hanging on to his dish.

But what to do with it other than storing it in a cupboard?

I had an idea. It reminds me of a planting dish, so off I went to a local nursery. I bought some succulents and some special potting soil.

Each of the plants came in a terra cotta pot with little rocks on top of the soil. I shook out all the rocks and added them to the bottom of the bowl for drainage.

Then I filled the bowl with plants and soil.

While I was doing all of this, Don and Scout were out on the porch with me. Ever the blogger, I picked up the bowl to find the place to photograph it. As I set it down on the bench, this happened:

Immediately. Our girl misses her brother.

Riley’s Dish Garden

Yes, there are prettier planting dishes – I have several McCoy planting dishes right here in the cottage. But this may be the most loved planting dish to be found anywhere.

It helps a great deal. Creating this garden is a fitting tribute to my Riley.

Miss you, my dear, sweet boy. With all my heart.

dogdishcollage

Happy Monday.

Fall Beauty

November 11, 2012 at 7:58 am by Claudia

The new boiler was installed on Friday and we have heat. At one point, I started to feel sleepy and achy, my eyes stung, and I would have sworn I was coming down with a cold. At the same time I could smell the solvents they were using and Don suggested I go outside for a while. That made everything better – I think I was having a reaction to the chemicals. We opened some windows and the fresh air did the trick.

Brenda asked me what a boiler is. She’s used to furnaces. A boiler heats water which flows through pipes, in our case, through pipes that run in our baseboard heating. A furnace heats air, which is blown throughout the house. Our boiler is fueled with heating oil, which seems to be the predominant way of heating a home out here in the East.

Let’s take a walk around the property. When I was forced outside the other day by the fumes, I grabbed my camera. There really is beauty to found even in the brown, stark landscape of late fall and winter.

Linking to Elaine’s Sunny Simple Sunday.

If you click on this link, you’ll see my home featured today on Cozy Inspiration.

Happy Sunday.

Riveted

October 31, 2012 at 9:21 am by Claudia

We’ve been camped out in the den, watching our local stations out of NYC. They’ve been preempting regular programming with coverage of the hurricane and its aftermath. I couldn’t stop watching yesterday as I tried to comprehend the damage to the infrastructure of Manhattan, the horrendous damage to the shoreline of New Jersey, the loss of life, the fire that destroyed over a hundred homes in Queens, a tree falling on a young couple walking a dog – it just goes on and on. It’s really all I can think of right now. We were incredibly lucky. Millions of others were not. This tragedy has just stopped us in our tracks. My sense of humor isn’t working very well at the moment.

Finally, we stopped for a while and played Scrabble. The previous night of very little sleep may have blunted our Scrabbley-wordy skills, but we had fun. I won. I tell you, it’s all in the tiles you draw. I managed to draw Q and Z and that made all the difference.

I really can’t think about anything for any length of time other than those who have lost so much and the heartbreak I feel for this part of our country that is so dear to me. It has been ravaged, stripped and forever changed.

But I try. I took all the plants back outside to the porch, stowed all the flashlights and lanterns. We ate food that Don had precooked the day before when he was worried that all our frozen food might spoil if we lost our electricity. It makes for easy meal prep, that’s for sure. I may keep this alyssum inside for a bit longer. I like the way it looks here. Has anyone ever kept alyssum as a house plant?

And in the ‘Duh’ category, when I was preparing to bring all my potted plants in before the hurricane hit, I cleaned out a few pots that held all-but-dead plants. One of them had a sweet potato vine in it. As I took it to the compost pile, I had trouble dumping all the potting soil. My fingers kept running into something beneath the soil. What was it?

Am I the only one out there who was surprised to see an actual sweet potato underneath the soil?

I felt like an idiot.

I’m charmed by it. It’s sitting in a place of honor in the kitchen right now.

Hey, sometimes the simplest thing can bring a smile to my face. Or make me laugh at myself.

Thank goodness. I need that right now.

Happy Wednesday.

Riley’s Dish Garden

Fall Beauty

Riveted

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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