Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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Nostalgia & The Clean Up

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What fun it was to read all your comments yesterday! Nancy Drew clearly sparks a lot of memories for all of us. Thinking about it led me to remember that I borrowed my Nancy Drew books from the library and from friends. I think I might have owned one or two, but I’m not even sure about that. We didn’t have much money and receiving a new book was a rare treat. As Vicki said, those were the days where we routinely went to the library or, in my case, bookmobile, and checked out lots of books. There was really no other option for me and it wasn’t at all a sacrifice. I had a few new books in my possession, but nearly everything I read as a child came to me via the library: the Little House Books, Nancy Drew, Beverly Cleary books (Fifteen was a favorite) – all the favorites of my childhood and pre-teen years.

If you didn’t get a chance to read the comments, you might enjoy going back to yesterday’s post. It sparked a conversation about books, Walt Disney and the Mickey Mouse Club, and more. I was happily steeped in nostalgia.

Ahem. I worked outside yesterday.

It’s been months since I could say that (I’m not counting shoveling snow) and it felt so good. My body will need to adjust to raking and bending over repeatedly, but it will. It was sunny and in the sixties and I started the massive clean up that is necessary every spring. Picking up fallen branches. Cleaning out garden beds.

4-7 big garden bed

I leave autumn’s fallen leaves on my garden beds for the winter. The leaves provide protection for the plants and serve as mulch. I don’t cut back plants because I want the birds to have shelter and seeds over the course of the winter. So once spring finally arrives, I rake all the old leaves out of the beds, and start to cut back the plants. I worked on the planter outside the kitchen door and two of the garden beds. As you can see, things are still rather stark around here, but I see buds on the lilac bush, baby sedums, and my day lilies are coming up:

4-7 babydaylily

The rhythm of the garden’s renewal is the same every year. Everything happens in a certain order and that brings a sort of comfort. Ah yes, there are the day lilies! There are the sedum! There are the beginnings of the catmint!

I have yet to really look at the rose bushes. The winter of 2013-14 caused some damage to them. The winter of 2014-15 was worse, so I’m preparing myself for what I might see. But as to the rest of my plants, having a perennial garden ensures that most of the plants are long established and less likely to be damaged. Fingers crossed.

I made sure I was finished by 2:30 so that I could plop myself in front of the television to watch the Red Sox in their opening game. They won. Huzzah!

By the way, I badly wanted Wisconsin to win the NCAA tournament last night. I was raised in Michigan with two Big Ten universities and so it follows that I cheered for the Big Ten university in this game. It was so close! I know some of you are Duke fans and I’m happy for you. But Duke has won this particular tournament a lot. I would have liked to see the underdog triumph.

Ah well.

New post up on Just Let Me Finish This Page.

Happy Tuesday.

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Signs of Spring

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4-4 redsox&eggs

An iPhone/Instagrammy photo that captures this beginning of April: fabric Easter eggs and the Red Sox. Opening Day of the baseball season is tomorrow. The Red Sox are looking good this year. We’ve already watched a few exhibition games during Spring Training. Oh baseball, I love you. Welcome back!

I walked out to the leaf covered big garden bed the other day and uncovered a small area just to assure myself that something is happening out there:

4-4 sedum

I knew I could count on the sedum – always the first to show new growth. I keep the leaves on the garden beds until there’s no danger of below freezing temperatures. I’m hoping that will be in the next week. We have almost two acres here and there are woods and lots of trees and dead leaves and fallen branches and several garden beds to clean up. Brambles have to be cut back – ouch.

All the stones (called Item 4, for some reason) from our driveway that the snow blower propelled onto the grass need to be put back where they belong. That, by the way, is one of the most painstaking and irritating jobs there is in early spring. Last year, Don and I sat out by the driveway with pails by our sides, gathering up all the rocks that weren’t where they were supposed to be. And that was before we had our own snowblower that had to be used several times this winter. This year, there are even more rocks on the lawn, rocks on the patio, rocks in the garden. I used to rake them up, and I still do as much of that as I can, but last year I enlisted Mr. Sparks in the whole thing and I’m going to do that again this year.

Someday, we want to pave the driveway. Most people around here, however, have the same kind of driveway we do – part of country living, I guess.

It’s a quiet weekend around here. We have no big plans. We watched The Wizard of Oz  last night on TCM. Glorious. And, after decades of watching it, I still worry when I don’t see Toto in a shot. Where is he? Is he okay? Did he run off with Dorothy unaware that he’s missing? Then, he’ll suddenly come into the shot from offstage and I relax. Don understands, bless him. He knows I worry about that sort of thing.

What are your plans for today?

Happy Saturday.

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An Intense Saturday

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quilt

(photos from the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone)

Yesterday, I started work on the quilt again. There’s a lot of hand quilting to do on this baby, mostly because I’m using random circles that are overlapping each other to create a fairly densely quilted top. What have you started, Claudia? It’s so easy to get discouraged because the squares themselves are large and there are 25 of them. I’m just now in the middle of my second square. But that’s what winters, with more than a dash of patience, are for.

We were witness to a frightening car crash yesterday, right in front of our house. We were sitting in the den when we heard the screech of brakes. I looked out the window to see a car skidding out of control. Then I heard the terrible sound of metal hitting a solid object, in this case the trees that border the road just beyond our next door neighbor’s property. I jumped up, put on my shoes (I was in my pajamas) and ran across the yard in the direction of the crash. Don was right behind me. At first I couldn’t see the driver at all, which filled me with dread. There was another car parked ahead of the damaged car and they were calling 911. As I ran toward the driver’s side of the car, I saw a young woman sit up, clearly shaken. She was crying. She may have sustained an injury to her hand. When I asked her what happened, she said something about the brake and the gas pedal. Apparently she had almost hit the other car head on and when they saw her car go into a tailspin, they doubled back to help her. I can’t imagine how terrifying the crash must have been to this young woman, who kept saying that she had never had an accident before.

Perhaps she hit the gas when she meant to hit the brake and then slammed on her brakes so quickly that she couldn’t maintain control of the car. I don’t know. The ambulance and fire trucks came very quickly. All I could think was thank goodness she was alright. She slammed into a tree; it could have been so much worse.

It prompted Don and me to once again acknowledge that everything can change in an instant. I’m grateful that she is relatively unscathed. Cars can be fixed.

I don’t think Don has ever seen me run that fast.

quilting

So we started the day with a very frightening accident and we ended it (at 1 am) with the euphoria of the Red Sox winning the American League pennant. It was a nail biter. At one point I screamed and shouted so loudly (after a grand slam by Shane Victorino) that my throat felt raw. Oh boy. A voice coach and teacher should know better! Now we get a few days off before the World Series starts on Wednesday. Yay, Red Sox!!

Last chance to enter the book giveaway. If you’re interested, scroll down for the book review and leave a comment on that post.

Happy Sunday.

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Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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