Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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What Are You Reading?

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Just a dusting of snow overnight. A stray flake or two falling.

Perfect. No cleanup necessary, no shoveling, no chipping away at ice. Thank you!

Well, we’re back into the non-holiday days of January. Though I’m happy to have a fresh start in a new year, I do dread the expanse of winter ahead. Don and I were saying it would be perfect if we had just three seasons a year, but it seems that isn’t going to happen, and considering the horrors of Climate Change, that’s a good thing.

We had a sunny day yesterday and this is a late afternoon view of the McCoy.

I’m in the middle of Jane Eyre. I’m really enjoying it. Brontë was such a wonderful writer. I swear I read it when I was young, but perhaps I just skimmed it? I’ve seen several adaptations of it on film and television, so I know the story. But I don’t remember reading all the detail that I’m reading at the moment, so it seems almost new to me.

I’m also reading The Seine, but I’ve had to temporarily put a pause on it because of Jane Eyre. Later today or early tomorrow, I have to read the script for the production I’m coaching.

So we come to my favorite question: What are you reading?

Happy Monday.

Some Christmas Finds and a Few More Thoughts

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I had an errand or two to run yesterday and I also had to pick Rick up from the bus station, as Doug has been out of town and won’t return until today. On the way to the bus station, I stopped at a local antique shop. Actually, it’s a barn and there are multiple dealers there, including my friend Sydney of Fox Run Antiques. Same place where I found the egg cup cubby. Happily, I ran into Sydney and had a nice chat with her.

I hadn’t been there for a while and I’ve been on a search for some more vintage Christmas. I found two more putz houses:

The green house was made by the Dolly Toy Company, which I referenced the other day.

They were modestly priced at $4 and $5 each, which – for fairly well-preserved vintage – is a good deal.

Then I found another bluebird ornament!

You might remember that I have another bluebird ornament, slightly different in design. It has a “thumbprint” indentation. This one does not. Both of them have the same style of bluebird. It was only $3. I had a brief fantasy of slowly collecting bluebird ornaments and having a whole tree of them, with a bluebird tree-topper. Wouldn’t that be fun? But, since it’s taken me several years just to find two of them, that seems unlikely. If you ever see one, let me know!

With tax, $13 for all three. You can’t beat it.

We had some snow overnight, but it’s just a coating and I can see some of it melting already. Because it was rain transitioning to snow, it was a wet snow and it’s currently coating all the tree branches. Very pretty.

This is my favorite kind of snow because it’s pretty, there isn’t much of it, and the driveway doesn’t need to be shoveled because it stayed wet. If we had this kind of thing all winter long, I’d be fine.

We finished Season 3 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel  the night before last and now we’re watching it over again, which is what we did with the two previous seasons. Excellent. Brilliant. A heads up on upcoming series: Schitt’s Creek  returns to PopTV and the CBC in early January and Grace and Frankie  returns to Netflix in late January.

Thank you for your kind comments yesterday. I knew you would understand my sadness. Frankly, if you didn’t understand, you would most likely have left this blog long ago because I’ve never hidden the way I feel about these things. I try not to be judgmental – it’s a constant struggle because I’m only human – but those who think of animals as expendable and as beings we shouldn’t concern ourselves with are not going to be my pals. Likewise those who berate me and tell me I shouldn’t waste my worry on animals and, instead, worry about humans – as if caring about one automatically rules out caring about the other. That’s a false dichotomy.

Having ‘dominion’ over animals means caring about and for them. It doesn’t give us free rein to slaughter them or abuse them or hurt them. And I don’t believe we are ‘superior’ to them – far from it.

Happy Wednesday.

 

 

Snow. And Then Some More Snow.

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After an exhausting stretch yesterday with the snow blower and the shovel – trying to get through layers of sleet, snow, and more sleet – we figured we were all done.

But then we got about 5 more inches last night. This time, the snow is quite light and powdery. So we’ll be back out there today, shoveling, snow blowing, and salting. The sun is out, as so often happens after a storm. We went outside early this morning to take some pictures because it was so beautiful.

You can see the mountains in this shot. No pristine shed shot, however, as we moved our cars over there so we can shovel. School has been cancelled for the past two days, many businesses were closed; it was a very long snow ‘event.’

Since we were housebound for most of the day yesterday, we did this:

We’re very pleased with this tree; the shape, height, and scent. I would say 98% of the ornaments are vintage, many of them Shiny Brites. There are also some ornaments that I’ve had since I was quite young. And then there are the large creamy bottlebrush ornaments that I purchased when I was working at my friend Heidi’s shop. I have nine of them and I love them. I think that large pop of off-white adds definition to the tree.

Here it is from inside the den:

I love being able to see it from both rooms. Why didn’t we think of this long ago? Probably because of the dogs and the paths they took from room to room. We used to have our real tree nestled back into the corner of the den where the dollhouse now sits. It was the safest place at the time.

We don’t plan to have a big ‘gift’ Christmas. We had our Paris trip (a huge gift!) and we decided the frame (framing is never cheap) of our Paris lithograph is our gift to each other. There will be a few little gifts under the tree, but mostly this Christmas is about the tree and being together here in our cottage. About being grateful.

Happy Tuesday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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