Since it’s going to be hot and steamy today (what else is new?) I thought I’d stay here on the porch after our cup of coffee and blog from the glider while it’s still pleasant outside. The wi-fi is just fine out here. I used to do this more often when Don was out of town, but I tend to forget that it’s a possibility. (Traffic noise is a pain in the tush, but if I can block it out on any particular day, I’m okay.)
Yesterday, Don took down much of the chicken wire fence that enclosed our corral. There has to be a way for trucks to get up to the area where half of the maple has fallen as well as the two dead ash trees that have to come down. And he needed a project. But he told me he felt a wave of sadness because we were taking down the enclosure for our dogs that had been there for nearly 15 years. It needed to be taken down because it was rusty, had pulled apart in places, and it just plain looked crappy. But, my thoughts have been full of our dogs since yesterday. We kept the ‘chute’ that enclosed the area just outside our kitchen door. That’s where Scoutie would run down the hill and leap into the kitchen. Plus, that section of fence and another section beyond that are part of my memorial gardens and I currently have morning glory vines growing there. The trucks are going to have to go in on the far side of that fence. I’m not taking down my garden just when it’s taking off.
This whole thing is a pain. Our plans for next year (if we’re finally earning some money) are to enclose a future vegetable garden with deer fencing and construct some raised beds. It will be in the sunniest and flattest part of the former corral.
My package from Italy arrived yesterday. Miniature happiness.
Oh my goodness. This was made by a woman named Carlotta who lives in Bologna, Italy. I discovered her Etsy shop when the annual Kensington Dollhouse Festival (in London) did a virtual show this year. They had to cancel their annual show due to COVID. They highlighted many of their usual exhibitors and had links to their webpages or Etsy shops. I clicked on Cinen, Carlotta’s shop, and fell in love with her work.
This is the kind of piece that would usually be used by a miniaturist in a miniature shop of some kind, but I think of it as a large vintage piece of furniture, formerly in a shop, that the ‘owner’ has repurposed in her living room. This takes up most of the wall in the living room section of Dove Cottage, which will (hopefully) consist of an eclectic mix of vintage styles, patterns, tchotchkes, etc. I can’t wait to fill it with books and pottery and art. Those twelve drawers open. What fun it will be to fill them!
Forgot to add that the original piece was a bit too tall for my little cottage, especially considering I haven’t even put the floor in yet. I messaged Carlotta and asked if it would be possible to make it about a half inch shorter. Frankly I figured this would be a no-go, but she said yes. She had to reconfigure everything, including drawer size, and she did it all for the same price as the original. It arrived after 14 days in transit, beautifully packaged and intact.
I couldn’t make anything like this. With my modest means, I do try to support miniaturists when I can. Their skill continues to astound me and I like having their pieces in my little houses. I guess you could say that I collect artisan miniatures. And I am head-over-heels in love with this piece.
Today – and don’t be jealous – we take the old chicken wire to the dump. I know…what a fast-paced, celebrity-filled life we lead!
Stay safe.
Happy Friday.
Oh those tiny drawer handles! Love!!
X Chy
Thanks, Chy!
Lol! I can relate to your ‘celebrity-filled’ life.
Have a wonderful day!
It boggles my mind that the drawers open! Amazing work.
A vegetable garden is a great idea….fenced for sure. Sounds like a good project for Don.
And me. It will be something we’ll work on together.
Thanks, Marilyn.
Thanks, Cathy!
That is just stunning. That lady is very talented indeed.
She is, indeed.
Thanks, Lyn.
This is exquisite. Check out the hardware on the drawers. Such fine work and I mean that both in quality and in minute-ness. It’s beautiful.
Do you think you will ever have another dog? Lizzie’s fine now, but I ponder if when her time is up if it would be fair of me to have another cat that would probably outlive me. Although an older one is a possibility.
Sounds like a different excursion, the wire-dumping. That’s something!
We don’t know. We’ve always said if and when it’s time, we’ll know. We still don’t feel a pull. Having a pet is an expensive proposition, as well, so we have to take that into consideration. But mostly, if it’s meant to be, it will happen.
Thanks, Jeanie.
So beautiful. Those drawer pulls…… how in the world?????? Amazing.
Our world is nearly as exciting as yours. Awesome.
Yep, words of the day ~~ amazing and awesome. Somehow I am not quite feeling it.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt ‘awesome.’ Amazing, yes. Awesome, no.
Thanks, Chris! Stay safe.
Wondrous! Like an old apothecary shop. Great color. Another stand out work of art. I feel for your loss of the fence which enclosed and protected your beloved dogs for so many years. Loss seems to go on forever sometimes.
It does. There are days when I miss my dogs so much. It’s like an ache that never quite goes away.
Thanks, Nora.
i don’t envy you on that task, but a fenced-in vegetable garden would be wonderful!
and that miniature cupboard is incredible. how do people make detailed things in such teeny little sizes?!?
hope you’re staying comfortable. it’s hot and humid again here, too. i am ready for 40 – 60 degree weather any time now. and rain! more rain!
nice photo of you on instagram. i need to get a “nasty woman” t-shirt!
hope you, don and everyone else has a nice weekend ahead. i am going to start reading agatha christie’s “the mysterious mr. quin” (from your mysterious bookshop) … and it is supposed to rain!
kathy in iowa
We feel the need – given the way the state of our country – to be a bit more self-sufficient. Less dependent. Raising our own vegetables would be a good step in that direction.
Enjoy your book, Kathy!
I can just say, thanks to my husband’s very-large vegetable garden this year, that it’s been a real joy to be supplied with so much organic, fresh produce. Some things do better than others, and it can change from year to year, and some people fight rabbits and deer the way we do gophers and moles and raccoons, but it’s beautiful to see a big tray of colorful vegetables brought in from the garden, from tomatoes to carrots, lemony cucumbers to green beans and the green-leafys, oh-the-squash(!), eggplants and onions and plump bell peppers and herbs (and, next year, we want to try growing our own potatoes). Still to come, PUMPKINS!
I was watching a TV Food Network show which showcased the gardens of three chefs and it was all about grow something, try anything, it doesn’t have to be large. You can grow a garden in a couple of raised-bed planters and get a decent yield. One of the chefs had the hanging-tomato contraption which could easily hang in a balcony or patio of a small apartment. And even a high-rise place can have a windowsill herb garden. It’s fun to start going through seed catalogs in the new year and plot out your garden space and what you’ll grow. It IS a good feeling to grow some of your own food; and it’s so much healthier unless you’ve got a really good source in a farmer’s market scenario where you are acquainted with the farmer and know exactly how he/she is growing their product. You grow it at home and you can control it; you know precisely what’s in your soil, how you’ve fed the plants, etc.
You and Don are perfect folks to grow a veggie garden in all that nice property you’ve got, with patches where you’ll have good sunshine. Just make sure it’s not too far from your garden hose because it’s a pain in the tush to have to haul water. Our hilltop garden isn’t anywhere near our rear-yard garden hose/faucet, so my husband had to rig up quite a system to extend hoses up that steep hill.
We’re going to do a lot of research and planningt this winter and hopefully we’ll be earning some money in the new year to fund some fencing and raised beds.
Thanks, Vicki.
Stay safe.
Oooh, the dump! At least it’s not the grocery store. That is a lovely miniature and I’d love to have a full-sized cabinet like that in my dining room.
Today two deeply tanned and tattooed young men are balancing on multiple tall ladders while they install gutters on our house. The new roof went up almost two weeks ago and then a new crew came in and are refacing our soffits. But today is gutter day. I cannot watch them as they precariously balance atop those swaying ladders anchored in the bushes and flower beds around the house.
Take it easy in the heat and hope you had a nice trip to the dump. Hey, remember you found a miniature house there once so…who knows what treasures await.
Take care.
Kay
It was a brief and productive trip to the dump. We don’t linger, but everyone that was there was wearing a mask, I’m happy to say.
Thanks, Kay!
A fenced in garden sounds like a wonderful project for next year. Best, part you’ll have all winter to plan it.
You live as awesome of a life as we do…congrats! Actually, I do envy your trip to the dump…and actual dump that is. Here, they are paved places where you drop off lawn refuse in selected bins. Not very exciting.
Stay safe! ;)
Except we were in and out of there very quickly! No time to look for any stray dollhouses. (That’s for the best, I think!)
Stay safe, Donna.
I’ve never written to you before, however I read your post everyday (for years). I first became interested in your dollhouse posts. I also love your posts about books, puzzles, antiquing, and love of animals.
I was just wondering, have you thought about adopting or at least fostering a dog or cat that desperately needs a home during this awfully needy time? They may be the additional comfort you both need right now.
Everyday I get emails asking for help for the many animals that have been abandoned due to the economic problems and just wish more animals/pets could be brought together with caregivers.. I would be totally lost without my four cats.
I know myself and I get too invested, too attached. I would not be a good candidate to foster a dog or a cat (I’m allergic to cats.) I worry about birds on our property, about our groundhog, about bunnies. I don’t have the emotional distance necessary.
After nurturing three dogs over the course of our time together, and in their old age, never going anywhere together because one of us had to be home with a dog in fragile health (we regret none of that, they were and are our children) we want and need the possibility of taking off for a weekend, of going on a trip. We were unable to do that for over 20 years.
I rescued strays for years while we were living in San Diego, doing everything I could to find their owners or find them a home.
Now, it’s time to let go – at least until we feel differently.
Thanks. Stay safe!
Hi Claudia,
You always seem to find such great minitures. I started a few years ago doing miniture rooms, it is so fun planning, looking for furniture and then placing the furniture. It is a learning process to proportion the size of the furniture.
I,too, know what it’s like to take down a dog enclosure. Even though our dog Pepper has been gone almost 20 years everytime I look at the area where the enclosure was, I think of her.
It is 100 degrees here in Calif. Suppose to be 107 Tuesday.
You and Don stay cool and safe
Linda
Bay Area, Linda? If so, me, too. Hoping those warnings about power outages are minimal. and you & I don’t have them. Too much to ask?
Martha,
I live in Sierra foothills, about 45 minutes from Sacramento. The weather station said Tuesday in Sacramento it will be 110. Yesterday there were power outages on the outskirts of Sacramento. We had a few last year, did you? I gave heard they are trying to downsize them this year so they don’t last as long!
I was born in Bay Area and lived there 35 years. Miss it but have brother and sister still there.
They stay in our hearts forever, Linda. I understand.
Stay cool, Linda!
And stay safe.
Hi Linda, I’m on the Peninsula, San Mateo County. That’s horrible – 110!
We were at 100 yesterday. I find I can’t rely upon my cell phone’s weather temperature predictions.
No power outages, but, as you said, sporadic short outages have been warned. Can’t do much about it except lay low & endure it. I find I’m complaining a lot about it, I think primarily, because my 18-yr-old cat is struggling to survive. She’s courageous – got out last night & was gone for hours, up our hill to the neighbors and hanging out in the backyard to watch the deer.
Here with no AC, just 5 fans running constantly. Best to you and Stay Safe.
-Martha
Hi Martha,
I have a cat who is almost 20 years, poor thing except he is still getting around and loves the outdoors.
We only get Sacramento news channel and their weather temps are all over thé place. I would think by you living on the peninsula you might get breezes. We lived on a small town on the bay and really miss the breezes.
Stay safe and cool.
Linda
Now I would love a full size one of those in my family room. What a nice piece of furniture.
I would, too!
Stay safe, Robyn.