The first of the bee balm has opened. I like seeing that splash of red in the garden.
I got home around 4 pm yesterday and immediately watered all the plants on the porch. While adding water to the birdbath, I myself was watered, as we had a sudden summer rain, seemingly out of nowhere.
As always, I was glad to be home. Home is the best.
I saw this little guy yesterday on the edge of the woods. He’s part of the dragonfly family, which is apparently much larger than I knew. Once I start googling these things, I find myself off on a learning adventure. So many different kinds of dragonflies!
And the first of the coneflowers have opened. I love coneflowers; to me, they are the perfect cottage garden flower.
Today? Guess.
If you guessed mowing, you are right.
And some grocery shopping and some reconnaissance. My dear friend Rick (I was at his retirement party a few weeks ago) and his husband Doug are considering a move back east. Both of them lived for years in NYC and they love the Hudson Valley as well. So they’re thinking about buying a house outside of NYC and also having a little pied-à-terre in the city. Yesterday, Rick emailed me about a property that happens to be very near our cottage, and we ended up talking about it via the phone for an hour or so. I told him I’d drive by and scope it out for him. And maybe, just maybe, I can meet with the agent who is going to look at it on Sunday and check it out for Rick and Doug. Obviously, Don and I would love to have them nearby – it would be wonderful. But even if they end up being an hour away somewhere in the Hudson Valley, it will be a heck of a lot closer than San Diego!
Happy Thursday.
Love dragonflies…and yes, it seems there are so many varieties. I seem to find so many that have died and dried in such perfect positions, that I just can’t put them in the trash. They are now on display in my “natural history museums”. The glassed-in bookcase at the lake is my most extensive collection. Dragonflies share space with a hummingbird nest and bits of robin-egg shells, butterflies, bumblebees, a woolybear caterpillar, a huge black beetle, wasps nests, feathers, acorn, pine cones, rocks, etc. Yes, I’m probably weird, but I find them all beautiful.
Hope your friend finds what he’s looking for in your neck of the woods. It would be fun to have a CA friend so close to you!
I love collecting that sort of thing – not weird at all (at least to me!)
Rick and I worked together at Boston University, too, so he’s a friend from CA and Boston!
It is always good to be home! The cone flowers are a favorite of mine also. Love the photo of the dragonflies. We have some amazing one’s that visit us each summer. I might try for some photos. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have your friend so close. Fingers crossed that works out. We are still immersed in rain with the storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Prayers for TX and LA as they are flooding. Hugs!
You should see if you can get a photo – they usually land and stay in place for a while, so you might get some great pictures.
Poor Texas and Louisiana – and everyone that’s getting hit by so much rain!
yes, home is best! hope your friend finds a great place near you and don. nice of you to help check it out for him.
prayers for louisiana, texas and anyone else dealing with storms and flooding …
Yes, indeed. I feel for them – one feels powerless in the face of all those storms.
Nothing better than having friends live near!
It would be so nice if it all works out!
That would be fantastic for you and Don, if Rick moved closer! We seem to have significantly more dragonflies this year….unless I’m just more aware. Such lovely creatures! Rain seems to be everywhere…except the southwest. Summer is not exactly off to a great start for a lot of people. I love to take trips/adventures…but, I love coming home even more! ;)
Me too. I’m looking forward to my drive home with Don, but I’m already sad about being away for over two weeks!
I appreciate insects but I don’t like them…except bees. I like bees. Images of dragonflies are beautiful. The real thing creeps me out. Having said that, I do t hurt insects, just avoid them. Anyway, I love home too. I like traveling a lot but home is the best. Glad your friend will eventually be on the same coast, same area, Claudia. Wonderful if “down the street”.
I find I love insects more and more the more I study them. Having the garden and living out in the country has opened my eyes. I used to find them annoying, but now I find them fascinating. Except mosquitoes.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful fun to have them so close? Sometimes things just fall into place.
Wow….. the unveiling of this health deboggle is just mind blowing. I am so very ashamed of this country. Just watched them carrying and wheeling out the Medicaid patients from outside Mitch McConnell’s office. Shame. Bigger cuts to Medicaid than ever thought. We should all hang our heads.
I am stunned by the cruelty of the bill. What will people do without Medicaid – including my nephew? All of this to give tax cuts to the wealthy? The GOP does not care about us. It has become a cruel, power hungry party for the rich run by old white men.
Excellent dragonfly photo; I never see stuff like that here in my SoCalif garden.
Are your friends native-born to Midwest or East Coast? My husband’s Midwest but says he cannot ever return to cold, snowy weather. He grew up in it, spent his 20s in it but says, for him, that was enough, forever. Just curious; I’m always interested in the choices people make at retirement because I’m considering so many options myself.
Rick was raised in Seattle, Doug was raised in Kentucky. But both of them lived in NYC for years. Unlike your husband, I moved to Southern California for work, but after eight years I missed the seasons. Even though I cuss at snow and the problems that come with winter, I think the seasons keep me fresh in a way that SoCal didn’t (in the long run). I think Rick and Doug feel the same way.
Very interesting perspective for me. I’m the native Californian who’s really never known anything much different. My husband, although coincidentally born in California as his family was moved here and there with career military, had no connections/no family or friends in Calif. Work, too, brought him here, though, as he approached age 30, but he was hooked from there on, on Calif sunshine; he has utterly no sentimentality about ‘the seasons’ anywhere else. He’s very thin and tall; he likes to be warm. Conversely, most of my life, I’ve felt I’m living in the wrong place, for me. The only way I can ever know is to go live somewhere else, like for a one-year experiment, where I can see a true Fall & Winter.
How did Don learn to love the Northeast after being in San Diego? What settled it, for him?
We’re both tall, and we were quite a bit thinner when we moved here, so that had no impact on us!
It took Don a while. He had a troubled childhood, parents divorced (a bitter one), a mother who was mentally ill in a time where there wasn’t a lot of help available, constant moving from one apartment to another – each one dumpier than the last, being on welfare and a whole lot more besides. Then he became an actor and was constantly moving from one theater to another – on the road a lot. It wasn’t until about 3 years ago – and we’ve lived in this house for almost 12 years and out east for 16 years – that he really felt this was home. He has grown to love the changing seasons and the beauty of the Hudson Valley. It is spectacularly beautiful here, I have to say. And he loves the music scene.
That’s profound, what you’ve just said, Claudia, that Don could finally feel rested and at home in one special place after so much tumult earlier in his life and also the lifestyle of moving frequently for work but of course it also has everything to do with your life together, as a couple, you both as your own family, and all you’ve done personally to make the cottage a comfortable oasis for both of you…to have that rootedness and familiarity of a place to ‘come home’ to and make it your own.
With my grandfather growing up in Oneida County and, later, maybe (I’m not sure) Albany or even points further south along the river, I also am lured to your neck ‘o the woods from the somewhat-few-but-precious stories I have of him working on a horse farm in his teens and loving the beautiful green rolling hills of the Hudson Valley. I have always felt a strong need to walk in his footsteps in the places he lived, including where he was born in The Netherlands. I hope I’m just three years from making this dream come true in retirement…perhaps not Holland across the ocean, but New York for sure. I’ve tried to read a lot about New York as a whole state and it is so remarkably diverse, so full of history; I can’t wait to see it.
I had tears in my eyes when he finally felt this was home. I know how hard he worked to get there.
I feel a tug from Michigan or Wisconsin for that experiment I mentioned. I have a friend in Traverse City; I have many relatives in the Grand Rapids area I’ve yet to meet, and my neighbor has some good contacts, where she formerly lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, near Mackinac and also Copper Harbor. Did I ever ask you of Charlevoix, Claudia? Do you know anything about it?
Yes, Charlevoix is lovely – very near to Traverse City. I actually like Charlevoix even more than Traverse City. When I was young and we were camping ‘up north’ in Michigan every summer – and even when I was a camp counselor up there during college – I didn’t appreciate that area enough because I was from a major metropolitan area and though it was lovely, I thought I could never live there full-time. But now, of course, I’d love to live there full-time, though both towns have grown a great deal since those days. My parents lived in Rogers City for many years (on Lake Erie) right at the top of the Lower Peninsula. I also spent time in the Upper Peninsula and in Copper Harbor, etc. Grand Rapids is a big city and I’ve spent a bit of time there – it’s known for being quite conservative politically – Betsy DeVos (married to an Amway guy) is from that area. So it’s nice, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Of course, not everyone is conservative there, but it’s definitely a red part of the state.
Again, such interesting perspectives from you; thanks for sharing. I think it’s fun that places I mentioned are ones you’ve actually been to and can describe. I’ll read up on Rogers City now…
I don’t know anything about my family in Michigan (or Grand Rapids) except that they’re Dutch, and descendants have likely lived there since about 1904 (after leaving New York where they’d lived for about 10 years after immigrating from The Netherlands in the late 1800s). Mother and Dad did make one visit to Grand Rapids (long after her father had died), to meet her first cousins…and it was really life-changing for her because, there, in Michigan, those descendants live close to their heritage, families in large numbers, whereas my grandpa sort of left it all behind, came to California before he was age 20, sadly ditched the language, religion and customs, and Mom was his only child who, til the day she died, didn’t know one Dutch-language word (even though she was half Dutch).
There is a large population of Dutch families, Dutch descendants in Grand Rapids. It’s sort of known for that. And for all the furniture manufacturers that were based there.
Hope things work out for your friend Rick to purchase a house near you and Don. It is nice to have friends near by.
Marilyn
It would be very nice. Even if it isn’t this one, the fact that they’ll be within spitting distance rather than way out west will be very nice.
That would be so great to have Rick and his hubby so near to you..I wish them the best of luck with house hunting! So sorry I have been missing again…we haven’t had internet service in all of this time…today we had a guy from Verizon here who found the problem outside..now I will have to catch up and see were it is that you have been!
Poor you! I’m glad you finally got it back, Nancy!