Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Glimpses of the mess I was surrounded by when I was wallpapering the living room in the dollhouse.

I don’t have much space – just the desktop and the top of the sewing table. But creative messes are the best kind of messes, aren’t they?

By the way, it’s since been straightened up. (I used the weight of the books to hold the wallpaper in place.)

We worked outside yesterday. I started raking out one of the garden beds. Lots and lots of leaves were raked onto a tarp and lugged over to our disposal pile near the shed. We also did some work up in the woods. The day lilies have already emerged as well as the beginnings of the coneflowers and hostas. Familiar friends.

But it does involve a lot of bending over, so I feel it today. As does Don. Our plan? Work every other day. One day to work, the next to rest and recover, and then back at it the next day. I haven’t even begun the big garden bed!

I’ve also been moving some of the furniture that was stored on the porch during the winter back to the Funky Patio and the Secret Garden. One of the Adirondack chairs has been moved from the shed to the porch. Today, I’m going to visit the local nursery to buy some pansies and some potting soil, along with a few seed packets. I don’t think they’ll have impatiens yet, but if they do, I’ll buy a flat.

We have 80 degree temps coming up this week (too hot of course) but that means it’s time to really get things going out there. Exciting and exhausting!

I also have a little one-on-one dialect coaching coming up this week. An actress I worked with in one of Darko’s shows last year wants some coaching for a production she’ll be working on next month. I’m grateful because first of all, I like and respect her, and secondly, the fee is timely. It will help me buy plants for the porch.

I’m in the middle of reading The Benefit of Hindsight  by Susan Hill. I love her mysteries, but I often want to knock some sense into Simon Serailler, her lead character. Too flirty with women, often inappropriately so. He’s a grown man who often functions more like a teenager. Of course, Hill has written him beautifully because he’s flawed, like all of us. I’m more than halfway through.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

I can’t help it. They are just so perfect, these crabapple buds. These buds are on the tree in the center on the front lawn. It sprung up in the same place that our dear departed weeping willow was. It took us a while to figure out that it was indeed a crabapple; it needed to grow a bit first,

I was outside yesterday for about an hour and a half and then I was tired and stopped for the day. I was pruning the dead blooms from the limelight hydrangea. Still have a bit more to go but they’re in the middle of the bush and I can’t reach them. I also pruned a bit at the bottom where it blocks the sun from one of our boxwoods. Lots of bending over, picking up sticks and branches and walking them up to one of our discard piles. At one point, a bird kept up a nonstop chatter and it was coming from the maple. I suspect I was too close to a possible nest location.

I also removed a lot of oak leaves from the culvert with a rake. They seemed to be clogging up things. Don did some work up on the trails in our little woods.

But there’s a lot of pollen out there and I’m definitely feeling the effects of it today.

I’m refraining from clearing the garden beds until we get through the not-quite-freezing temperatures of tonight. I’ll start on that tomorrow. We have a burn ban in place and there have been fire warnings the past few days as the humidity is very, very low and the winds are high enough to cause trouble. This happened last year at this time, too.

And oh my! We watched all of the re-entry of Artemis II and it was glorious! This mission has been good for my soul. Something positive and beautiful in a world seemingly gone mad. And so many WOMEN in key roles at NASA!!! Bravo! I now have a renewed fascination with space exploration, something I haven’t felt in years.

So glad the astronauts are safe and sound.

I’m off to figure out if I can do any work outside today. That means more coffee first.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.