Mockingbird Hill Cottage — Page 1628 — Mockingbird Hill Cottage

My Beautiful Babies

April 28, 2011 at 7:19 pm by Claudia

As soon as Scout hears my feet hit the stairs in the morning, she is raring to go. She wakes up with a smile on her sweet face. Her joy is infectious – she often goes into what we call a ‘pounce.’ Sometimes she’ll spin around. She’s hilarious.

Riley, on the other hand, is like his mother. He wakes up slowly.

While Scout is ready to go outside and take care of business immediately, Riley stays on the floor for a while. He may be there for a mere 10 minutes but he’s been known to stay there for 2 hours. Then suddenly, he’ll get up and head for the door.

They’re so quirky and individual, these little babies of mine. This is the part I hate – knowing that I’m leaving in 3 days and will be away from them for 7 weeks. They have no idea. At least Don knows and understands and has had time to prepare for it all. The minute Scout sees my suitcase, she’ll turn away from me. She won’t meet my eyes. I’ll explain as best I can why I have to go, but they won’t understand. This is the time my heart breaks a little.

Babies need their Mom. Mom needs her babies.

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My heart goes out to everyone affected by the devastating tornados in the South. I hope and pray you are all safe. The weather here today was stormy and unpredictable. At one point, I was running errands south of our home when the radio broadcast a tornado warning for the area in which I was driving. The sky was frighteningly dark. I got out of the car and went into Target until the warning expired. That was unsettling but nothing like it must have been in Alabama and Georgia yesterday.

I also want to add that I am behind in blog visiting and commenting. I’ve so much to do before I leave. I don’t think I’ll be able to catch up until I get to Wisconsin and have some down time. Sorry!

Much Mulching & Pretty Pottery

April 27, 2011 at 8:59 am by Claudia

Alliteration makes me smile, hence today’s blog post title. Greetings from the land of mulch! And I mean lots of mulch. Yesterday, this crazy, extreme spring gave us a sunny day in the 80’s. I knew what I had to do. It was mulch time.

Don usually helps me with mulching but he had to go into Manhattan at the last minute. So it was just me and 8 bags of mulch. Since I’m leaving Sunday and big thunderstorms are forecast today and tomorrow, I had to grab my chance. I mulched. I planted. I mowed the dogs’ corral.

And I can barely move today. My arms are sore from carting bags of mulch around. My back is sore from bending over. I got a little sunburn. But, gosh darn it, except for a little bed on the side of the house and the beds in front of the shed, all is mulched. I’m trying to keep potential weeds at bay but I’m sure that upon my return in June this will all be overgrown. Don is afraid to pull anything that might be a real plant and not a weed. I’ve given him permission to yank the Jacob’s Ladder when it gets too pushy, otherwise it will take over the garden bed.

I took a walk around the property – everything is just starting to bud.

The big sugar maple will probably leaf out right after I leave. I’m crossing my fingers…maybe it will happen sooner.

My little lilac – will it open before Sunday?

Tiny, perfect buds on the Wiegela bush. Please open before Sunday…

By the way, I have to get up at 4 am on Sunday to catch a 6 am flight. I had two choices: arrive in the morning or late at night. Since I will be using a rental car and I have no idea how to get around in Wisconsin, I thought the wise choice would be driving in daylight. So I can see where I’m going. And find the condo where I will be staying.

And, unbelievably, Sonja (who sent me some Roseville pottery a while back) sent me another piece! I am amazed at her generosity. How did I get so lucky?

This is the Zephyr Lily pattern. I have a shallow dish in the same pattern – it might have been the first piece that I acquired. Isn’t it lovely? And those little rosettes? The vase was full of them.

Right now they are in this unattractive zip-lock bag but they will soon be headed up to my studio. Thank you, Sonja. You are a truly generous person and I am deeply grateful for these gifts.

I’m going to do a bit more work around here today, if the rain holds off. Carefully. Gingerly. Don’t want to be hobbled by a bad back when I get to Wisconsin.

A Frustrating Spring

April 25, 2011 at 9:23 am by Claudia

Yesterday, during the 1 hour of sunshine Mother Nature decided to allot for my use, I did a little clean up in the garden. This part of my hyacinth had bent over to touch the ground so I decided it needed to be in a little McCoy vase in the house. What an amazing scent hyacinths have. During the rain that descended later in the day and continues today, I have often stopped to breathe in that perfume.

What a frustrating spring that has been! Day after day of unseasonably cold, rainy weather. Only a few days of sunshine, and never two days in row. Nothing is blooming yet, save for the daffodils and forsythia, even at the end of April. When I decided to take the coaching job in Wisconsin, I was cheered by the fact that I wouldn’t be leaving quite as early as I had to when I was working in San Diego. I was sure I would get to see more of the garden in bloom. No such luck. In fact, there is much less in bloom than there was right before I left for San Diego last year. A quick look back in my blog archives shows me that.

This is our weather forecast for the next 5 days:

I have to mulch, pot more flowers, plant the window boxes. Oh, and I have to pack, organize everything here before I go, write lists for Don. I don’t feel motivated to do any of it, partly due to a reluctance to face the fact that I have to leave for 7 weeks and partly due to this unending dismal weather. Winter was terrible this year. Spring, so far, has been an extension of those gray winter days. I was counting on this time not only to work in the garden but to be in the garden. Being in the garden, working there, takes me to another place. I lose all sense of time. For a little while, my worries fade away as I work with the soil. And there are many worries at present. So I look forward to this particular form of meditation all winter. I feel a bit cheated this year.

I’ve been reading the journals of poet and writer May Sarton. She moved to Vermont in the early 1960’s and writes about her solitary life as a writer as well as the joys of gardening. From one of her journals, Plant Dreaming Deep, she writes:

“Making a garden is not a gentle hobby for the elderly, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion.
It seizes a person whole and once it has done so,
he will have to accept that his life is going to be radically changed.
There are seasons when he will hesitate to travel, and if he does travel, his mind will be distracted by the thousand and one children he has left behind, children who are always in peril of one sort or another….whatever he has considered to be his profession has become an avocation. His vocation is his garden.”

I recognized myself in the words of this passage, especially the part about having to travel. This is the fourth year in a row that I have had to travel during the time the garden is at its best. I have no choice. So I will grab what little time nature gives me this week and do my best to prepare the garden for the burst of blooms that will happen in May.Edited to add: The sun came out this afternoon for about 3 hours. What a difference it made. I got some planting done and tomorrow I mulch!

My Beautiful Babies

Much Mulching & Pretty Pottery

A Frustrating Spring

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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