• Oh my heavens, it was cold on our morning walk! I think it must have been in the forties, though I didn’t stop to check my weather app. Anyway, I felt it. Such a cold morning given that the temperature is going to hit the eighties tomorrow and Sunday. But that’s autumn for you.
• This David phlox is still blooming in the big garden bed. I managed to click the shutter just as the white spider emerged. Great camouflage, wouldn’t you say?
• Don is playing his guitar as I write this. We had our second cup of coffee after the walk. Part of our little morning ritual involves an app Don has called Word of the Day. We look at the word, think about it, and then I will say what I think it means, and Don will say what he thinks it means. We’re usually right, but sometimes we are completely wrong, or one of us will say we have no idea what it means. I have come to realize that there are a few words I routinely read that I assume I know the meaning of, but in reality, I don’t.
Then we read a bit from Samuel Pepys diary. Pepys, in case you’re unfamiliar with him, lived in London in the 17th Century. He kept a diary over the course of 10 years. It tells us a great deal about daily life in the city, as well as the Great Fire of London, which Pepys witnessed. He was an administrator for the navy and, eventually, a member of Parliament. He kept the diary from 1660 to 1669. We have the volume for 1660, so we have started reading it aloud to each other. We just started doing that this week.
Yes, we’re nerds.
• Huzzah! My monstera is growing another shoot! That makes seven in the last two months. So proud of my once-abandoned baby.
• I head for the miniature show tomorrow. I briefly debated whether to go or not, but it’s always inspiring and I can use some inspiration. I shall be back into the dollhouses come winter, so any and all inspiration is welcome.
But it will be a long day because it takes over 2 hours to get there. Don and I were talking about it this morning and I said it’s the only miniature show I go to and that there’s a big one in Philadelphia in November, but I never seem to get there. He said he’d go with me! I didn’t even ask him! Bless his heart, it would be much easier with him along for the ride.
How did I get so lucky? I thank God for that man on a daily basis.
I’ll post tomorrow if I have time, but if I don’t, it’s because I have to get on the road early in the morning.
Happy Friday.
It is still warm and humid here, even in the mornings. We’re in the 60’s in the morning and at night and low 80’s during the day. No complaints here on the last day of summer!
Brian and I are nerdy, too and enjoy random factual things and history (moreso Brian) and words. We both love hanging out in bookstores. And we play backgammon all the time. So there you go. ;-)
I caught up on housework this morning and now need to go out and run a couple of errands. Back home to make a pot of soup. I’ve been needing to make something I can keep in the fridge for quick meals and for Brian to take to work. And Tim has a bad cold right now, so I told him I’d bring him a container of the soup later. Good thing he only lives a couple of miles down the road! (But he’s moving to CA in November…my heart is already breaking!)
Have a good time at the miniatures show tomorrow and safe travels there and back.
Oh no! Well, it gives you an excuse to visit California, right?
I would LOVE to read the Pepys diaries. thanks for the reminder!
and I so glad Don went with you to the miniature show! xo
He didn’t go with me. He offered to go with me in November, Tammy!
Good job, Monstera! And have a wonderful time at the show. I hope you find just the right touch for the house (in your budget, of course!) and tons of inspiration!
Thank you, Jeanie! I always look forward to this show.
Miniature shows! I’m so jealous! They don’t seem to have any around here anymore. I do have relatives in Philadelphia though – hmmmm. I like the word a day idea, but I don’t know about doing it with my husband – his vocabulary is amazing- and mine’s not bad . He’d probably already know most of the words!
Well, my vocabulary is pretty amazing and they still stump me occasionally! Thanks, Jane.
Enjoy the miniature show. Take lots of pictures. I love to hear about your walks in the woods.
Thank you, Elaine! I will.
You & Don aren’t nerds….you are romantics….💕
Aw, thank you, Luanne!
Have a good time at the show.
Marilyn
Thank you Marilyn, I did!
The miniature show sounds like so much fun!! Your plants still look great
Enjoy!
Thank you, Judy!
That flower is simply beautiful! I’ve never seen a white spider–so yes, great camouflage. LOL I’m very glad that Don is going to the miniature show with you and also glad you decided to go. I’m sure there will be tons of inspiration and wonders. It’s good for our brains to see beauty. Lots of us are eager to see what the “new” dollhouse becomes. It’s such an idiosyncratic little place. Have a beautiful day with your very supportive husband!
Don is going with me to the November show. He had to be in the city on Saturday.
Your rituals a sweet not nerdy.
Thank you, Kay!
Oh, I think it’s great that the two of you will have the journey to the miniature show; have a nice little drive and destination; two’s company, twice the joy.
Your monstera is SO healthy-looking; bravo!
I’d say forget about posting tomorrow; instead, give us juicy details (Monday) once you’re settled back home; I do SO hope you can take photos for us (I’m a miniatures fanatic now). Thanks; have a great ‘mini’ road trip; so nice for Sunday, too.
We’re still having very warm days in my part of SoCalif but, big noteworthy announcement, I actually threw on a light blanket for sleep last night, first time in very-many months. It gets colder now around 4am-5am. I checked ‘my big, tall tree’ in town yesterday, which is always my Fall earmark (one of our few where the leaves turn color), and it’s still very green; just a ‘hole in the middle’ where I see some dark red and lightish-gold. It’ll be November til we get some real color on any trees we have here (certainly nothing like you get in the Northeast, though). It seems like “everybody I know” is off to autumn-color East Coast vacays right now; I’m feeling envious! One person starts it off in Massachusetts and another is going to Williamsburg (Virginia) first; another’s going directly to Maine. Oh, how I’d love to be taking those trips (would be my first time); happy for them, though. Let us know what kind of color you see tomorrow on your trip!
I was so glad to know of Samuel Pepy’s. In my ignorance, just never heard of him. Now you have me looking him up and learning of him! (Thanks, though!)
I’m not going to have HBO much longer, but I became interested in this recent show they had called Gentleman Jack (highly-entertaining series) as it’s a period of history in England in the very early 1800s of which I know little, and the clothes/costumes, wagons and carriages, sets, locale of this series seems so authentic (like stuff they cook, too, as in game or from barnyard; how the lead character would procure a book or go to a bank or see a lawyer in the very-early 19th century [and in somewhat rural areas still]; or how people toiled when trying to make a road and other manual labor; their carts and tools; farm implements); it’s sort of wealthy-people stories mixed in with their servants’/tenants’ stories, all on one big estate in Yorkshire and surrounding villages, and it’s not solely fiction as the series is based on the real-life writings of the estate’s intriguing and brave-strong-intelligent landowner, a woman, Anne Lister, who kept copious diaries herself, all in a secret code (apparently primarily because she was a closeted lesbian and wanted to ‘write it all out’ in secret, to be/feel safe in those times; but the writings are about more than just her personal relationships; also that of her everyday running of this working estate [she was an early ‘industrialist’ with a coal mine] and her many global travels as well). I am always interested in personal accounts of things of a time or place, so that’s why I know I’ll enjoy reading Pepy’s, thanks again to you, Claudia; another valuable blog post from you!
Pepys was in interesting guy, he knew most everyone, it seems!
I went alone. He said he would accompany me to the November show. I wasn’t clear, sorry.
In the past week, trees have started to turn color. We’re far from peak color yet, but you can see reds and yellows everywhere.
Ah, must be so pretty. I think I heard on the evening news that Monday is the true start of Fall?
Yes. But it’s 88 degrees here today!