I persuaded the Good Doctor to take an evening constitutional with the Beautiful Babette – and me. Oh, sure, he’s been here lots of times, but now it’s home. The Urbanite goes Country. Or something like that.
Mars and Venus Assemble a Garden Cart
It's a wonderful contraption with really great wheels!
HMOKeefe gave me a garden cart for Mother’s Day. What with one thing and another, I wasn’t able to assemble it until these evening. And a good thing too! It was definitely a two-person job. He thinks in pictures, I think in words. The pictures weren’t helpful and neither were the words.
By the time we finished, I was convinced that the cart was conceptualized by a woman and engineered by a man. I’m quite sure a man also wrote the directions. After a plethora of WTFs and “this thing was not manufactured properly”, I announced I was doing it my way.
The cart was assembled.
I’m really going to enjoy this thing. It beats the hell out of my old wheelbarrow. And when my time comes, I can just be rolled and dumped into the compost pit. Woo Hoo! It was a good day to be me.
Rain on Roses
Well, the vinca is doing great!
Well, it’s no Gardenpalooza – more like Gardenpifflefizzle, but it feels good. I finally got Quality Time in the garden this weekend. Quality Time being less than an accurate description. More later.
After having disappeared for so long, it’s a bit difficult to try and figure out where to begin.
In January, HMOKeefe decided to finally consolidate zip codes and he began the process of early retirement. He has some health issues related to a bone marrow transplant for leukemia (CML, to be exact) and the preparation for the move was, um, involved.
The man really does deserve a closet, but what am I going to do with all this stuff?
Besides trying to find a closet for him to put his togs in, I have been busier than a one-armed paper hanger on a unicycle in a tornado at my job. Frequently during the past few months, I have muttered, declared and yelled, “Hell’s bells, we don’t have to schedule everything for the same time. There are 12 months in the year.
He still doesn’t have a closet.
[Speaking of tornados, boy, do I have a story.]
HMOKeefe has been ensconced in Chez Barn for a little more than a week. Well, sort of. Following the VERY EVENTFUL move from Massachusetts to West Virginia, I contracted a nasty something that turned into viral pneumonia. At present, I am quarantined and he is staying with my folks. Is it a big ol’ goofy world or what?
I'm sick.
My doctor tut-tutted and reminded me that if I don’t slow myself down, my body will do it for me. And then she prescribed prednisone which winds me up like caffeine-laced cocaine. I’m supposed to be resting, sucking on one of my two inhalers (yes, two!) and drinking lots of fluids.
I still feel like the nasty crud at the bottom of the garbage can, but I’m strangely energized. I’ve restored some order to the house, processed a few loads of laundry, unpacked suitcases from the Massachusetts sojourn as well as those used for attendance at a conference last week.
[Oh, yes, I bring HMOKeefe to West Virginia and then abandon him. And then I arrive home with news that I’m contagious with a nasty and he’s got to go stay elsewhere due to the immune suppressants he takes. He had viral pneumonia years and years and years ago. It took little to persuade him to go stay with people he doesn’t know that well.]
And as if restoring order to the abode wasn’t enough, I summoned the wherewithal to finally mow the backyard.
The harsh winter, rainy spring and summer heat has not been kind.
I’ve been so flipping busy and it’s rained every weekend for months, I couldn’t get the lawn mowed. Folks tell me it’s been kind of dry the past couple of weeks, but my yard still squelches when I walk on it. Nonetheless, enough is enough. I tackled the (small) yard with a temperamental lawn mower yesterday. While hacking through the jungle that arose with the wild, wet spring, I hacked, coughed, sneezed and gagged – sometimes all at once. Viral pneumonia, even tempered with prednisone, is no fun.
Today, I weeded, cleaned up debris and finished chopping up last fall’s leaves with mower. [I was busy last fall, too.]
The one rose bloom I got to see. Is that pitiful or what?
The garden is in a sad state. We had a late freeze that seriously damaged some of the newer perennials. Then we had nonstop rain. And then we had sudden deluges punctuated with high heat that effectively boiled a bunch of stuff. The stuff that did well – some of the roses, the wisteria, the peonies, the mock orange and the vinca all decided to bloom and blow while I was conducting a move worthy of a David Lynch film.
I feel cheated. But I also feel as if my equanimity is returning. Mucking about in dirt is a very effective antidepressant for me. And gardens do provide immediate gratification at times. After a harsh winter and soggy spring, the before and after of a couple days of prednisone driven frenzy is a sight to behold.
The hostas are happy. But they're always happy.
If you don’t look too close.
The garden is in a state and I’ll be the rest of the season nurturing and repairing damage. There’s nothing left to bloom, except maybe the peony. It’s a new one and I can’t tell if it’s bloomed or not. The buds don’t quite look like buds and might be what’s left after a bloom. I can’t quite figure it out.
Anyway, I need annuals. Lots of annuals. Petunias. Impatiens. Shasta Daisies. Morning Glory. Moonflowers. And some creeping juniper to replace that which died. And Boston ferns to hang by the door. Chocolate mint to grace the table. So much to do. But, damn, it’s good to be back in the garden..
Blogging, too, is an emotional balm for me. Damn, it’s good to be back.
Rain on Roses
[Did I mention the laptop hard drive crashed spectacularly and I’ve been without the little darling for nearly 4 weeks? HMOKeefe put in a new hard drive. I finished loading software and copying backup files and things are almost normal. Since I don’t have a picture of this spring’s roses, I’m using an older one for my desktop. Rain on roses seemed a fitting metaphor for the past few months.]
Nuffin ‘Bout Birthin’ No Valances
I love windows.
One of the great pleasures of being down to one job is the time to nest in my home. Another is having time to blog.
One of the great pleasures of living where I do is I don’t have to cover the windows with hundreds of dollars of fabric to keep the creeps from peeping in. When living in various towns and cities, intellectually I understood the need for curtains and draperies, but I hated them. I particularly hated them in my first house – the house with leaded glass and ornate molding. And I hated them during the winter when frugality dictated they be closed to keep the heating bill within the realm of payment possibility.
The last set of drapes I remember really liking were those worn by Carol Burnett during one of her more memorable skits.
Nobody suggests "window treatments" here!
When I landed in the barn at the end of a dirt road on top of a hill, I gloried in having lots of uncovered windows. I flaunted my bare windows. I’m a window junkie, so there was much to flaunt.
After twenty years of fabric-free flaunting of glass and molding, it seems I’ve gotten over the illicit thrill of naked windows. For the past few years, some of the windows have begun to look bare – unfinished – improperly accessorized – and, well, being the trendy chick I am, I began looking at what are now known as window treatments and used to be called drapes.
[Not all the windows, mind you. There are some that I’ll never cover and you can’t make me.]
Window treatments have silly prices. Window treatments should not cost more than the window. They shouldn’t cost more than major appliances, my first car, a root canal or the yearly vet bill for three dogs. People pay this kind of money? Hand me my smelling salts.
Still and all, some of my windows, particularly those in the kitchen, began looking a bit forlorn.
Mmmmmm
Kitchen curtains are hideous. I don’t want prancing chefs, embroidered tea kettles, frolicking kittens, or fruits and vegetables. The Great Kitchen Curtain Search was further complicated by my chosen and much loved color scheme. I am inordinately fond of the combination of dark brown, blue and white. That trilogy comforts me, inspires me, and was the first to teach me the power of color.
My very first kitchen was blue, brown and white and the last kitchen I’ll ever have is blue, brown and white. One wouldn’t think that would be such a rough combination to accessorize with a bit of fabric. One would be surprised. One was surprised. For that first kitchen, I found a set of tiers in the three colors and, since, country was all the rage, they worked. It helped that I had only one window in the kitchen. [Raging or not, my patience for ruffles can wear thin.]
What can I say?
In a fit of country kitsch brought on by low blood sugar (or possibly a hangover), I bought some white eyelet valances with blue embroidered flowers for the current (and last) kitchen. They weren’t totally hideous, but they were totally too short and looked flippin’ ridiculous. Think Jethro in pants and sleeves that were never long enough. I took them down to wash them and never put them back up. That was, hmmm, five years ago?
Yup. That's a sofa throw if I ever saw one.
The compulsion to partially cover kitchen windows ratcheted up a few months ago. I looked and looked. Surfed the web. Haunted clearance sales. I found the valances I thought were the ones of my dreams – Indian batik with a lotus motif and beading. Valances were my preferred covering because they don’t really cover, but do solve the oh-my-god-what-do-I-do-with-the-windows problem. $250 for cotton strips of fabric? People pay that? Really?
So. I found some Indian batik on the web (sans beads) and decided to sew some valances. The fabric arrived and it’s gorgeous, but I decided it would make a better throw for the sofa than window treatments. Besides, I didn’t have time to learn how to bead.
I just realized the blue swirls are actually the word coffee.
So, I toddled off to the fabric store and found some really spiffy cotton in all the right colors. I began haunting websites for instructions on how to make valances. Good grief they made it sound complicated. Let me just remind you of the great fear I hold for my sewing machine.
Both lengths of fabric have been sitting on the church pew for months. I’ve been trying to a) find time b) when I was motivated to c) tackle the Beelzebub of Bobbinhood. It never happened. That particular trilogy can’t be achieved without additives to my blood chemistry.
Now ain't they something?
One thing led to another and then another and another and, in short, while trying to find a Mother’s Day gift, I ran across the Most Beautiful Valances in the Whole Wide World. At 90% off with free shipping. I clicked, whipped out the debit card, and typed in my address quicker than you can sing the three verses of To Hell with Sewing Machines. (Lawsy, Miz Scarlett, I don’t no nuffin ‘bout birthin’ no valances.)
They arrived today. I figured there was a good chance my internal image of them wasn’t going to match their external image. I also figured there was a good chance I would be sending them back.
Yup. It's spring.
They’re perfect! They’re ridiculous enough to be mine. (Who has taffeta in their kitchen, hmmm?) They’re the right size. They’ve got enough ornamentation to make them interesting. They’re a tasteful, elegant white. They’re washable. They’re peachy keen, cool beans, awesome, righteous, neato, and groovy. I love them. They don’t completely cover the windows, they’re sheer enough to have no effect on the ability of the sun to flood my kitchen, and my windows look like they just won the tiara in the Miss Window Treatment contest. (With any luck the complete prize package includes Windex and a Windex-er.)
It’s a good day to be me.
[P.S. I saw my first blooming daffodil last week. I am so excited about a lot of stuff these days and not least among them is the opportunity to garden with my nights and weekends free free free.]
W. Va. Fur and Root 