He is a born again Believer, a natural leader, calm, easy going, sincere, strong, glad-hearted, friendly.
I remember him getting into trouble as a small thing in Kindergarten or first grade because he would not.stop.humming.songs during class time.
Yesterday I was smiling all over the house as he took a long shower after school, he was singing with such gusto up there in the bathroom.
Always has music in his heart.
He is on my mind a lot lately because he is my firstborn, he is 18, he is at the end of his childhood days and about to begin the rest of his life on his own….be his own man, make his own decisions, and hopefully do his own laundry, cooking, and cleaning, too.
He and Emily are a sweet loving couple. I wonder what the future holds for them? They already speak of marriage. They get along so well, it’s the best thing in the world to watch them together. (He reads books to her!) If I find a love note on his bedside table I read it and wipe away little tears.
He is all set to attend a community college in the fall.
He still loves to talk to me and his Dad all about his experiences. Last Friday was his Senior picnic and he had a grand time all day long….rock climbing, playing football, eating lots of food, all free “I only had to pay 20 dollars!” at a wonderful park in Connecticut.
When he talks to me I see glimpses of his baby face within the man’s.
Oh what it is to be a mother. I never really knew. I dare say I still have no idea how much my heart can take.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6
A sense of humor is more valuable for a busy woman than all the latest inventions for making housekeeping easy. The patent dish-washer, the self-feeding and self-shaking range, the washing-machine, the bread-mixer and the egg beater all put together will not help “mother” through Saturday morning so well as the ability to laugh long and heartily.
Unfortunately, there is no school where this accomplishment can be learned. The giggling girl is not so sure to grow up a laughing woman. She may regard herself and her own affairs with a portentous seriousness. Egotism is fatal to a true sense of humor. So is a lack of imagination. So is that morbid conscientiousness which is our least desirable inheritance from Puritanism.
That family is fortunate indeed where the mother is first to see a joke and to lead the mirth. In too many homes her sole share in merriment is her dismal “I’m sure I don’t see what you’re laughing about!” The mother, an invalid for years, who could answer an inquiry about her health with a quizzical smile and a quick “Sick abed, and worse up!” was not a burden but a joy to the children who found her room “the jolliest place in the house.”
A nonsense rhyme, a droll conundrum, a lively repartee, a story of misadventure may all serve as sauce for a dull day. The appetite for fun may be coaxed to grow by what it feeds on, until the mature woman, laden with responsibilities, can smile at her own small trials and help others to follow her example. She will learn first not to cry over spilt milk, and later will master an even more useful accomplishment, and will laugh over it.
Youths Companion, 1903
We laugh a lot at our house. I mean, honestly, there are gloomy times as well like just yesterday when they (not I) decided upon the idea of going to Subway for lunch after church…ordering subs for 11 people and overtaxing the employees can put a damper on any joyous attitude.
However, in general, we are constantly laughing over things…like, for instance, the funny things that the little ones say. Yesterday Sarah was riding in the backseat with her brothers. They were playing with toy animals when we overheard her little voice saying pleadingly, “Will you please give my ear a little nibble?”
We read humorous stories from the latest Reader’s Digest out loud on the way to church.
We love watching funny movies.
Sparing back and forth with my husband…we get ourselves laughing and happy to be together. Like last week when I had to use the bathroom twice in the first half hour of church…as I pressed myself past him during a song he said sarcastically, “What did you do, drink a gallon of water before church today?”
I make up funny songs and sing them to the kids…like this morning when Sarah was trying so hard to look sad because she hasn’t seen a baby calf and I sang, “Sarah looks sad but her Mother think she’s funny!”
After the initial shock, we even laughed about the applesauce.
“Sauce for a Dull Day”
The other day, Seth wanted some applesauce so he brought me a new plastic tub of it from the pantry. I was busy making dinner with several children around me underfoot. “Seth, we already have one open, go put that back.” I told him rather impatiently, only to hear a loud crash when he went to do it.
“What was that?” I cried as I left my dinner preparations to walk to the pantry. I met Seth on his way out with a very messy jar of opened sauce. “What did you do?”
“I threw it in the air and didn’t catch it,” he explained with no remorse.
There was applesauce across the floor, into the cat food dish, and on the front of the freezer. A couple of days later I happened to look up and there was some dried to the ceiling, too.
Emily helped me make him clean it up, I was silently seething, but by the time we got done with the mess I had found my sense of humor again.
“Now, what was I doing before my son decided to throw applesauce into the air?” I asked, as Emily pretended to throw her own imaginary jar of it, sky high. We laughed together at our crazy little boy who is so impulsive. Later on when Rich was home, I took Seth to him and said, “Seth, tell Dad what you learned today. About applesauce.”
“I learned not to throw applesauce too high or it will ‘splode.”
(six words too long of an answer)
I believe in happy people, happy Christians…joyful hearts…giggling in church…life is hard and dreadful at times, so we need to laugh as much as we can…it’s the best medicine in life!
*******
I put the morning’s egg collection in Sarah’s bike while she played and I gathered rocks to surround a flower bed down by the woods near the long pond. (thinking of Aunt Carol as I did so).
This is what the baby toads look like now. Growing so fast, they spend their days swimming.
Violets as delicate as purple tissue paper.
Strawberry blossom.
More violets…our property is overrun by them, to my delight.
We decided to go for a little walk with Dave, who was home from school with a stomach ache. While Sarah hesitated on the other side of our makeshift bridge, David dissevered a baby lizard in the water (unphotographable) and……………
a small snapping turtle!
He picked it up carefully by the tail. It’s little arms and legs spun around and around in fierce anger. His neck stretched out so that he could face his foe:
Oh he wanted a piece of Dave so bad. David left for home with his prize while Sarah and I continued on our walk.
I wanted to see the violet patch in the field by the edge of the forest. There were thousands of them blooming all at once.
There were also a great number of bright dandelions, fully opened with nice thick stems. I taught Sarah how to make a dandelion chain with them and she had no trouble making me a wreath for my hair, as I made one for her, too.
You can see that she was smelling them..her little nose is yellow. I tucked an apple blossom into her wreath, and some violets, too. She looked so pretty.
When we got back home, Sarah wanted to see Dave’s turtle so bad. Dave had put it in a bucket by the pond so we ran down to look inside. It was gone, completely gone, David’s head turned this way and that in disbelief. When we told Jacob later on he spoke with experience, “Oh snapping turtles always escape from buckets, every turtle I ever put in a bucket got out. You can’t keep them unless you put a lid over it.” And we wondered. How can a turtle climb out of a bucket?? And now that snapper is no doubt in the pond waiting to bite off the toes of my children this summer as they swim.
There was a box on the porch from a friend…with beautiful fiesta dinner plates contained inside! And an encouraging note and card: thank you Jami, from the bottom of my heart. God bless you.
ex library books…beautiful books…library bindings, hard covers, oldish copies of good, wholesome, living stories for my own collection of the best books for my children and someday grandchildren. all for a song at the thrift store. TWO DOLLARS!
Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, by Tomie DePaola
Such a heart warming, sentimental story that David was very touched by that day he was on the couch with the stomach ache and I made him read all the books.
A wonderful story: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by Steig
and a funny one : ANIMALS SHOULD DEFINITELY NOT WEAR CLOTHING
“because it might make life hard for a hen”
Happy Monday, my friends! Hope you have a great day with lots of belly laughs.
We love to laugh Loud and long and clear We love to laugh So everybody can hear
The more you laugh The more you fill with glee And the more the glee The more we’re a merrier we.
{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
“I’m sure I shall always feel like a child again in the woods.” L.M. Montgomery
Isn’t this a really cool picture? David, my 12 year old, caught a couple of these frogs so far this spring and both times brought it to the house to show me and wonder what it was. I said, “Take a picture of it and we’ll research”. Turns out it’s a spring peeper. He catches them down by the stream. He put it in a glass to take the picture…
Seth was using his Dad’s golf club which was way too big for him. He and the boys really enjoy hitting golf balls lately. I found a shopping bag (yellow in the pic) of balls at a tag sale, used, for only one dollar!
Oh Sarah. She’s just thrilled to “take a bath” in the pond, which is what she calls “swimming”. She’s a little more brave this year and will walk out to her waist in water. She is still bragging that she knows how to float (with a life jacket, mind you).
Do you remember that I got 30 new baby chicks almost 2 weeks ago? One of them started ailing and unfortunately died the other day, which was so sad, but the remaining 29 are growing so fast…eating and drinking like little machines.
One day Sarah played on a rock while I read a book. She loves making up little games and stories with her plastic animals.
I found a profusion of tiny fragrant white violets down in the yard by the stream. There are hundreds of them.
One evening last week, I went for a walk with Grace, Dave, and Seth. We went to a part of the stream that spreads out more like a very small shallow pond. David had fun walking around in the water catching toads.
The sun was going down, and I think the way the sunshine is glowing behind the trees is so beautiful. We had such a nice time on our walk, enjoying everything we saw. We even got to eat some wild onion stalks that I found.
Grace with the hems of her jeans wet from wading. As soon as she got home she found tweezers and worked on getting slivers from the soles of her feet, which are tender from winter.
There is an old beaver lodge there and we noticed that it was covered with downy feathers. I wondered if something had caught a bird and ate it. But then, we saw that there was an egg about 8 feet away, along with the remains of two other eggs, just the shells cleaned completely out. Perhaps licked?
David was thrilled with the egg. He picked it up and said, “Grace! I have a baby!”
We carried it home and found out it was a wild Canadian Goose egg. Their nest must have been vandalized by predator. Since Canadian Geese are as common as the cold, we felt bad, but not too bad, about the loss of their descendants. David blew the egg out and carried it to school the next day in a shoebox to show his Science teacher.
Marsh Marigold: Cowslip Caltha palustris
“The flowers of this showy spring plant resemble those of large buttercups rather than true marigolds, of the aster family. The leaves are sometimes used a potherbs but require several short boilings with changes of water between; they should not be eaten raw.” ~ National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers
Bluets carpeting the lawn next to the pond.
My son’s girlfriend Emily babysat David, Caleb, Seth, and Sarah for us on Monday while we went to Grace’s Spring Music Concert. Later on that night after everyone was home again, she texted me these pictures from a walk they went on.
Pretending to be Knights, and a Princess
“….be still and listen….the earth is singing….”
“And at the end of the day your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.” ~Shanti
Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
But only one mother the wide world over.
~George Cooper
“I wish you were here so you could make pancakes for us,” I teased my Mom yesterday morning when I called her.
“Guess what I’m doing right now?” she replied, “Making pancakes for Isaac! Did you know he came out?” We laughed, and I knew she was having a great mother’s day already because she got to cook breakfast for one of her boys (she has three of them, and two girls–one of whom is me). We had a nice little chat talking of the children and the gardens and then hung up so she could go eat some pancakes with Isaac. I don’t get to see my Mom as much as I would like, but I think of her constantly, especially while I am busy in the kitchen, or in the garden planting peas and flowers.
We went to church yesterday morning and had a great service listening to Wally give a missions presentation and then Gary preach the Word. After church I said, “Since it’s Mother’s Day, all I want is one nice picture with you children.” Rich happily agreed to take the photo in front of a very cool black car that he and the boys loved……. and you would think I would have learned by now that what I end up is not quite what I was hoping for or picturing in my mind.
This was pretty good, however we are all missing our feet…..but it was hot and we left to get some lunch. Everyone was hungry and everyone had an opinion about where we should go. The Chinese Buffet? Crackerbarrel? Again I brought up Mother’s Day so I could stay out of it. I would sit and just wait to see where Rich (who was silent through the discussions by the children) would take me, the mother of his precious, well-taken care of children.
I held my breath as we pulled gently into…..MCDONALDS.
“Rich you’re just trying to make me scream but I’m not going to.”
“What?? They have a really great burger here that I loved. I wanted you to try it.” (laughing)
“Right, because I eat carbs!” (NOT screaming)
Lots of laughter ensued as he had the audacity to park the car. Roll with it, I decided, roll with it with humor. Then I realized, wait… no drive thru?
“We get to go in?” Now I became slightly sarcastic. “It’s Mother’s Day so we get to go IN to eat, children!”
You have to understand as a family of nine, we rarely eat inside of any fast food place. And if we do, it’s usually Wendy’s……not mcdonald’s. Also understand that we have a Mcdonalds in our hometown so I am there several times a week to get something for one or two of the children as we rush off to go to sports events and such. It’s “old hat” that place, basically one step up from going back home to eat leftovers from the fridge.
Yesterday we had an extra kid with us, so we were a family of 10. The sun was shining, the sun was hot, and we all were fooling around as we trooped inside……. MCDONALDS….was this a dream? 🙂
Turns out McDonalds is pretty awesome for a Mother’s Day luncheon because…..no one is there!
We spent 72 dollars on food! Rich almost died and I laugh when I remember what his face looked like as he studied the receipt to make sure it was right.
I sat across from Sarah and Rich, Grace was down sitting in a booth with David and Caleb. Jacob and Ethan were sitting with Zac.
Meanwhile, Mr. Highly Independent sat away from us, over at his own table. He sat there the whole time, working away at eating his lunch and paying no attention to us. Rich and I kept saying to each other, “Look at Seth. He’s so so cute.”
Poor Rich was the last to get settled and eat, but had to get up yet again to get himself some ketchup for his fries. Jacob, who was already eating away at his nuggets and is 18 years old, asked his Dad to get him some ketchup to which Rich replied impatiently, “GET IT YOURSELF!” He was feeling a bit frazzled.
The soda and food started kicking in. I ate my burger while carefully peeling off the bun as I went along. Soon I was left with a box of bun bits. “Does anyone want the rest of my burger?” I asked, just to be funny. Rich carefully selected a piece and threw it behind him to hit one of the boys. He did this several times.
Grace took this selfie of us. I was busy straining and trying to open Sarah’s toy.
“Okay, times up, let’s go!” Rich announced after most of us were done eating. “The bus is here!” Jacob replied, which caused all the school kids to get up, throw away their garbage and hustle out to the car (bus).
On the way home Rich said something that accidentally hurt Ethan’s feelings and Jacob said, “Don’t worry, E, I know what you can do to get back at him……”
“Ask him to get you ketchup!” I interrupted, and we all laughed again.
(Incidentally, I cannot handle caffeine lately. I drank a very small bottle of coke a week or so ago at about 7:30 pm and I didn’t sleep that night until 2. Then, yesterday I drank half of my small diet coke and got all nervous and jittery from it. So now I’ve decided I won’t drink it anymore and I will only drink half-caf coffee.)
Well, we got home and I asked Rich if he could take one more picture of me and the kids and this time to please not cut the feet off.
So I get this:
Seriously! I got my phone back and there were about 35 pictures of just our legs and then this one:
We went in the house…home, finally home…it was like 2 at this point. Rich and I crashed into bed not meaning to actually take a nap, but we did and it was glorious.
When we got up we had to take the boys to the mall.
IN ORDER TO CHOOSE TUXES FOR THE PROM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jacob is going with Emily, who is a Jr. (it’s the JR prom, our school doesn’t have a SR prom)
Ethan is going single. Oh they are going to be so handsome in their tuxes. Stay tuned!
{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Spring in general is quite distracting and I mean that in the very best of ways….after a quiet winter all nature is alive with growing things, singing birds, visiting ducks, opening buds, blooming flowers,,,,,,,and procreating toads.
I have an affection for toads. Thanks to the fabulous Handbook of Nature Study, I have learned some charming basics of their simple yet fascinating ways.
“Whoever has not had a pet toad has missed a most entertaining experience. Toad actions are surprisingly interesting; one of my safeguards against the blues is the memory of the thoughtful way one of my pet toads rubbed and patted its stomach with its little hands after it had swallowed a June bug.” page 170
Every time I read the above quote I am filled with longing for a pet toad of my own. I need an aquarium and a toad. This would currently be the ideal time for finding a toad, I could take a pick from a very many many many of them right out of my own pond. But soon they will be done with laying eggs and hop away again and we will only come across them randomly in the woods as we walk along.
Toads lay their eggs in very long strings of black dots. Soon a jelly will form around the eggs and the tadpoles will develop, tiny at first and then growing little by little until soon a miniature toad will be perfectly formed about the size of a pencil eraser. When that happens, they will hop out of the pond to make their way in the world. It’s so fun to watch year and after year.
Male toads are smaller than the females, which are plump with eggs. All the single males sit on the side of the pond and sing a magnetic song….with the purpose of calling to himself a lovely female.
I sat and watched this one for quite a while, it never moved, and never attracted a female. I hope it had success after I left.
The males are so ready for action that when the kids catch one it immediately hugs their hand or wrist, and needs to be pried gently off. Interestingly, if a male tries to “hug” another male, he knows something is wrong right away and lets go almost as soon as it grips. “begs pardon”
Our dog Parker came to investigate along with us and caught a couple of toads in his mouth. While Sarah and I were yelling at him, he rushed away up the bank with his prize. But very soon he dropped them and started gagging repeatedly and foaming at the mouth. I was telling my friend about this and she said that her dog did the same thing. She found out that the toads spit some kind of nasty fluid which make the dogs drop them….a lovely defense mechanism.
I learned more this morning: “The warts upon the back are glands, which secrete a substance disagreeable for the animal seeking toad dinners. This is especially true of the glands in the elongated swellings above and just back of the ear, which are called the parotid glands; these give forth a milky, poisonous substance when the toad is seized by an enemy, although the snakes do not seem to mid it.” page 173
Other toad facts:
It eats insects and worms.
It doesn’t drink water, it absorbs it through its skin.
It burrows into the ground, typically staying there during the day and coming out at night to eat…also, it burrows deeply into the earth to sleep all winter….awaking in the warmth of spring.
It breathes air by swallowing it into the lungs.
It sheds its skin as it grows, and eats it.
It likes having its back scratched gently.
Its chief enemy is the snake.
(all facts from The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsword Comstock—a highly recommended book for all nature lovers)
Dandelions and Violets
Please pet me, little girl. ~Billy Cat
I like to sleep in the garden amongst the tulips. ~Snickers
This little boy SETH is recovering from ear infections, bronchitis and a cracked nose (trampoline collision with Caleb)…but nothing slows him down…usually has a glove and baseball at all times and dirt on the knees and under the fingernails. Very rare boy, one of a kind really, and belongs to a proud mama and papa.
Guess what I am listening to right now? You’ll never guess so I will tell you.
a hundred, give or take, TOADS.
You see, every spring, toads hop to our property to mate in our two ponds. Part of this mating ritual is the continuous singing and calling sounds that they make to gather each other from hither and yon area lands. The sound is a long sustained high note that falls a half step. Sounds kind of scary, sort of sci-fi. In fact, it makes me tense. I’m trying to enjoy it, though, because it is another sign that spring has in fact arrived.
I’m sitting on my bed with Billy cat grooming himself next to me. My windows are open and gusts of wind blow through, making the wind chimes rattle on the porch. I hung clothes outside on the line for the first time this year.
This weekend was nuts. This was our agenda for Saturday:
1. Take Ethan to SAT’s half an hour away.
2. Target for much needed supplies
3. Doctor’s appointment for Seth, where we learned he had double ear infections and bronchitis.
4. Little League Opening Day for David and Caleb
5. Baseball game for Ethan
6. Pick up prescription at Pharmacy
7. Grace to be at the H.S. at 4
8. Mom and Dad coming from out of town.
9. Go to H.S. for Grace’s play: Tarzan.
And this was just Saturday. Rich and I had to work separately, so he took Ethan to the SAT’s while I did numbers 2, 3, 4, and 7 by myself. No one went to E’s game. Rich was also preparing to preach on Sunday. I went to half of the opening day, and when Rich arrived I left in order to be home to greet Mom and Dad.
David in the parade. (the only player looking at me is my Dave).
And Caleb. It was fun, the weather was great, and thankfully Jacob was home to watch Sarah. I only had to keep track of Seth…who is a special challenge these days because he can hardly hear, what with the ear infections. They aren’t slowing him down any though.
Dad and Mom with my two youngest. I love it. Mom brought me a bunch of perennials from her garden for which I was extremely thankful. Dad played some whiffle ball with the kids outside.
Mom and I
Jacob with his Grandma, who was laughing over the height difference. 🙂
Mom and Dad at the High School.
Sweet Emily and Jacob.
The drama kids performed Tarzan this year. Grace was a gorilla, a spider, and a plant. She also performed sign language for one of the songs. Here is a video of it, but it is important to note that she is not doing the SINGING, only the SIGNING.
I wish it were taped better but this at least gives an idea of the beauty of the song and signing.
They did so well, it was wonderful, I was so proud of them all.
Mom hugging Grace after the show.
Dad and Mom with Grace the Gorilla.
Yesterday was the final performance of Tarzan and I attended it with my brother Isaac and his wife Cassandra.
Meanwhile, I have baby chicks. The post office called on Friday morning at 5:15 am and I went down to get them.
There are 30. And they are so very cute right now. We like to go in the garage and just sit in front of the cage and watch them.
Do you see in the very back of the cage, there is a dangling piece of cardboard paper…little chicks take turns trying to get it off. It’s so cute.
This is what I have:
FIVE each of Barred Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Brown Leghorn, and Easter Egger. Then, I have NINE Cuckoo Maran, and I am most excited about these because they lay a darker shade of brown than any I’ve owned previously.
Discovered in the woods as I picked up trash this morning.
wildflowers
As I was walking by the edge of the pond I scared a toad (not this one) into the water where a fish promptly grabbed it by the legs and went down deep with it. I gasped as I watched it happen… the poor toad was held by both his back legs, which were half inside the fish’s mouth. It’s little front arms were straight out to the sides with stiff fingers, it was the picture of terror as it was carried away. I watched for a while and it appeared once again with two fish in hot pursuit. I don’t know the ending to the story. I sat by the edge of the pond for a while and also saw a turtle. But the horrors continued when I put my hand in the grass to stand back up. I narrowly missed putting it down on two disemboweled toads! It’s truly a life and death world out there……..
Last but not least, Mom, as I promised I did plant all the plants on Sunday.
This is a little garden Rich made for me a few weeks ago. It was empty and I ordered the animals and flag from amazon. I bought 2 perennials but all the rest were from Mom.
{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
It was such a glorious, dare I say, WARM morning that the 8 of us went outside; the dog, the four cats, the rabbit, Sarah, and I. Sarah played by the rabbit cage with her little toy animals, a bowl of water for a lake, and a piece of wood to be the land.
I set up a lawn chair with my bag of outside goodies; old magazines, scissors, glue, pens, books, camera, coffee, sunglasses, and a blanket in case of chilly winds. A feeling of contentment was all around us but soon Sarah wanted to make mud pies instead and I readily agreed.
In order to make mud pies she went away down the hill to her sandbox and trucked water back and forth from the pond, to the sand. Every once in a while I would look up from my book and watch her. She was so cute with her short blond hair flying behind her as she ran, so busy, so carefree. She ran up to me once or twice to show me how dirty she was getting.
Time went by. Eventually, I stopped reading my book and listened. I thought I heard something. I thought it was music and started to read again. The music got louder. I thought Sarah was in the garage, singing. The music got even louder and only then did I realize it was the distressed sort of “singing”, it was screaming and crying, actually.
If a child has the energy and will to cry really loud then I do not worry, but the children have a talent of getting me to run. I couldn’t see her at all so I was able to use my amazing imagination to convince myself she was broken and/or bleeding. I couldn’t get to the stream fast enough.
I knew she was fine as soon as I saw her, and laughed. She was standing in the rushing waters on a huge rock, wet from waist to toe. She was frozen in terror. I picked my way down the bank cursing the ticks to offer her my motherly hands. I got her safely up the bank and she stopped sobbing. I thought it would be funny to *not say a word* to see what her first remark would be after her adventure.
We walked hand in hand while she sniffled and finally gave up this remark, “sniffle sniffle, well, I AM glad I washed my feet. My feet and my hands. sniffle sniffle”
You can’t help but admire a thankful heart. By the time we got to the porch she was talking about how much she liked “jumping in the stream” and wanted to put on a lifejacket and sunscreen and go swimming. (the answer was no–too cold–go change your clothes)
I had to get a bug from my coffee.
“April is a chancy month here. Bitter knife-cold, oven-warm. Rainy. Sunny. But always the feeling of spring, the definite excitement of things growing. Such a wonderful month, promise of richness to come, restoring faith in the good bounty of Nature. A bouquet of violets to you, my dear.” ~ Gladys Taber to her friend Barbara, in Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge
The twentieth time reading an LM Montgomery book is just as good as the first. When I was a teenager I was very protective of my paperbacks and used to reinforce the corners and binding with tape. However, the best loved books ended up looking similar to this copy of Anne’s House of Dreams. This book is extra special because it’s the only one I accidentally dropped into a bowl of leftover chicken soup after an late night excessive indulgence of reading, and there it stayed until morning. Every time I pull it from the shelf I think of chicken soup. I still grieve.
Anne’s House of Dreams begins at Green Gables in the midst of wedding preparations. Anne and Gilbert are married in the garden and move away to Four Winds Harbor, near Glen St. Mary, a town by the shores. They live in a darling house, which Anne declares is their House of Dreams. LM Montogomery was so clever in creating unique and delightful characters and in no time at all the reader meets the captivating Captain Jim, Leslie Moore, and Cornelia Bryant. Every page is a delight.
I’ve been in a “feathering the nest” mood this week, hence Anne’s House of Dreams on my reading list, and have been working on completely finishing up my own personal scrapbook of home inspiration. I spend more time on Pinterest these days than looking at magazines, but way back many years ago BEFORE PINTEREST when I was a young thing with no internet, I absolutely delighted in pouring over magazines with a pair of scissors dreaming of what I could do in my home. I’ve been working on this scrapbook for over 10 years……going back to it the last few days was like visiting an old friend.
I love the country mix and match eclectic look, with browns and yellows. And books everywhere.
Everything about this kitchen is perfection. I love the railing behind the stovepipe for towels, the color of the walls, the little cupboards and shelves, red floor.
“The walls of this house must be sorter soaked with laughing and good times.” Anne’s House of Dreams pg. 38
“Anne looked about her with bright, appreciative eyes as she followed Mrs. Doctor Dave upstairs. She liked the appearance of her new home very much. It seemed to have the atmosphere of Green Gables and the flavor of her old traditions.”
Another room that I love everything about….wicker side chair, all the pillows, the blue ship painting, no curtains on the windows, flowers……the colors…..
This is my Home and House board on Pinterest: click HERE. It’s much easier to pin photos online now and…… I have let my Country Living magazine subscription lapse. But I hope I never stop taking the time now and then to sit “the old fashioned way” with scissors, glue, a scrapbook, and a handful of dreams á la Anne Shirley Blythe.
Good to be Home 