I changed up my front-porch plants recently. I pulled out the old worn-out summer caladiums and torenia and filled the urns and pots with fresh pink begonias from Home Depot. I wasn’t that enthused at first, but in the last few days the begonias have …
On Sunday Rob and I made a big ole lunch of beer-battered seitan sticks, mashed potatoes, fried kale, cornbread, and vegan macaroni and cheese. It took most of the day to prepare and about two seconds to eat. We feasted (briefly) at our new picnic …
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| Rob and his great picnic table |
Rob recently built us a new picnic table to replace our old rotten one. It’s really nice—extra big and sturdy, made with all pressure-treated wood so it will last a long time.
We stained it a shade called “Barn Red.” We put the final coat on this morning, and then when it was dry, I decided I’d bring a snack out to the picnic table and take pictures of the table in use for my blog. Well, the photo shoot was pretty funny, not very professional at all. A very bold, friendly, vivacious little cat has been hanging around in our yard lately—a petite young lady, all black with a cute, round, short face and big expressive yellow eyes. She belongs to the neighbors, and her name is Bubbles. Needless to say, she has totally won my heart. Anyway, I had set up my fussy little snack–cupcakes and jelly beans arranged on my wedding china–and while I was inside fetching my camera, Bubbles jumped up on the table and licked all the frosting off both cupcakes.
She was still working on the second one when I returned. “Bubbles!” I cried. “What are you doing?!”
She responded by picking up the cupcake with her teeth and running away with it.
She didn’t get very far. She dropped the cupcake in the ferns by the picnic table and continued to voraciously eat it.
Luckily I had a few extra cupcakes in the house so I could continue my photo shoot. But as soon as Bubbles caught sight of the replacement cupcakes, she was jumping up on the table and interrupting the photo shoot every two seconds. I finally had to just give up and sit down on a nearby bench and hold her and pet for a while so she’d forget about her dumb cupcake obsession.
“Bubbles,” I said, “I’d love for you for to participate in my photo shoots. I’m always looking for models. But you can’t eat the props!”
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| Bubbles crashes the photo shoot. |
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| Bubbles and the picnic table |
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| Bubbles at rest |
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| Just being cute |
On Saturday morning I started decorating the house for Halloween. I got up really early, when it was still pitch-dark, and sat on the couch in the Little House in my pajamas, drinking Coke and stitching up some dumb little ornaments for my Halloween tree–funny …
I added a third blue-glazed pot to the stone patio behind the vegetable garden. I think it’s a nice effect. The arrangement of pots and furniture is more balanced now, and the extra pot adds needed color, of course. I can’t wait until the ferns …
This weekend was very satisfying, one of the best I’ve had in a while. I got to do all the dorky things I love, like playing with my cats and making cat videos and drinking too much Coke, but I also moved ahead on some garden projects. I mean, Rob and I did. We were outside all weekend, and the yard looked way better today (Sunday) than it did on Friday.
For the longest time I’ve wanted to add some color to our little sitting area under the giant water oak tree behind the vegetable garden. Well, on Saturday I finally found two bold blue pots that were just the right size and shape. I planted rosemary in them and arranged them on the little stone patio next to the cast-iron furniture. The whole area looks so much brighter and more eye-catching now, but I still think I need a third pot, one a bit smaller, to complete the scene. I’m going to try to look for one this week.
To be honest, Rob and I don’t often sit in this sitting area—because the furniture is rather dainty and we are rather big. Bernie, our stray-cat friend, is much more likely to relax here than we are. The lacy little chairs and settee are quite appropriately sized for cats . . . and gnomes.
On Saturday afternoon we started preparing our fall vegetable garden. The old summer crops looked so tired and bedraggled that it felt refreshing to pull them out, kind of like doing a good spring cleaning. First we removed the worn-out eggplant and tomatoes. Then we harvested all our sweet potatoes in order to make room for our new fall stuff. Rob was disappointed because a lot of our sweet potatoes had bites taken out of them. (I think it was the work of voles or mice.) The potatoes that didn’t have bites were very handsome and kind of reminded me of little pink manatees.
This morning we set to work planting. We’d gone to the nurseries on Saturday and gotten a bunch of starters. We planted nine arugula, eight Red Acre cabbages, 18 Bonnie’s Best white cabbages, nine Red Russian kale, nine Blue Knight kale, 18 Top Bunch collards, six Coronado Crown broccoli, and 18 Packman broccoli. We mixed lots of compost into the beds, along with some Garden-tone. We make our compost from kitchen scraps . . . and bags of leaves we collect all winter long from our neighbors’ trash piles.
We took some little breaks from our gardening to sit on the screen porch and drink the season’s first Rangpur limeade. We picked 20 limes on Saturday and polished them and squeezed them and made limeade in a big glass pitcher. It was so delicious. The flavor of a Rangpur lime is wonderfully complex. It’s not just sour and acidic; it’s also got a flowery taste. I often think I can detect a hint of honeysuckle.
While we were drinking our limeade, Carl was being cute. He’s such a cheerful little fellow, he really brightens up our house. When we first adopted him, we thought he was a girl and we called him Daisy. The name still seems kind of perfect for him because he’s such a sunny, happy soul. He’s friendly to all the other cats, but especially the ones with social problems: shy, timid Foxy and moody Buntin, who is her own worst enemy and a helpless slave to her emotions. He works on them, trying to draw them out, win their trust. His method with Foxy is to bump heads with her repeatedly and purr and rub his side against hers. He likes to stand right next to her and drape his tail protectively over her back.
Oh, I forgot. I also did a couple of inside projects (on Saturday night). I finally figured out how to display my cute little pig-shaped serving bowl, a treasure I’ve had for years and kept buried at the bottom of our old salt box (a piece of furniture that looks kind of like a primitive desk). I put a potted fern in the pig bowl and turned it into a centerpiece for the kitchen table. The cats approve of this new addition—they enjoy walking around on the table in an unsanitary fashion and nibbling on the fern.
Lastly, I found pictures to put in some brass frames that have been sitting empty for several months. It’s quite a relief. Now if only I could find a little decorative item to put next to the frames. . . . I’ll have to add that to my to-do list.
When my mom’s sister Aunt Mary came to visit us from Wisconsin in February, she brought a bunch of old family pictures with her so I could scan them. Well, I finally finished scanning and I thought I’d share a few of the best ones: …
On Saturday, Mom, Bunny, Kris, Sophie, Jake, and I went to Eden Gardens State Park in Santa Rosa Beach. The centerpiece of the park is the historic Wesley House, built in 1897. A white-columned beauty with a two-story wrap-around porch, it stands on the shore of Tucker Bayou and is surrounded by lawns and formal gardens. The gardens feature over 100 varieties of camellias, a reflecting pool, and some wonderfully ghostly, eerie white statuary.
Bunny, Kris, and I spent our first hour at the park madly taking pictures, trying desperately to capture all its dreamy romance. Sophie and Jake, age 12 and nine, were getting pretty peeved. They were standing in the background shaking their heads and fake-crying as Kris said to Bunny and me, “Now let’s try some other angles. . . .” Sophie stormed off and pouted for a while somewhere in the bushes, and when she came back she cried out to Mom in indignation, “Are you serious? They’re still taking pictures of that same tree!”
In our defense, it was a terrific tree, a giant moss-draped live oak. The park ranger on duty told us later that scientists had dated the tree and found it to be over 500 years old.
The kids were happier once we started our tour of the house, mostly because the house was air conditioned. Our tour guide, the cheerful blond park ranger mentioned above, told us that the Wesleys had been in the lumber business and that the old pilings in the bayou were remnants of their very successful sawmill. Katie Wesley lived in the house until 1953, the ranger said, and when she died the house sat vacant for 10 years. Nobody was interested in the property, except for a developer who came and bought up all the outbuildings and moved them over to nearby Grayton Beach to become beach cottages. The house languished. Neighborhood kids played in it, and goats ran through it. Then finally, in 1963, Lois Maxon, a reporter from New York, happened to see the house on a Sunday afternoon drive and immediately fell in love with it. She bought it for $12,000, then poured a million dollars into fixing it up. Miss Maxon came from a very wealthy family and filled the house with a remarkable collection of antiques and family heirlooms. Sadly, she only got to live in her dream house for about five years. She got sick, and before she died she donated the house and all its grand furnishings to the state of Florida.
When the tour was over, Sophie said, mostly just to needle me, I think, “I liked the house, but if I lived in it I’d get all new furniture. I like modern things.”
“Like what?” I said, needling her right back. “What would you put in it? Let me guess. Plastic stuff and a One Direction poster?”
“I like One Direction.”
“I know,” I said, “and I’m appalled. I must say you’ve got terrible taste.”
“They’re cute. Harry’s cute, and so’s Liam.”
“They are not. Like I told you before, I’m not going to mince words with you on this.”
Then we argued about whether or not the boys had been booed at the VMAs. I was certain they had been, though of course I didn’t watch the VMAs. (I suppose at this point I should mention that Sophie and I love to tease each other and play fight.)
We walked down to the water—all of us, the whole family—admiring along the way the blush pink cones in the magnolia trees, and the fine, fat hickory nuts that littered the grass. We watched a little squirrel sitting in a tree, eating one of the nuts.
“What a lucky squirrel,” I said. “He gets to live at Eden Gardens.”
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| Jake thought Eden Gardens was boring. On this subject and several others, we’ve agreed to disagree. |
