For the last six years, I’ve been using the dining room as a makeshift crafting room, sitting at the big table to paint and sew. Well, the other day Rob and I started talking about how I needed better spot to work in, and we …
I wanted to share a few little improvements I’ve made around the house and yard recently. I’ve lived in my house for 19 years now, but I’ve still got so many dreams for it.
About a month ago I found the neatest little rocking chair at the Planters Exchange in nearby Havana and got it for a song. It’s so cute—petite, with light-blue velvet upholstery, and dainty mahogany arms carved with flowers. The lady I bought it from was really nice. She carried the little chair to my car for me and asked me if I planned to have it reupholstered.
“Oh, no!” I said. “I like it just as it is! I don’t mind a few stains as long as I didn’t cause them. They just add character, in my opinion.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say!” she said.
I brought the chair home and set it up in the back bedroom as my cats gathered to watch. So far they’ve been really good and haven’t chosen to condition their claws on the velvet.
Last week I finally hung up some pictures that Rob’s aunt gifted us back in May when she moved from her big house in Tampa to a cabin in the North Carolina mountains. The pictures are really pretty, featuring pink flamingos and other graceful tropical birds, and they’re a perfect fit in our pink sunroom. I had a grand time putting them up. I always feel like a superhero when I successfully complete a task that involves using a level and measuring tape. The cats had fun too. I’d gotten the ladder out, and everybody took a turn climbing to the top.
This summer the meadow garden has amazed me every day with its buzzing, fluttering liveliness. It’s a mecca for pollinators, including butterflies, bees, moths, and hummingbirds. I’ve become such a fan of the meadow that I’ve decided to expand it down around the garage. In March Rob and I removed a Ponkan tangerine tree near the back of the garage (it was damaged in the big freeze we had at Christmas), and for the past couple months I’ve been filling the empty space with Indian pinks, prairie coneflowers, purple coneflowers, and oxeye sunflowers. I also planted a plant that’s new to me—golden zizia, which is in the carrot family, has delicate yellow flowers and dark, fern-like foliage, and is a host plant for the black swallowtail butterfly.
On Saturday morning I tried out this delicious, easy mango smoothie recipe that I found on Minimalist Baker and modified just slightly. The recipe made enough for two smoothies, so . . . I drank them both. I sipped the first one while petting and …
One of my favorite Saturday activities is whipping up a smoothie for myself in the early morning hours. It’s so fun and easy. I use almond butter, almond milk, ripe bananas, and organic frozen strawberries. In the lamplight before dawn, I like to sit with …
On Sundays, Rob and I love to cook big vegetarian feasts. They take all afternoon to make and usually include country-fried seitan steaks, mashed potatoes, cornbread, field peas or butter beans, sautéed kale, and my Not-Too-Sweet Sweet Potato Casserole. I wanted to share the casserole recipe because it’s delicious and very healthy for you; it contains no added sweeteners.
4 pounds sweet potatoes
1 cup almond milk
2 tablespoons melted vegan butter
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups finely chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
Heat the oven to 450 degrees and roast the sweet potatoes (whole, in their peels) until soft.
While they’re roasting, prepare the topping. Stir all the ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.
When the sweet potatoes are done roasting, wait until they’re cool enough to handle, then peel them, place them in a large bowl, and mash them. Add the almond milk, melted butter, paprika, and salt and mix well.
Grease a 9×13-inch pan and spread the sweet potato mixture in an even layer. Top with the walnut mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until the walnuts are toasted and the potatoes are warmed through.
I spent the last two weeks of February reorganizing the back bedroom. Every night after work I’d hurry home, eager to get started. I’d change into my comfy fleece pajamas and socks and sit on the rug in front of the bed to sort through …
I took last Friday off and had another long weekend. Hooray!
“I have so much to do!” I said to Rob on Thursday night.
“Well, you won’t be able to get to it all,” Rob warned kindly.
“But I’m going to try!” I said.
Here are just a few of the things I managed to squeeze in:
Rob and I spent Friday morning in the backyard pulling up our homemade stone paths and stacking the rocks neatly behind the garage. We’re planning to have the narrow, bumpy old paths replaced with wide, smooth, professionally installed brick paths. I don’t know when this will actually happen, but I hope it will be soon!
Pulling up the paths was pretty hard labor because the paths were composed of some very large rocks.
“So,” I said to Rob as we worked, “what’s the worst part of dealing with the rocks? Digging them up, pushing them in the wheelbarrow, or stacking them?”
“Probably stacking them,” Rob said.
“Agreed,” I said. “My favorite part is when I’m done stacking my load and I get to push the empty wheelbarrow back.”
The sun felt so nice and warm on my head as I strolled along with my empty wheelbarrow. Bees buzzed in the camellia blossoms, and I spotted two yellow-rumped warblers flitting about in the satsuma tree by the garage door. The sky was sapphire blue.
That afternoon I finally filled the pots that have been sitting around empty for months on the front porch and picnic table. I bought some pink cyclamen at Lowe’s and planted three in each pot, tucking them in among some fresh, soft Spanish moss that I gathered under our giant pecan tree in the backyard.
Cyclamen are so cute. With their wing-like petals, the flowers look a little like butterflies, I think, and the leaves are extra fancy—heart-shaped and decorated with intricate patterns like silver lace.
On Saturday morning I met Mom and my sister Kris in nearby Havana to do some antiquing. We spent a few hours joking and poking around in the shops and, in the end, Kris and I each went home with a treasure. Kris’s was an adorable Belleek porcelain lamp decorated with shamrocks, and mine was a Seth Thomas mantel clock with lots of gold embellishments and an interesting curly-grained burl wood veneer. I thought the clock would look perfect in the front bedroom next to the foggy, gold-framed mirror I bought recently and hung over Rob’s dresser. The mirror has such wavy, hazy, distorted glass that it seems like a magic mirror, a portal for (friendly) ghosts perhaps.
On Sunday, Rob and I cooked a feast—country-fried seitan steaks, black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, sautéed kale, and cornbread. At least four cats were in the kitchen the whole time we were cooking. Carl was supervising from a perch on the Hoosier cabinet, and Becky and Tellie were rolling in the warm air that was blowing out of the oven vent as the cornbread baked. Becky was having a grand time but was also getting overstimulated, and pretty soon she wanted to wrestle little Tellie. Meanwhile, Buntin was on the lookout for crumbs and scraps. I had just fed her, but she was acting like a ravenous freak. At one point we caught her licking melted butter off a paper towel I had dropped. Then she ate a black-eyed pea that fell.
“I think maybe she just wants to participate in what we’re doing,” I said to Rob. “I think she’s just trying to take part.”
“That sounds right,” Rob said. He petted dear old Buntin, who turns sixteen this year. “Buntin is a good, good friend.”
