This weekend we started redecorating our breezeway, attempting to turn it into a cozy open-air living room. We took everything out and washed the walls and the floor with buckets of warm soapy water. Then we drove up to Thomasville in search of some sort …
This weekend I was so happy because it rained! It finally rained–on Friday and Saturday! Afterward, the yard was so beautiful and green, quenched. The box turtles came out, and the frogs sang.
Buttercrunch lettuce glowing in the sun
Rob and I spent Saturday doing two things: weeding all the beds and mulching a new bed on the south side of the front yard. To me it was a good day because I got to daydream and visit with various cats as I killed untold numbers of clovers.
Babs kept stopping by, to lie next to us, and at one point Rob said, “Babs is such a good and true friend. Every morning when I’m hanging the laundry, she comes running out of the garage. Then she rolls around on the driveway while I hang everything up. She just wants to be nearby.”
“I know,” I said. “She did that with me this morning. She rolled in the sun and I stood there in the sun hanging things. It was a very nice kind of fellowship.”
All day Babs was covered in pollen and dust; she loves taking dust baths.
I made some neat discoveries while I was weeding. Here’s one: My favorite rose, the Souvenir de St. Anne’s, is blooming! The flowers look like the thinnest, most delicate pink porcelain cups. I made sure to weed all around the little plant, and water it, just to be encouraging. Oh, and another thing: The American holly is full of little tiny white blossoms, and all over the tree butterflies were feeding, sipping nectar (even 25 feet in the air).
On Saturday evening around sunset we saw our first hummingbird of the year. She was visiting the coral honeysuckle that drapes the Vine House.
Souvenir de St. Anne’s
Satsuma blossom. We have ten citrus trees around the house, so the air is very sweet right now.
Carnes pear flowers–too cute
Sometimes when I get discouraged, it helps to look back at old pictures. They remind me of how far we’ve come with this house and yard. February 2008 March 2012
Saturday was such a golden day, the oaks sporting new soft golden leaves and the front porch rockers wearing coats of golden pollen. Rob and I got to be outside in all the gold, all day. We mowed our lawn of weeds for the first time this year, and edged and ran the weedeater …
I truly love where I live—Quincy, my little town with its white wedding-cake houses and billowing pink and purple azalea gardens. When I take walks, I go crazy for the old brick garden walls and the leaded glass windows, the deep porches and silvery, rusty tin roofs. Streamers of Spanish moss festoon the trees, and the sandy, patchy lawns are polka-dotted with bulbs—rain lilies, surprise lilies, daffodils. . . .
The other day I took pictures as I walked—of the white houses and nearly black magnolias, the live oaks heavily robed in ferns. Of course, the pictures didn’t turn out as pretty as I’d hoped, as pretty as the dear old town really looks to my eye. But here are a few of them anyway:
Pat Monroe House (Quincy Garden Center)
Mr. Pat Monroe built this house in 1893. He served as president of the Quincy State Bank for fifty years and in his time was one of Quincy’s most prominent and respected citizens. The house stayed in the Monroe family until the 1970s, when it was donated to the City of Quincy. Today, the Quincy Garden Club leases it.
Stockton-Curry House
Probably the most interesting thing about this house, built in 1842, is the matching mini mansion at the southern corner of the front yard. The mini mansion, with its white columns and fancy front-door sidelights, served as the law office of Phillip Stockton, the second owner of the property.
Smallwood-White House
This house was built in 1843 and extensively remodeled in 1856 by Pleasants Woodson White, a Quincy lawyer and judge who lived to be ninety-nine years old. After Judge White died in 1921, the house was sold to the Centenary Methodist Church. Ever since, it’s been used as a parsonage.
This weekend we did most of our spring vegetable planting. Rob planted 17 tomato plants in brightly colored cages. He planted four Romas, one Arkansas Traveler, one Japanese Black Trifele, one Sweet Baby Girl, one Park’s Whopper, one Red Grape, one Yellow Pear, one Red Brandywine …
A few weeks ago, Rob made up this delicious, healthy kale stew so we could use up our bounty of greens in the garden. Today we picked almost seven pounds of collards, so we used collards instead of kale in our enormous pot of stew. …
Here are some pictures I took of the house the other day:
In the lower left side of the cabinet, you can see our latest decoy, an eider with a mussel in its beak.
I really like that little painted chair.
That’s June Baxter on the bedside table.
The chiffonier was the first piece of nice furniture we ever bought.
The urn on the sideboard is a Christine Sibley piece. We got it when Urban Nirvana was going out of business.