On Sunday we put up our Christmas tree! Rob came home with the tree that afternoon. It was a nice, tall, straight tree with a perfect pyramid shape, but when we got it in the stand we noticed that its bottom branches had lost most …
Tonight I’m finishing up a rare four-day weekend. It was so much fun and felt like such a luxury! During most of my time off, I worked on a painting of a chubby baby bunny frolicking in a patch of bluets. I took breaks every …
Some time ago I worked with a very nice man who loved fall. On the first slightly cool day in October during the first year that I knew him, he arrived at work exhilarated, full of happy plans for the season, and he shared those plans with me, his stressed-out office-mate.
He and his family would be doing an old-fashioned cane grinding, he told me, on their farm. “We always go camping too,” he said, “in the fall. And play touch football in the yard. We make chili and cornbread. We love to sit around our fire pit on frosty nights.”
“Cool,” I said.
“What do you do in fall?” he asked in his pleasant, friendly way. “I mean, to enjoy it?”
“Um . . .” I said. If I had been honest, I would have answered, “Nothing,” but because I didn’t want to disappoint him I made something up. I said I made caramel apples and went to the North Florida Fair, which is what I wished I did, I guess.
Later the conversation got me thinking: I had loved fall when I was younger, but now I barely noticed it because I was so busy working. I was definitely missing out. So I made a plan to, as I described it to myself, “take back the fall,” to embrace it, to rejoice in it the way my wise coworker did. I resolved to start decorating for Halloween again and picking goldenrod on the side of the road again—just like I did when I was young.
Now a long time has passed since I made that pledge, but I never forgot it. I renew it each September.
Yesterday was our first fall-y day of the year here in Quincy, with weather that was cool, clear, and sparkling, under a royal-blue sky. After work (I’m still working from home) I ran outside to try and seize the moment. I let my cat June out too so she could frolic in the grass as I cheered her on. When she was safely back inside, I took loads of pictures of the gaudy, fabulous hurricane lilies and the mist-like ageratum blooming all over the yard. Near the breezeway I admired a big banana spider and her glittering web strung between two citrus trees. I watched butterflies and picked ripe hot peppers. I spotted a white squirrel and heard a hawk cry—and I knew that Charles, my old friend at the office, would approve.
Ironweed and rosinweed in bloom in the front yard:
Ageratum is the most bewitching shade of blue:
Hurricane lilies would make amazing crowns for teddy bears, I think:
The impatiens bloomed all summer, and they’re still going strong.
This is way off topic, but here’s a little painting that I finished recently:
I’ve been spending these early-August evenings sewing wonky felt Halloween ornaments while listening to The Fellowship of the Ring on Audible. It’s been so much fun. I sit on the dining room floor surrounded by cats and drink hot Country Peach Passion tea and dream …
A couple weeks ago, Rob and I started working on a brand-new project—outlining all our garden beds with bricks! We had ordered the bricks at Acme Brick, Tile and Stone in Tallahassee on April 21, the day after I got my second dose of the …
On Tuesday, I took the day off from work. I really needed it. Tuesday was my day off, but I’m not going to tell you about Tuesday. I’m going to tell you about Monday night because it was even better than Tuesday. On Monday night, I still had the whole of Tuesday ahead of me—all that freedom, all that possibility.
My fun began at precisely four on Monday afternoon, the moment my workday ended. I raced out to the yard and gardened for three hours, running the weedeater and mowing the lawn. As I worked in my inefficient way, often just standing there “gazing,” as I like to say, I noticed some neat things: roses and Alabama azaleas in bloom, a hawk perched on a branch above the pond, and a box turtle eating a worm. The Ashe magnolias were sporting their pale, gigantic flowers that smell even more lemony than lemons.
At about seven, I took a picture of my teddy bear Paulette sitting under her parasol on a log in the backyard. Paulette is a great model and looked completely captivating in her fancy hat and pearls, but the real reason I took the picture was to celebrate the log. The log is so cool. I love how it’s decorated all over with mushrooms and ferns, and what a nice seat it makes.
After I went inside for the evening, I did the most mundane chores—but everything was fun fun fun because I didn’t have to work the next day. I sang as I fed the cats. I folded the laundry with care because I could—because I had time. When I sat down to watch CSI on Hulu with Buntin, Rob, and a big bowl of homemade popcorn, the lamps in the living room were golden and glowing and I felt like I’d arrived at the most wonderful party.
Our “lawn” is really just weeds, but it looks pretty great when it’s mowed.
Paulette on the fabulous log:
Oxeye sunflowers blooming in the meadow. It’s spring!
For the last half of January, all of February, and most of March, I was working obsessively (in the evenings and on weekends) on a small painting of our backyard. The painting was very hard for me to finish because the scene I was trying …
It’s only January and I’ve already started sewing Easter ornaments and making them pose for photos. Obviously I’m a big Easter fan.
I always have been. When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny came every year, bringing me and my sisters and brother baskets brimming with candy and colored eggs. He also brought us each one small present–maybe a cute duck or bunny figurine for the girls and a Nerf football or some other little toy for Jacob, my brother.
The candy was artfully arranged in each basket and always included a coconut nest, a peanut butter egg, a Cadbury egg, Peeps, jellybeans, bubblegum eggs, malted milk eggs, SweeTart eggs, and a large, handsome chocolate bunny.
We’d spend some time admiring the beauty of our baskets, but pretty soon we’d dig in. I was an obsessive eater of candy and usually managed to polish off my entire basket by the end of the day. I ate steadily, methodically, using the bubblegum and SweeTarts as a palate cleanser between the numerous courses of chocolate.
Dad and Mom didn’t usually participate in the day with us, so we kids took it on ourselves to invent and observe our own Easter traditions. We’d hide eggs multiple times in very, very hard places. The hiding places were so difficult that many of the eggs were inevitably given up for lost–until the neighborhood raccoons found them days later. In the mornings after Easter, the lawn would be littered with bits of colored eggshells, remnants of the raccoons’ midnight feasts, and one time Mom even spotted a nice, chubby raccoon washing a purple Easter egg in broad daylight in our backyard goldfish pond.
Since Dad and Mom often spent Easter doing very un-Easter-y things like fighting while cleaning the garage, we kids would try to counter that by behaving in what we hoped was a reverent manner. My sister Kris and I would sit with our baskets and imagine the kind and gentle life of the Easter Bunny, or I (as the oldest) would endeavor to read the Bible to the other kids. I’m sure my attempts at providing religious instruction were quite funny because I was not at all knowledgeable about the Bible.
One of our rituals, a very important one, was to say at the end of the day, “This was the best Easter ever!” I would say it, and then Kris would immediately agree. She’d say, “Oh, yes, it was the best Easter ever!”
