I’m shamelessly stealing the title of a popular show here in the States. I’ve never actually watched a single episode of it, so I am not exactly sure what it is about except that apparently the network can manage to eke an entire season’s worth of shows out of one harrowing 24 hour period.
Life at The Havens is not harrowing. Far from it, although we do manage to have a slight amount of “harrow” upon occasion. For example, the tooth that was bothering Jim turned out to be cracked clear to the root and so it had to be removed. This was done on Monday afternoon, and there was a certain amount of misery that night and the next day, but both of us survived and things are much improved now. Well, except for this dumb cold I seem to have. I think I may have contracted it when I went to Springfield to acquire the fabrics for the quilt I am making for the bed. However, this is far from harrowing; it is merely annoying.
My cold situation provided poor Mallory with a harrowing morning yesterday. I wasn’t really up to snuff, more down to snuffling, and I had an interrupted night of sleep. When the alarm went off at 4:15 a.m. I did not even hear it. Jim got his coffee and lunch together all by his loneliness, and took himself off to work after giving me a kiss goodbye. Two and half hours later, I awoke for the second time, feeling more rested, and arose. As soon as I started to walk down the hall, I could hear Miss Mallory yowling and howling “I’m trapped, I’ve been here for hours with no food, I’m so bored, get me out of here! Mom! Mom?! MOM!!!” Her fascination with the water drops sliding down the wall of the shower after the showeree has vacated the premises led to her inadvertently being locked in the back bathroom.
She was SOOO happy to be released, she ate a couple of bites of food and then spent the next hour cuddling and loving on me. I almost think we might shut her in the bathroom for a few hours more often. But that would be mean.
Anyway, yesterday dawned clear and beautiful. We enjoyed temperatures in the mid 60s (16°C). The early morning sun lit up the Petite Prairie in a most loving way.
Right by the back door I was attracted by a bract of goldenrod seeds catching the dawn’s early light.
The weather was so fine I hung my laundry out to dry in the breezy sunshine. Only two loads today, a light day for once.
Later on in the day, I was enjoying the blooming crocuses in front of the house and noticed that the bees had discovered the sugar water we put out for them. They cleaned up a whole pint of it in one afternoon. Some of them were so full of goodies they couldn’t fly home, but wandered around on the nearby thyme plants, almost as if they were drunk.
Inside the house, in between folding the four loads of laundry I had washed and dried the day before, I completed cutting the strips for the quilt. Next I will be sewing the strips together into the tubes from which I will cut the bargello strips.
I’m really happy with my color run. I had the best time acquiring my fabric even if I did get exposed to a cold betwixtwhiles. I was quite encouraged by the variety of people I saw buying fabric while I was out shopping. There were very old ladies, young mothers, matrons, college students, little children helping select fabric for their own clothing in addition to several men who were there too, and not just accompanying their wives, but actually selecting fabric for their own projects. From this I conclude that the art of sewing has not died, but is alive and well and thriving.
But I digress from my 24 hour report. Out in the vegetable garden, which is sadly neglected, I am sorry to report, I have volunteers. These are seedlings of a red Japanese mustard that sprouted where the seeds dropped from a plant I was removing from the garden after it had bolted.
Close up they make a wilderness of reds and greens.
Out in front of the house the afternoon sun enticed an early daffodil into opening.
The snowdrops by the back fence joined in.
During the night a front swept through. The wind howled all night, and the temperature dropped thirty degrees to just above freezing. I’m not quite up for a walk out in the cold wind just yet. Maybe later on in the day when the front has finished stamping through and there isn’t a cutting wind. But for now, I am tending the fire.
Mallory was So Bored I decided to give her some catnip to liven things up a bit.
Ruby wasn’t really sure about all that. After all, a catnipped cat might decide that she needed to wrestle with that big head.
Anyway, she feels we should be going for a walk no matter what the weather is.
Hope you have enjoyed the short venture into 24 hours in the exciting life at The Havens. I need to feed the fire again.
Hey, i caught a snuffly cold, too. and right after reading your post. hmmm… thinking i have to wash my hands after reading posts any more. wouldn’t want to catch colds left and right.
a great glimpse into a day in the life. thank you.
I hear that you can catch a virus with your computer… probably not a cold virus though.
You are welcome. Some days are more typical than others…
Up to snuff, down to snuffling and drunken bees. What a delightful post!
Thank you. I try to have fun here.
Is there anything cheerier than a bright yellow daffodil? I think not
‘Beautiful!’ was one of the last words I heard my beloved grandmother speak as she looked up to see a fresh bunch of daffodils at the end of her bed.
Daffodils are really my favorite flower, I’m just a little mad about them. The catalog that hawks them lives on my coffee table and I just pick it up and read about the new cultivars… drool…. this year I’m actually going to order for the first time in several years we have extra money that I can put into my addiction.
I really like the look of the fabrics you chose, all lined up like that. What a beautiful quilt it will be.
I’m looking forward to the finished product, I think it will warm the bedroom up considerably. Over the years I have learned that if you are going to spend a lot of time with a project it really is imperative that you like the “ingredients”. I like these fabrics, the color family, I had a lot of fun shopping for them. I’m going to start sewing today.
We got stuck in a villa in Portugal a few years ago. The weather was dreadful and all that was on the television that we could understand was 24 Hours shown back to back for …. 24 hours. I don’t want to talk about it really …
I can understand why…. That situation is why God made the Kindle, I think….
i’m amazed at the amount of laundry you do! my mother (for a family of 6) would do 3 loads of laundry every day. when i started doing my own laundry, i quickly learned that a bath towel could be used more than once, and that i really didn’t need a separate towel for my hair…
the daily routine is what pins us, isn’t it?
The vast majority of my laundry is generated by my massage business. A long time ago I looked into having a sheet service rather than doing my own, but there were several stumbling blocks. First one was that I worked out of my home and most of the laundry services were not even interested in bidding for my business. It was “too much trouble” to set me up in their route because their experience was that the home based business folded too quickly. I managed to get over that one by pointing out that I had already been in business for over ten years in this location…. The next one was that a lot of laundry services no longer handle sheets at all because hotels have taken to doing their own laundry rather than sending it out. Finally, when I got someone to bid for the job, they wanted $75 PER WEEK to do my laundry, which almost never was more than the sheets and pillowcases generated by 25 massages. That seemed exorbitant to me, so I do my own laundry. And on the taxes, we claim $1.50 per massage as laundry costs.
As far as personal laundry, if we didn’t have the massage laundry to do I’d probaly only have about three loads a week. One of sheets and towels, and two of clothing. We have a set of towels for each bathroom, bath sheets, actually, and they get laundered once a week. I learned this at my mother’s knee, as this was the procedure when I was growing up. If your towel wound up in a damp lump on your bedroom floor, tough beans. You could use a cold damp towel to dry yourself with and then maybe you’d remember where it was supposed to live, which was NOT on the floor!
Despite the State’s mandate that all my laundry should be dried in a hot dryer, quite often it goes out on the clothesline. In the dead of winter or when it is rainy, I use my dryer. Otherwise, it acts as a flat surface upon which to set tools and gloves when you enter the house from the back yard. I think it is lonely, which probably accounts for its new habit of “beeping” randomly. This has become so pervasive and annoying that when I am not actually using it, I unplug it so the errant sensor has no juice to voice its complaints.