Post 334

19 September 2020

Saturday Stopover

Viewing the Last Weekend of Summer

with Lynda McKinney Lambert

 

Did  you realize this is the last weekend of Summer 2020?

This weekend  feels odd, doesn’t it?  I am feeling a bit sad inside at the thought of this final few days of the summer season.  Each season holds the marks of the seasons  of our own life span. It is like footprints  on a sandy beach or like lines on a measuring tape.  One by one, year by year, we lay down the marks of our passage.

Birds are singing outside my window this morning. Sun is bright and I see it shining on the old Norway Maple tree outside my office  window.  That tree is enormous and beginning to show its changes the past couple of years. The tree expert told me about three years ago it has begun dying. Bob and I planted that tree as a sapling Bob dug up from the woods, in 1967, after we bought this house.  We dearly love this tree and will care for it for as long as is possible.  Taking a tree down is a traumatic thing to do.  It’s akin to  losing a member of the family or a best friend.  Even more, it is the loss of a piece of our own body for we understand that in the livingness of nature we see a reflection of who we are as well. Creations of an Almighty God who tenderly tends the garden of our lives.

 

I had a cup of hot Red Rose Tea with a teaspoon of sugar, and in my favorite mug.  I’m wearing my winter pajamas! I’ve enjoyed Red Rose Tea for as long as I can remember.  It has a taste that is just right, for me.  I am so accustomed to the flavor of Red Rose Tea that I can barely drink any other tea.  That is how it is with our lives – we find something we like a lot and it becomes a part of us. Red Rose Tea is a part of who I am after all these years.

As for coffee, most mornings I have a cup of Caribou Mild Roast Coffee and I drink it from a favorite cup that was hand crafted in a Pennsylvania  potter’s studio. I have such mugs made by three different Pennsylvania potters.  There is something so special about using hand-made mugs and pottery pieces that nothing on the commercial market can compare.

 

 

It is a feeling of the person’s hands that remain in the finished piece of pottery. It’s personal. It’s sensual. It is that human touch that nothing made in a factory could duplicate. It is as though the hand crafted pottery holds the potters life inside of it  and you touch that person each time you pick up that cup or bowl.  You can see more of this pottery by visiting Mud Monkey Pottery – Gallery

 

 

 

 

 

This morning, I wrote to a friend to let her know I enjoyed her excellent message sent via e-mail. It was the first one of the day for me. Her  reflections are tender and sweet. I loved being with her as I read her message.  She spoke about her dog and her life and the comforts of this cool morning as she prepared a cup of hot coffee and talked about getting out her flannel shirt. You can visit her, too, by going to Campbell’s World Blog by Patty Fletcher

I thought how our pets and how precious they are  to us. We could never put a value on them, for they are priceless treasures. I tell my cats and dogs how much I love them, and I tell them I am thankful for this time we are together. I thank them for coming into my life and for being so faithful and loving to me. I try to never take them for granted but to stop and think of the gift they are to us every day that we have them with us.

 

The past month has been a time of change and improvements inside and outside of our home. The kitchen project kept us occupied right now. I call it refreshment and not a remodel., We do not take away anything from the vintage aspects of our century home. We do not tear out anything and put in modern stuff – we refresh and restore, we do not destroy.

 

Our home is important to us, and we love it. We want it to be comfortable and a beautiful place that makes us smile when we walk in the door. We want anyone who enters our home to feel comfortable and surrounded by beauty – we want it to be a happy place for anyone who steps in our doors. We began having the entire house done in Puerto Rico color combinations a couple of years before Bob was in the hospital in 2014. Earlier, we had our upstairs bathroom done this way after our daughter,

Heidi McClure  Owner of Sassafrass Hill Studio

and her husband, Jerry, worked on the walls and ceiling  to fix the plaster.  They  fixed  it and it was as nice as a  new room. Bob painted it in Puerto Rico colors.  I continued with the updates in painting by having three rooms done while Bob  was away so much that year.  He was battling acute myeloid leukemia and had a stem cell transplant in October 2014. That year, we had two bedrooms painted upstairs and his reading room on the first floor was done for him, too. He enjoys it every day since he is an avid reader.

 

We are doing the remaining rooms now.

Our Kitchen

 

For the past month, the kitchen is under attack – the painters  from  Allwine Painting were here for a week every day – prepping and painting. Now we can finish up with the new floor and backsplash. We went shopping on Wednesday for those items – my brother and sister-in-law took us and helped us find what we had in mind.

 

On Wednesday, we went to Home Depot and bought the tile that will be our kitchen floor. We ordered the glass tile that will be our backsplash. The one we picked out is not in stock. We won’t get delivery on it till October 14. This glass tile is called ABALONE because the glass tiles looks similar to abalone shells  that have a reflective quality known as Labradorescence. or AKA, Chatoyancy.

Can you imagine that on the backsplash between the white upper cupboards and the turquoise lower ones?

I wanted something that would be a powerful connection between the two areas. This brings in our love of nature, too. My brother found this for us.

 

Our new floor will also reflect our love of nature.

tile for the floor is in large slabs. The floor will look and feel like walking on a shady stone pathway. It will give the kitchen a feeling of something beautiful outside – stones and rocky ledges.  We are crazy for stones of all kinds. We have bowls of stones throughout the house. They bring in good energy, by the way.

 

Of course, we are now looking at the living and dining rooms.

We are thinking about how we can refresh them later in the year or during the winter months.

The color on the walls is much too soft, a peach color.

Pastel colors have white paint added to the primary color. This mixture makes the colors chalky. That is what makes them pastel. I’m not too fond of pastel colors. We are looking at colors now and are considering something in the red family – I have two couches in the living room – one is yellow, one is white. The carpeting throughout the entire house is white, and even when the carpet needs replaced, we will do it in white again.

 

With all of that done, next year, there will be only one more little room to get refreshed, and that will be the downstairs powder room.

It is just off the kitchen, next to Bob’s reading room. That little room gets used all day long. My office is off the kitchen in the other direction, and it is wood panelling, which I will keep as it is. It is my little hide-a-way, separate from the rest of the house – a world all it’s own. At the moment, 2 of my cats are seated in the open window looking outside as they do every morning. My feet are cold because it is cold out, and that air is coming into my office. But, it feels good – I love cold and cooler weather.

 

Yesterday, my computer and house phone were offline most of the day. A technician at the cable company walked me through the process of fixing them over the phone. Now, I hope I can remember how to do this again if I need to. Meanwhile, the men arrived around 9 in the morning to begin installing the Leaf Filter system in the gutters of the house. They cleaned the gutters, sealed them, and installed the system. It’s expensive, and we have many gutters on the house and barn, but my husband is no longer able to be up on the roofs several times a year doing this work. It made sense to me to invest in this now so that he would not be stressing over the falling leaves and the winter weather that brings down branches and dirt to fill the gutters. The men were here nearly all day – finished up around three. This system is under warranty for 80 years – and it adds tremendous sales value to a property. The contract is handed down to the new owner when we sell the property, so it goes on for the new owners. It is guaranteed that never in the 80 years will we ever have a clogged gutter. This improvement is an investment for Bob’s safety and increases our home’s value in the future.

 

I’d be so happy if we could spend every day of our life in this comfortable vintage home where we have lived since June 1967.  We raised our five children here. Every year on Christmas day, the family arrives for a day of celebration. Some come and stay for a few days, or at least overnight. It is something we look forward to all year long.

 

As for my writing this week

I am working on my revision of my first book Concerti: Psalms for the Pilgrimage.  I placed all of the poems  into my new draft format – I may add a few more writings as I begin reading the travel journals I created each summer as I taught, Drawing and Writing in Salzburg, for Geneva College courses.  This was a travel-study month-long course each year in July. I did these annual courses until my retirement in 2008. Below is a photo I took of our great-granddaughter, Delaunay Yaromey in 2007.I  lived every summer at the Bachmann home at the base of the Untersberg.

 

I know I will write a few more poems based on information and descriptions in the journals. I’ve already created some new haiku poems based on that primary source. This is so interesting for me to bee reading the actual WRITINGS  from those years of travels.

I will gather  some of the original Journal entries to put into the new expanded and revised version of the book. I am reading through them now.  The series of journal entries will set a historical context for the poems and stories. I think these little pieces will add to the collection.

In January 2003, Concerti: Psalms for the Pilgrimage became my first published book. The revision is a personal goal for me. I’ve wanted to do this update for some years. I changed the title of the book to

Songs for the Pilgrimage.

 

This is the Saturday Stopover, a view from my home at River Road, in The Village of Wurtemburg.

Saturday, September 19, 2020.

 

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I’d love to hear about your week and what you are working on  this week in your home or neighborhood.

I love to hear from my friends and I invite you to contact me or leave a comment.

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Courtesy of Lynda McKinney Lambert.  Copyright September 19, 2020. All rights reserved.

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Who IS?  Lynda McKinney Lambert