Five years at Holly Tree Manor

Today marks the fifth anniversary of Holly Tree Manor. So much has happened in those years. The big life changing events that happened in those years are that I retired and my beloved Ron passed. I have more questions than ever about my life and the choices I've made. 

I'm not alone in wondering where I'd be today if I'd made different choices. What if I hadn't retired? Would I be happier at work than here alone all day? I don't think so. I was able to be with Ron and my only worry was Deuce. Thankfully, my closest cousin lives next door and was able to visit Deuce during the times I was at the hospital with Ron. 

Ron's passing aside, the last five years have been good ones. I started working when I was just sixteen years old. I wanted to save up to buy my own car, which I did even though it was against my parent's wishes. My mother always tried to hold me back. My father was more aware but he didn't know what to do with a teenage daughter. Dad was the one who said I could buy my first car - a 1969 Camaro. 

I worked all those years so I could have my own money, buy my own things, and save for the day when I could step into all I ever wanted to be - The Lady of the Manor. Truly, it was my fondest dream, and here I am. The reality looks a bit different than the dream since Ron passed, but he knew this was my dream. 

Yesterday, we marked the winter solstice. Starting today, we begin to have more daylight minutes every day until we reach the summer solstice. It's a cold (29F), clear and sunny day here. There is little work that needs to be done outside in the cold. I've completed a few indoor chores, perused a few seed sellers like Burpees and Totally Tomatoes, and now I'm blogging. Later this afternoon, I need to decide on my canning/preserving projects for the year, which will influence what I plant in the 2025 garden. 

My computer room/sunroom is flooded with sunlight. Outside the windows, the trees stand as watchful sentinels. My world is at peace. 

Thanks for coming along for the last five years. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

_*_*_

On a side note, I've got a new book out called Once in October. Click on the link to the book page located at my writing blog, Between the Keys. You will probably get a message that the link takes you off this blog. If that worries you, copy and paste in:

https://kckendricks.blogspot.com/p/once-in-october-by-kc-kendricks.html

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, rural living, country lifestyle, fifth anniversary, a writer's life, winter solstice, 1969 Camaro, KC Kendricks, blogging, women's work, loss of spouse, dreams

A minute here, a minute there

Today was a "catch up" day for me. My To Do List always has a few small items on it, ones I thought of in passing and hastily scribbled down. The scribbling has taken over the list and it was time to renew it. That means, for me, it's time to do those small jobs that aren't critical, but they bother me being undone. 

Early this morning I tossed a load of laundry in the washer and sat down to handle my mother's correspondences. Deuce and I walked two envelopes down to the mailbox and Cousin Dave came out to chat. 

Home again, the laundry went in the dryer and I lit a match. The burn ring had collected some wooden debris, pallets and such, and was an eyesore. It's gone now and I can report the old well still works great. 

Housework gets neglected in the summer months, so I put some things away in the pantry and straightened up the shelves. A thorough vacuuming job followed since Deuce is shedding at the moment. Then the clothes in the dryer were hung, folded, and put in the closet. Little chores were finished and crossed off the list. I felt like I walked in circles, and I did, but I dutifully stuck to the items in the order they were written. 

A quick call from a girlfriend netted me some old candles. I'll use them to make fire-starter this winter. The Lord of the Manor was working in the shed, and when I checked on him, he put me to work. FedEx saved me when they delivered a roll of woven ground cover from Grower's Solutions. 

I started dinner prep and then went to the computer to do some quick promos. That led to blogging at Deuce's Day and Between the Keys. Dinner went into the oven, and I watered the garden while it baked. 

After dinner, it was time to write a new list, which led to blogging here at The Hideaway.

Some days I wonder why I'm tired at the end of the day. Maybe tomorrow I'll sit in my garden and listen to the bees. More likely, I'll start working on the new list. 

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, rural living, country lifestyle, To Do List, retirement, gardening, homesteading, blogging, a writer's life

Shade cloth

Last year was the first time I used shade cloth. The small greenhouse I purchased really heated up inside and it was pretty obvious if I didn't moderate the temperature, plants would burn up on really hot days. The answer was shade cloth.  What surprised me about the shade cloth over the greenhouse was that it also kept the inside a bit warmer a bit longer in the evenings. I hadn't expected that. 

I also learned last year that "full sun" can kill a tomato plant in a five-gallon bucket. I had a devil of a time keeping the soil in the tomato buckets from going bone dry. It's one of the many reasons I've moved my garden to its current location. It will get dappled shade early in the morning and full sun from about ten-thirty to five-ish. So will that still be too much full sun? 

Good old Sol is doing a few things that are not conducive to great gardening. We've had the Grand Solar Minimum, we've had coronal flares, and pretty soon it looks like a solar maximum may be in the works. What's a gardener to do? 

I'm going with shade cloth. I recently purchased a small shade cloth for over the frame of the first tiny greenhouse I got several years ago. The plastic shredded (I knew it would eventually) but the frame is fine. The plan is to cover the frame with the shade cloth and go from there. I also got a larger shade cloth to drape over the wooden frames. I can screw one side down and pull it over the rails as necessary. I think it should work, but as with all things, I'll make adjustments as I go along. 

And for those who wonder how well the greenhouse withstands high winds, I zip-tied 10-pound barbell weights to each corner for a little extra insurance. The greenhouse hasn't moved yet. 

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, greenhouse, shade cloth, rural living, country lifestyle, blogging, a writer's life, sun activity

An unexpected and appropriate change

 

Yesterday afternoon, a visitor braved the drive into the woods to visit us. When he arrived, I smiled and said, "Welcome to my hideaway!" And that's when it hit me. I knew right then and there I needed to update the title of the blog. In the beginning, it seemed like Holly Tree Manor, because of all the holly trees, was a good name, I've not warmed to it the way I'd hoped. Those words, so easily spoken, resonated deeply. And so we make changes. 

The Holly Tree Manor blog has officially been renamed The Hideaway. 

Google Earth provided a good overhead photo of the manor and house. It clearly explains why the name change is so appropriate. I'm invisible on the ground level, but not from the air. 

Whenever I look at my woods, I'm reminded of the words of my favorite poet, Robert Frost: 
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, 

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

He's not alone. We all have miles to go.

The Lady of The Hideaway

Drop back two and punt?

Life at the manor has taken a few twists and turns over the years. Sometimes we've been reacting more than proacting. When a loved one has health issues, you're often at the mercy of disease progression or disease treatment and that's simply the way it is. Other times, you can lay out a good plan and see it through to fruition. Sometimes your plans are thwarted by forces beyond your control. 

And sometimes, and this is the hard one, you come to realize that what you planned, what was your dream, is no longer feasible. You realize there isn't time to invest into working the plan or you come to the crossroads of where you've been versus the fact you've gone as far as you think you can with it. So it is with me and my writing career. 

Becoming a writer was a fluke. I was bored one day and I sat down in front of an old HP desktop that had a whopping big 256MB hard drive and a One Note program, and I started to tell a story. The damn thing snowballed on me and here I am, decades later, with a publishing history, blogs, social media, and book sales. Unreal. 

It became my plan to retire so I could write full-time. I lived for the moment! Now that I'm in the transition into total retirement, I'm wondering if that's what I really want to do. With so much that I love to do - walking, gardening, canning, quilting - do I want to sit at the computer for several hours a day? 

The publishing industry is one of constant change. Established writers get pushed back by new voices fueling different markets. Amazon only rewards megastars. Many, many, many good, solid writers get lost in the algorithms because that's the way Amazon makes more money. My own work is buried by the algorithms at Amazon. My sales are predominately at iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and a few other subscription services overseas.  

Even Facebook has begun to punish promotion. I belong to a lot of Facebook groups, and as I started to promo the release of July Heat, my posts went "into review" because I included buy links. 

Should I spend the time, months in fact, creating a good story only to have nothing become of it? Or should I spend my time, daily, enjoying Holly Tree Manor? As I transition into retirement, would my time be better spent rebuilding old friendships now that we all have more time to spend together without the constraints of jobs? 

I can't see my way to striking a workable balance. Maybe it will be clearer when I'm not "employed" even on a part-time, work-from-home basis. And maybe I'll have to drop back two and punt my way into something I've yet to imagine. 

Some days I'm just along for the ride, not steering the boat. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Rainy days and prep cooking

Rainy days are good days to do some cooking and stock the freezer. It's definitely helpful to have meals made ahead for those days when I've been working outside and I'm tired. Who wants to cook if you've just spent three hours on a lawnmower? Or a couple of hours on the John Deere 1023 using the snowblower? Not me, that's for sure.

I used to hate leftovers. I guess that was a holdover from my formative years when my mother and grandmother shoved even the smallest amount of leftover food into the fridge and God alone only knew how long it would be in there until they pulled it out and ultimately had to throw it in the garbage. I learned to FEAR the leftover.

Things are different now. Managing the manor means managing food resources the same as managing how we spend our time. Sound a bit hokey? It's really not. Wise use of food is wise use of money. That's what all those science projects my grandmother and mother created were about - saving money. It didn't work for them because they didn't take the time to THINK about meal planning. They just cooked. That's all they had time for. They didn't have the tools we have today.

Homemade ricotta

My life is a little different. I have a computer and the Internet. Those two things are as big game changers as Gutenberg's printing press. I don't have to reinvent the meal planning wheel. I can pick and choose from hundreds of plans developed by others. Saves money and saves time.

So taking a rainy and cooking a few freezer meals is a no-brainer for me. One of my favorite things to fix is lasagna. I generally have everything on hand on except ricotta cheese, so I make my own. Instructions on how I make it are found here.  A gallon of whole milk makes enough ricotta for one 13x9 pan of lasagna. 

I don't just cook meals on my cooking-binge days. I brown burger, bake cookies, make French toast casserole, make homemade crackers - anything I have ingredients for. A couple of hours spent prepping makes life a lot easier when I come home from work so it's well worth doing. 

Of all the things we have in life, time is the most precious. I do my best to use mine wisely. How I spend my time UN-wisely is for another blog. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor