Outdoor living

I've always wanted to spend more time outdoors. I remember the summers of my youth when I was rarely indoors. My mother always had to come outside and bellow for me to come for what reason she had at the moment. My father instituted the porch light rule. I was to go nowhere in the neighborhood I couldn't see the porch light. When it came on, I was to come home. Yes, I grew up in a much different world - a country world. 

Adulthood stripped me of those carefree outdoor days, but retirement may just give them back. This is the year of some patio improvements. 

There are several reasons for installing an outdoor work/cook space. One - we can (yeah, that's a given). We enjoy grilling and since we screened the patio we can add eating outside. Before the screens, the insects kept us from truly enjoying outside dining. Another reason is so that I'll be able to do some of the canning outside and not risk damage to my solid surface stove. Our new work/cook station has a Formica countertop and that will be quite handy for all sorts of projects. Who doesn't love an easy clean work surface? 

And then there is the extra storage for a lot of gardening items and drawers for our outdoor grill implements, lids, oil, and more. 

I'm really looking forward to summer evenings on the patio this year. We may even break down and get a new television with a remote control that works. Of course, I'll need a good lounge chair if that happens. 

Somehow, I don't think that will be a problem.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

The bathroom closet

Everyone has that one closet they’d like to throw a grenade into. Well, maybe not a grenade, but you get the idea. It’s that one space in the house you can’t seem to control. In our little house, it’s the bathroom closet.

I think it was intended to be a linen closet, but our little house is a little house. Storage is at a premium so it doesn’t matter what some architect designed it to be. It is what it is and that’s the bathroom closet. Over the course of the last years, it has accumulated all matter of non-essential *stuff*. For whatever reason, I took a fit and started to organize the plastic bin that holds my razors, facial wipes, Q-tips, and other small, loose things. That led to pulling everything off the shelf to wipe it down, which in turn led to re-stacking the sheets, towels, and kitchen cloths.

No, I don’t have room for kitchen cloths in my kitchen. I have too many because I like to have a full washer load of things when I run the washer. When I wash the kitchen towels, that’s all that goes in the washer with hot water and a bit of bleach. But I digress…

Himself came to see what the commotion in the bathroom was all about and we ended up sorting out our first aid shelf. All-in-all we went from having so little room on the shelves that things fell off to having empty space.

We’re taking bets on how long it will last.

We agreed we need to get busy on a couple of other closets, and not so we can buy new things and fill up the empty space again. We’ve reached the age where we know life needs to be simpler. It’s one of the things living debt-free has taught us. We have come to understand the difference between an actual need and a mere want. It’s an important distinction.

 Here at Holly Tree Manor, we’ve been blessed with an abundance of many things. As we discarded expired cough meds, pain relievers, and various lotions and potions, our discussion centered around our need to be more intentional in our purchases and the recognition we sometimes fall short. Sometimes we forget to ask ourselves what do we truly need before we open our wallets.

What do we truly need? That’s a question that needs to be asked and answered every day.

  The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

 

The New Year 2021

 May all our hopes and dreams be met. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

New Year's Eve 2020

 What can one say about 2020 that has not been said? 

The year of the pandemic. The year of citizens accepting "house arrest."

The year parents died alone. The year women gave birth alone. 

The year we led lives quietly desperate for family. 

The year political corruption took advantage of the American citizen and set the stage for what are surely horrible things to come. 

The year we lost so much. 

Here at Holly Tree Manor life went on unchanged in many regards. Externally, all our adjustments came when we had to deal with the outside world. Internally, inside our property boundaries, life was much the same as always. I was home more, of course, but nothing else was different. 

We had grass to mow, trees to prune, brush to burn, mulch to spread, stone to level, painting to be done, equipment to service, and wildlife to enjoy. We were more blessed than most. We did not suffer.

Looking into 2021 the view is murky. Will the vaccine for Covid-19 be safe? Will it work? What will this mean for me personally? If the vaccine works, should I retire? 

Is it possible to resurrect my writing career? Do I even want to do that? I need TIME to do that, time that has to come from somewhere. I made the decision to check back into my life and that meant the writing suffered. To go back to writing means my personal life will be short-changed. Do I want to go back to being that lonely, because writing is surely a lonely profession. 

Maybe in the new year, I'll find some answers, although I doubt it. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Terrace wall repair

There's never a lack of projects to do here at the manor.  One we've put off, for one reason or another, is repairing the west terrace wall. 

This wall has a bit of a sad story. It was constructed near the end of 2004 after Himself was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. The prognosis was pretty grim. It was colon cancer that had metastasized to his liver and the doctor at Johns Hopkins deemed it to be "inoperable," and therefore terminal. 

Doctors CAN be wrong. 

It was under this dark cloud that he took on the project, firmly believing it would be the last thing he ever did to improve the manor. 

The wall lasted over a decade, but time and water will always win. The last section built has collapsed. Last summer it was only a small collapse and close inspection showed a larger one was imminent. We determined it would be better to allow the hostas to bloom another year, wait for the collapse, and then effect a more substantial repair. 

And so here we are. When the weather improves and the ground dries and firms up, we have a job to do. It's not as difficult as it may appear. The remnants of the old wall will get scooped up in the bucket of the John Deere and dropped on the lower stone fence. Using the backhoe, we'll dig out some soil and prepare level ground for the foundation. After that is finished, it will be time to select some substantial stones from the upper stone fence and rebuild the wall. 

With any luck, it will only take us a weekend. Like everything here at the manor, the weather is the key factor. No matter how many Saturday afternoons it may take, we'll both be glad to have it done. 

That wall is like a metaphor for his life. If a section crumbles, it's time to pick yourself up, fix it, and keep going. And that's how we do it at Holly Tree Manor.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Elder and Crone

Of Christmas snow, I would wish

for it to kiss the ground

Pristine and white falling down, 

to the earth forever bound

Silent night gives way to day, 

quiet stirrings under brightest rays

The fire warms, the cat sleeps on, 

wrapped in quiet, steeped in peace

The elder and the crone, as we have now become

Sip coffee and smile, hidden behind our walls

Tasks fulfilled, our legacy fading (as it should)

Indulgent to our past, memories notwithstanding

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)