Spring Cleaning

We're having a blustery, cold spring here on Pershing Lane. This time of year I want to make everything sparkle inside and out as spring puts on her new green and yellow coat. It's spring cleaning time.

No I won't be folding my underwear into origami shapes as Marie Kondo suggests in The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. But I do enjoy the virtuous feeling of seeing everything in ship-shape order. This spring has been a season of deep cleaning. I've scoured every drawer, closet, nook and cranny for the useless, worn out, tired, ripped and torn. Mostly I've taken the time to sort, fold, put dividers in drawers and refold.

My friend Nancy who works with the homeless said that as they work to put folks in homes they give away beds and sheets. I had a drawer full of full-size sheets, but no longer own a full-size bed.  Out came the sheets and off they went to Nancy and her group. Now I can find the sheets I need, no more messing around with sheets that don't fit the bed and I know that someone who really needs sheets will have them.  Living simply so that others may simply live as I'm reminded weekly in church.

Mom gave me tons of her beautiful jewelry over the holidays. This rich abundance made it hard to close the jewelry drawer with all of the little boxes filling it to over flowing. I found this great hack online for storing earrings. 

 A trip to the dollar store and three ice cube trays later, I had all of my earrings sorted. I find I'm wearing more of them more often because now I an see at a glance what I have. Just put a little bit of foam or the cotton lining from your old jewelry boxes in the bottom of the ice cube trays and either pin your earrings to the foam or drop them in. They are so thin that I can stack two or three on top of each other. Neat, tidy, simple, cheap, makes getting dressed easier. All of this sorting and organizing is so satisfying.

Look what else went up this week.

Marijo put up the clothesline which she very graciously lets me use since my backyard is too deeply shaded to dry much of anything in the summer. You can't see it in this picture but little snowflakes were dancing around me as I hung these towels out to dry.  It might be too cold for them to dry much but the wind is blowing so strongly that I'm crossing my fingers.  I've just put these towels through their spring cleaning ritual.  Are your bath and kitchen towels musty after winter? I've got a special spring cleaning recipe that will take the winter blahs right out of them.  Scroll to the end of this post for the recipe. You can dry your towels in the dryer, but I think they smell even fresher when dried out on the line after their "treatment"

See the Scillia blooming behind the clothesline?  Even if snowflakes are flying it's so much fun to see these periwinkle blue flowers this time of year.

The scillia carpet Marijo's and my "community garden", the area between our two yards that we garden together. It's half the work and twice as much fun gardening together. I cut some of the scillia to bring a little bit of spring inside this morning.

Don't they look pretty sitting on the freshly starched napkin I put on the dinning room table to set off the floral arrangement? Here's a closer look.

I think these little details like the cross-stitched napkin make a house a home. I wish I had the patience to sit and stitch like this, but I can always find treasures like this at flea markets, Goodwill or antique stores. These little details spark such joy for me.  You too?

Round one, the early spring cleaning is done.  All of the wood furniture has been washed down and polished. I even washed and polished the knotty pine walls of our den.

Such a warm cozy room to sit in on nights when the spring winds are howling and scratching with little icy fingers at the windows. 

While I've been dropping off donations, I've also done a little guilt-free shopping at Goodwill.  Look what I found

I wanted a fresh ornament for the front door.  These purple and pink boots filled with spring flowers fit the bill and Prince Charming liked the cost. Boots and silk flowers set me back less than $10.

Round two of spring cleaning which mostly consists of washing windows will wait until the neighbor girl, Hailey, comes home from college.  I've got her lined up to work with me in June. 

Yesterday we had 15 minutes of sunshine, the wind died down for a bit and I got out to inspect the neighborhood for evidence that spring is coming.

The Daffodils are blooming. I don't have any of these bi-colored daffodils in my yard.

or these itty-bitty cuties

They are so small, they are about the same size as the scillia, maybe three or four inches high. I think I might need to add both of these to my garden when I'm planting bulbs next fall.

The peonies are just peeking out.

And the pink magnolias have broken bud

The white magnolias are in full bloom!

This tree also comes in an ornamental size.  I wish now I'd planted this tree instead of the small dogwoods I planted on the south side of the house.  We're just a little too far north for dogwoods to do well. In four years, I think I've gotten one blossom on one of the two dogwoods I planted.  I'd love to trade them out for these magnolia wonders.  But Prince Charming doesn't like it when I move something as big as a tree, especially one that's living, for something I argue is "better". I suppose his objection stems from the work of digging and lifting and digging a new hole. Cross your fingers friends and let's hope for some dogwood blossoms this year.

The maples are "blooming"

And the crab apple is leafing out

David from Stella's Guesthouse and Gardens dropped by this week with my order of giant tree lilies.

David says to plant them at least 7-inches deep.  That's a lot of digging.  They need to go so deep because they are so big that they need to have plenty of ground support for the stalk and roots.  They'll look like this when they bloom.

Won't they be stunning?

They are going in the sun perennial bed

which looks like this now.....

And will look like this this summer.  Can't you just picture those giant tree lilies in the back?! I like my gardens full of flowers cheek-by-jowl.  Some people like their gardens with a little breathing room but I always think there is room for one more flower in my garden.

Before I forget here's the recipe for washing away the winter blahs out of your towels:

Run them through a wash cycle with only hot water & 1 cup of white vinegar. Do not add soap.

Then run them through again. This time using hot water and 1/2 cup baking soda. Again, do not use soap. This process will strip the residue that has built up and cause them to be fresh and practically new again. You will notice they absorb better as well.
Repeat this procedure as needed

Hang them on the line outside to dry.

We've had quite a romp through the house and neighborhood this week and the snow is really coming down now so I better go snatch my towels off the line. Take care of each other until we talk again next week! Hugs xxoo

Fooling Mother Nature

It's too early, David, the sage gardener of Stella's Guesthouse and Gardens, warns as he delivers my order of pansies.  Too early for such warm weather he means.

The lilacs are coming on too quick. They need to shelter in place and wait until the hard frosts of April pass before they put out their bloom buds.

Marijo who's come over from next door to pick out some pansies, shifts from foot to foot as we watch David pull out of the drive. Now I'm worried too, she says.

Frost won't hurt the daffodils or

or the Hellebore's also known as Lenten Rose.

These beautiful scillia love cold, snow and frost.

Frost could nip the bleeding hearts just emerging from their winter sleep.

Don't worry, I say. It's an old farmer's trick to ward off the garden gods. If you get excited at the nice turn of weather, the garden gods will hear sending a killing frost or blizzard. David's protecting us by telling the gods the weather's too warm. 

Though it did snow the day after David delivered the pansies. It wasn't a blizzard. The blessing is working!

This March has been relatively nice all month, even exceptional for a couple of weeks.

The completed pots

 David isn't fooled. Now that he's blessed the garden with his "too warm" blessing, I'm sure to have arm loads of lilacs in May. Mother Nature's the biggest prank player of all time.

Enjoy your April Fool's day.  

Isn't Mother Nature grand?! Take good care of each other dear ones until next week.

Eggstastic

Seven years ago my youngest left home to go to college. At first I was so excited for him and for me, the future seemed unbounded, limitless horizon. Then Easter rolled around and I felt the most profound sense of loss when he couldn't come home. Suddenly I realized these last months weren't a vacation from parenthood, this was my new life. It felt really empty.

Feeling blue, I stared out the window thinking about how this new life with children who'd flown the coop was REALLY going to feel. In the middle of this reveries the next-door-neighbor's grandchildren were spilling out of the car and making happy children's noises.

From that happy noise the Grandma Brigade was born.

The Grandma Brigade in action

The Grandma Brigade waxes and wanes, but from the beginning it has been my good friend Joni and Joanie. Yes they have the same name, spelled differently but when the children are yelling "Grandma" we all answer. Sometimes other Grandmas join us, regardless we three have been coloring Easter eggs, making May baskets, gingerbread houses and Valentines together now for seven years.

Today was time to color the Easter eggs!

The oldest of our artists is now 11 and youngest at 5 wasn't even born when we started.  Isn't that the wonder of starting new traditions? In short order to an 11-year-old or 5-year-old our holidays traditions so recently started are just-the-way-things-are.

Through change and loss, love and growth, tears and smiles the network of friends and lives shared buoys us.

It is in expressing love through traditions shared,  simple acts liking dipping an egg in food coloring, squeezing half a bottle of white glue on some red construction paper so that we can sprinkle it with glitter, licking frosting off our fingers and the back of candy before we stick a candy cane on some gingerbread that we taste that sweet, silly thing called life.

Wishing you all the most blessed Easter.

Lemons, corned beef, cabbage friendship

March is being her usual mercurial self. March is like the eccentric old aunt come to visit.  Half the time I love her and the rest of the time I want to help her pack her bags and show her the door.

These past couple of weeks it's been all love with daily temps in the 60's, daffodils growing fat and promising to pop their bright yellow blooms, snowdrops in full bloom and the first tiny little scilla blossom peaking through last fall's dead leaves.

Despite the bright sunshine this morning, March is threatening to turn surly later today and tomorrow with snow back in the forecast.

So before March gets all crazy, I'm enjoying sitting in a bit of sunshine, sipping my lemon-ginger tea with the fresh Meyer lemons Maryann brought me from her neighbor's tree in Houston. These lemons from a stranger have been passed with love from one hand to another. More on that in a minute.

First we have a winner from last week's gratitude give-away. Louise who writes that she's grateful for a smile from her mum who has end stage dementia, the smell of hyacinths and the anticipation of blue bells.  Louise's list and other's who shared their moments of gratitude remind me that puny little gratitude isn't big and grand, it's everyday, readily available and so easily overlooked and forgotten that we can forget to stop for a moment and notice.  So thank you to all who wrote in, taking the time and effort to stop and feel that little spark of joy that gratitude gives us. Louise send your mailing address to felecia.babb@gmail.com, I'll put your painting in the mail post haste! Congratulations.

Back to the lemons.  Maryann's neighbor gave her lemons from his tree which she so thoughtfully brought to me.  Really fresh lemons, plucked right from the tree by the hand of someone who knows someone I know are more precious to me than a chest full of gold coins.

Thanks to this gift of lemons I spent yesterday in a happy reverie baking a lemon pound cake to take to Marijo's St. Patrick's day dinner.  The pound cake recipe called for sifted flour which meant pulling Mom's old sifter off it's shelf.  Somehow the sifter was given away or loaned out to a family friend, Susan, who kept it for 25 or 30 years before re-gifting it to me a few years ago.

My family isn't sentimental and so we cast off pictures, and household items without thought.  Susan has always been there to pick up the shards of memory, store and treasure them until she thinks one of us is ready and responsible enough to be trusted with the family treasure.

Sifting the flour reminded me of the all the cakes Mom, Susan and I've baked and shared. Such happy memories from a friendship that spans more than 50 years.

The recipe also called for nutmeg.  Mom gave me whole nutmegs and a small grater for Christmas this year.  We had fun making and drinking eggnog and then I put the nutmegs away and wondered when I'd have need of them again.  I had no idea what nutmegs look like.

Here's a picture with a penny to give you an idea of the scale of the nuts.  It delighted me to be able to put fresh nutmeg in the cake.  It felt like I was sprinkling a little extra love on top of the golden lemon juice as I folded the ingredients in.

Is there any better smell than lemon pound cake baking in the oven on a windy March day?  Maybe the rich smells of corned beef roasting?  Once the cake was baked, Prince Charming and I hot-footed it next door to Marijo's for her annual St. Patrick's Day feast of

corned beef, boiled cabbage,

roasted potatoes, Irish soda bread and Irish whiskey and Guinness

This story of love shared, started with a stranger giving away a lemon, which was then given away, squeezed and pulped and grated into a cake, shared with friends at the end of a feast. It took the stranger, Maryann, Susan, Mom, me and Marijo all giving and receiving, passing and sharing the love around to complete the story. So let March with all of her eccentricities batter at the door with wind and sleet, rain and snow. I've got my lemony sunshine of friendship, memory and tea to keep me warm.

Hope you're enjoying your day, take good care of each other until next week.

Here's the Lemon Cake Recipe adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup butter 
• 2 cups white sugar

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Juice of two lemons
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest
• 1 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a bread pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the sour cream, vanilla and lemon extract. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, mixing just until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 50 to 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

Amplified Gratitude

Snowdrops blooming in the garden today!

Sometimes angels sneak up on us and whisper profound, life changing secrets right into our hearts.   One Sunday, Pastor Peter hit me with a message so wise and helpful it took my breath away.

"The opposite of love is not hatred, but fear," Pastor Peter said. It was like he'd given me the secret handbook to life.  The opposite of happiness is not unhappiness but fear, the opposite of courage is fear, the opposite of creativity is fear.

Fear is the one trump card the Crazy Old Lady who lives in our heads has.  Her whole hand is the fear card. 

Fear tells us you're no good, you're self-indulgent, you have no talent, you're embarrassing your family, you're too emotional, you are wasting your time, you are too old, too fat and too stupid....the list goes on and on.

Happiness shrugs it's shoulders and says, "Well it may all be true, but who cares?" It takes our big scary monsters and personal demons and shrinks them down to size.  

Wonderful, just great, you may be thinking. Sign me up for that happiness pill,  book, program, whatever it is because I could really use some tonic for the pile of unpaid bills, the kids fighting, all of the folks who made me mad this week, the harsh thing my sweety said last night and the pile of laundry getting moldy in the basement.

There's no book, no pill, no program. Here's how to let a little squeak of happiness into your life-- amplify your gratitude.  

Just notice what makes you smile, feel a little warmer, a little lighter, stop resisting whatever is happening in your life, if only just for a second. Gratitude puts a stop to the  ceaseless yearning and longing for something else. Gratitude allows us to take delight in whatever is right in front of us.  

When I started noticing the warmth of sunshine on a late winter day, I could, just in that one moment feel a spark of gratitude.  I'll admit it was slow going at first and required effort to find five things I could be grateful for each day. Day by day, it got easier to find gratitude in more and more things.

Research suggests that if you record at five things that you are grateful for each day, you'll feel happier. Just five, every day. Better than a pill more like magic, you'll feel happier!

One of my wise and busy friends, Lisa,--a mother of two, owner of her own business with a husband and two dogs (not sure how Andy will feel about being lumped in with the dogs, but he's friendly, loyal and trustworthy so hopefully he'll take it well) uses DayOne app to take a picture and record a one-word diary entry on her smart phone.  However you choose to record your gratitude, just do it.  

As a way to get you thinking about what makes you grateful here are 10 things in my life that make me feel grateful:

Notes from friends

Hanging laundry on the line

Wearing hats

Taking a walk

Serendipity

Bike Riding

Sweet corn in August

Summer nights on the porch

 

Days spent on the water

Gardens, especially creating beauty in my own garden

And one bonus gratitude

First Snow

Dear ones I'd love to hear what makes you grateful. As a special thank you for sharing I'll be giving away this unique one-of-a-kind painting I made to one lucky winner who shares what makes you grateful in the comments below. Deadline for submissions is next Tuesday.

Dear readers you fill me with gratitude.  Take good care of each other until next week.  And don't forget to leave a comment!