Cabin Crafted

Category: friendship

  • Old Skills

    Last Wednesday evening, I trekked over to the museum to teach an old skill. No costume required for this event. We set up 4 stations for 4 ladies + 1 second grader accompanying her Mom and they learned to make basic lard and lye soap. We used a mix of old school and modern skills and equipment so we weren’t there all night stirring the mix. Of course they were given some history of soap and soap making and why we now use a lye calculator and a superfatted recipe to be sure we end up with a body friendly product. I put together kits of a small heat safe plastic bucket, two rigid plastic stadium cups, a spatula, and a silicone loaf pan for each participant that they keep at the end of the session, along with the a three page history, instructions, and two recipes; one for the lard and lye and one for a vegan soap with Shea butter, Coconut Oil, and Olive Oil, and of course, their mold of soap. We “cheat” by stirring with an immersion blender to speed the process up to keep our session within a 90 minute window. As I dug out some of my equipment and essential oils to scent their individual batches of soap, it seemed a good time to go ahead and make soap for 3 friends and our household.

    The batches at home were made Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. On Tuesday, a double batch of one scent was made and I won’t do that again as it took forever to get to the consistency to pour it in the molds and is still not as firm as I would like to slice it into bars. The
    Wednesday batches will be unmolded and cut tomorrow to cure for a month before going to the folks for whom it was made.

    Today as I sat waiting for hubby to have a consultation visit and then I waited for my annual mammogram, I spun. In public, I spin on either a top whorl drop spindle or a Turkish spindle. When doing it, there are surreptitious glances, to out and out staring and occasionally someone will ask what I am doing. Followed by the question of what I then do with the yarn I spin.

    The other old skill that really hasn’t been done so far this year is canning and preserving. There have been pickles fermented and stored, but the tomatoes haven’t produced in sufficient quantity to bother canning them. I have frozen a couple of gallon bags, made one big pot of sauce to use one night for pasta and the rest frozen in wide mouth pint jars. There is a basket of Asian pears from the orchard sitting on the dining table with a couple of oranges to make pear/orange marmalade, but I haven’t gotten around to dragging down the canning pot to do it. As there are still many jars of applesauce from last year unopened, I doubt that any will be canned this year. The only other produce that has come in quantity are greenbeans and I freeze some of them, but don’t like canned one at all and barely tolerate them from frozen. I like to buy local, but come midwinter when green vegetables are at a premium if at all available, I do buy from the grocer.

    All of these skills have been learned since retirement. You can teach an old dog new tricks. And I truly believe in the each one teach one. I am grateful to the friends who taught me to make soap, spin, and improve my knitting skills. The canning and fermentation, I have learned from books and the internet.

  • It’s Been a While

    Not to anything dire, just not wanting to keep posting the same routine.

    It has been a hot, wet summer and the garden has suffered. Raccoons got every ear of corn and started on the tomatoes as they ripened. Green beans have been very prolific as were the cucumbers. The cucumber vines have now died off and were pulled from their trellis yesterday afternoon and the first planting of green beans also pulled as I had been away for 5 days and most of the ones on the plants were too large and soft to be desirable as we don’t like the “southern” way of cooking them with fat back until they are practically mush. The second planting has just begun to provide.

    We set about on Monday to get the lawn mowed after lunch. I sent DH out to get gas for a fill up, thinking there was enough to start while he was gone, but I backed the riding mower out of the garage and it sputtered to a stop. Instead of sitting idly by, the bed of flowers by the east side of the garage was a weedy mess and the grass was hanging over into it, so much bending, stooping, and sitting on a step stool that sent me into an unplanned hard landing on the grass, and all the grass and lambs quarters were pulled, a new edge dug. He began to mow while I was doing that so the line trimmer was used to go around the house and over to the vegetable garden that had lambs quarters, wild amaranth, and horse nettles as tall as me that the line trimmer couldn’t handle. This is the result of hand weeding all of it and the orchard grass growing in the paths.

    That pile is about 2.5 feet tall, what you see behind it is the same mess that is in the closed off chicken run that I can’t access until the fence is removed. I don’t know if it will compost as I had no means of chopping it up, so it is a stack of 5 to 6 feet long stalks mixed with mats of Creeping Charlie, Bermuda grass, Smart weed, and other unwanted greenery that had taken over the end of the garden not in use this summer. I’m thinking about trying to move the inner fence to cross just above the part of the garden in use and letting the chicken have at the rest. It will leave them unprotected from the hawks but that is a chance I am willing to take.

    Yesterday a very early venture over to the garden to harvest beans and tomatoes and finish weeding a small section I never got to Monday, found all of the Tithonia and Sunflowers full of sleeping wild bees.

    Yesterday afternoon, after a trip to the nursery, flats of spinach and Romaine lettuce seedling, a row of Little Gems lettuce seed, and three rows of turnips were planted in one of the empty raised beds. The one the first green beans were in will be reserved to plant garlic when it cools more.

    The reason for my 5 day absence was to travel to Black Mountain, North Carolina for my favorite Art and Fiber Retreat. We meet at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly. It was rejuvenating and a bit heartbreaking. The group is a wonderful mix of ladies that spin, knit, crochet, weave, and do other paper arts. The heartbreak was to see the damage caused by Helene and know that though they have worked hard to recover, only 40% occupancy is available still as they lost a couple of buildings and had damage to many others. The motel style lodge where we stay and where meals are prepared and served by the staff was the first to be repaired and reopened. Helene took out every power pole leading up to the buildings except for 3. It took them 4 weeks to get any power back. The creek that became a river down the west side, that damaged the old gym so badly it had to be torn down is now a gully 16 feet deep and washed through the woods taking out trees and rhododendron to now look like a dry river bed.

    This is an area above the retreat that is up the mountain. All of their hiking trails in that area are impassable still and a lower priority than restoring the rest of the buildings.

    Part of the repair is placing 14 foot arches where roads were to divert the flow, instead of smaller culverts that had always handled the creeks in the past. Also where two landslides sent mud into buildings, have new reinforced walls at the top and the slides seeded as they are now open meadows.

    In addition to visiting with friends I see seldom, I finished a skein of yarn I had been spindle spinning, took a needle felting class and made two little pumpkins, and started wheel spinning 8 ounces of Coopworth and Alpaca roving purchased from a friend that raises the animals and dyes the wool before the mill processes it into roving. Also some knitting on a pair of fingerless mitts was done with the wool I purchased in Alaska in May, spun on spindles and plyed on spindles.

    Now back home, my food consumption is focusing on smaller portions and healthier choices as we always have a snack table with too much sugar and fat on it, and though I did take a walk up as far as I could go up hill above the retreat one day, I consumed too much not so healthy snacks in addition to the three meals a day they provide. Now home, I have resumed my daily walks with DH of 2-2.5 miles. It has been so humid though, it feels like you are breathing fog.

    We have a cooler week of so ahead, it should help make the walks more enjoyable. We see early Autumn in the air as the early turning leaves are coloring and some are already falling. Until I have something new, stay safe.

  • It’s Gone

    For the past several years, our youngest son and his family have kept their RV parked on our farm. It leaves occasionally for them to use as a mobile hotel and was often used for them to stay in when visiting us. The last couple of times they were here, they stayed in the house due to some repair issues on the RV. I would start up the generator every few weeks, keep mouse traps baited and cleared, but otherwise just mowed around it. They now have a mini homestead and have moved it home. It is odd driving down the driveway and not seeing it, or doing a double take out the front window when noticing it isn’t there. In addition to the RV leaving, a pile of roof and vent repair items that have been in our garage left with it.

    Weekend before last was the only fiber festival that the Jenkins, makers of my favorite spindles attend. A distant friend that attends each year has offered and proxy shopped for me several times as the festival is in Oregon and I am in Virginia, so attending in person hasn’t happened. This new plum spindle will soon join the spinning fun.

    The Jenkins spindle group to which I belong on social media holds a fun scavenger hunt each year during Tour de France, called Tour de Fleece. Many groups hold versions of Tour de Fleece, many with challenges on who or what team can spin the most, but our version is more laid back and more fun. Each day, we are given an object to find and photograph with our spindle in progress on a spin. Each day the spindle needs to have more spun or plyed fiber on it than the day before. I have several small Jenkins Turkish spindles that will be used during this period. There are prizes donated by members of the group if you find enough of the items and post your photo within the 24 hour window. This year, I am doing it just for the fun of it and have asked not to be included in the prize drawing if I find enough items and follow through with the daily posting.

    During DH’s broken clavicle healing, my trigger finger surgery healing, and our cruise, I didn’t post much in the group. It is fun to be back involved with them.

    Most of my evenings have been spent knitting on a shawl with a skein of handspun. Last night, I began the Old Shale Lace border using a different skein of handspun alternating with the other skein as there isn’t enough of it to finish without adding the skein of similar colors. One 4 row repeat of the border has been done and the next begun. We will have to see how many repeats I do before I either tire of it or it begins to distort the triangular shape of the shawl. It is difficult to tell with it scrunched up on the needle.

    After days and days of heavy rain that damaged our driveway, filled the ditch above our culvert (again), and damaged the state road that had recently been graded, it is dry. The garden will need to be watered if we don’t get a thunderstorm soon. Yesterday was a mild day in the upper 70’s, today it is nearly 90. That is usually a recipe for a thunderstorm, at least I’m hoping so.

    My current read is a new release called “Reckoning Hour” by Peter O’Mahoney and as I read it, I feel like I have read it before, though it was just released in April. A bit of research and I think it is very reminiscent (almost too much so) of a Grisham book.

  • The Seasons Change

    Each day the trees are greener, the grass taller. When I first moved here, the last expected average frost day was around Mother’s Day, in the 19 years, it has drifted earlier and earlier and is now around April 25. About 3 weeks ago, I started some Nasturtiums, Zinnias, and Marigolds in the house to put in the deck pots. Though it is only hovering around 40 right now, I transplanted them into the pots and sowed some “Bee Nectary” mix seed in a few other pots. We had a 28f night last week, but it didn’t frost and the fruit trees did ok. There are no very cold nights expected in the next 10 days which almost puts us to the “magic” date. The Columbine is beginning to flower and the strawberries are growing.

    Yesterday, 80 herb, flower, and vegetable seed were planted in the grow lite starter trays. They will go out into the garden by the end of the first week of May.

    The asparagus didn’t like the 28f night, but more new shoots are coming up and there will be some to pick in a couple days. The peas, onions, and garlic did fine.

    Two years ago at Christmas, a friend gave me a wax covered Amaryllis bulb already about to bloom. When the bloom stalk was done, I removed the wax and planted the bulb in a pot and put it out on the deck for the summer. That fall, it was brought in to overwinter and around last March, it again produced a flower stalk, then leaves and again it went out to the deck for the summer. Last fall I brought it in and the leaves didn’t die back until late February, but soon after, the new flower stalks emerged. They are amazing as they grow about an inch a day constantly seeking the bright light of the French doors, so it gets rotated a couple times a day. The stalk is taller than it has gotten before and the bud just started opening last night.

    Soon there will be 3 or 4 trumpet shaped red flowers, this year for Easter instead of Christmas.

    If we have a night that threatens the newly transplanted flower starts on the deck, I will line the pots up against the French doors and cover them with a sheet or shower curtain to protect them.

    Later this spring, the front of the house is going to get my attention. Since we lost all but two of our Nandinas two winters ago, there are no shrubs or flowers across the North facing front. That bed will be weeded, planted, and mulched and two large pots placed on the stoop with flowers that can tolerate mostly shade

  • All Good Things Must End

    Yesterday was the beginning of meteorological autumn, not the autumn marked on your wall calendar if you still have one. And right on cue, we started seeing the trees beginning to show their color, or at least we noticed it. The first to turn are the Tulip Poplars and the Locust trees. This Poplar acts like a Ginkgo and turns yellow all at once in a matter of a couple of days.

    And loses it’s leaves first.

    After being away for two weekends and hobbling around for 7 weeks, I finally got out into the garden this week. The heat and time of year ended the cucumbers and bush beans, but the tomatoes and peppers are producing wildly.

    Every day a basket like this is brought in and frozen. Once they are all ripe, I will make a pot of sauce. Two pounds of peppers were cut and put in the fermenting crock to make into hot sauce in about 5 or 6 weeks.

    Yesterday afternoon, the popcorn was harvested, shucked in place and brought in. It is now in two crisscrossed layers in two large baskets to finish drying for about 2 or 3 weeks, then we will have more than a year’s worth of popcorn. It is fun to put a cob in a brown paper lunch bag and pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Then you have a bag full of air popped corn.

    Fall is also the time to make soap. Soap for gift giving, soap for a friend who loves my soap, soap for us for a year. There will be 8 or 9 batches made over the next week and cut to cure in a guest room. The first two batches were made yesterday, cut today, and set to cure. I am awaiting an order of essential oils and shea butter to continue the process, but the first two batches are unscented.

    Today it much milder outdoors and as my foot still isn’t allowing exercise walks and since I did have my physical training session this morning, I tackled some garden chores. The cucumber and bean plants were pulled, given to the chickens, the bed that grew the peas in the spring and has been idle was weeded and the weeds put in a large tub to die off before being added back to that bed as compost. That bed also got a wheel barrow of chicken coop cleanings a month or so ago and it was spread out over the surface. There are now two and a half idle beds. One will likely have some fall veggies, the others covered in straw unless I can get a cover crop in quickly. The corn stalks won’t be cut until the Tithonia and sunflowers planted in a row up the middle of them finish blooming. There are so many hot peppers already canned that the rest will be allowed to turn red. The Ghost peppers will be infused in olive oil with sage and garlic, the jalapenos and cayennes will be crushed once dried for crushed red pepper. There are two tiny ornamental Thai pepper that are full of red peppers but they are very hard to harvest, though hot if you can get some.

    The chicken tunnel has been mostly a success. There are a few plants that grow into the tunnel they won’t eat, but do keep mostly scratched down, and the creeping charlie and smartweed that are reachable through the wire, they ignore so another day will have to be spent clearing the blueberry bed. The raspberry and blackberry half barrels were mostly a failure, though I see some volunteers outside the barrels. With all the wineberries and wild blackberries that are on the property, I should just not bother with the barrels. There are also several you pick berry farms around here.

    Not much spinning was done last month. Reading, a little travel to visit Son 1 and then to a retreat where I did spin both on my wheel and spindles, knit, and took both a wet felting class to make a small bowl and a project bag sewing class occupied my time with visiting friends I see only rarely. If I ever finish the knitting project, I will finish spinning the fiber I have worked on for two months slowly. I got a lovely braid to spin as a door prize at the retreat and a bag of felting wool from the gift exchange game.

    So you see from this, I am alive and well, not posting much here, on Facebook, or Instagram, but still here. Take care, enjoy the fall colors if you live where they occur, and get ready for another winter.

  • “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food”

    This phrase is used in our local Farmer’s Market advertising. It is amazing to me to go to our market and know that Thomas, Pete, Mike, Cedric, Kat, and others call me by name. They see hundreds of shoppers each week. They know what I am looking for and will “save” the item for my shopping. Each week, I spend $75-100 at the Farmer’s Market on locally grown vegetables, grass fed and finished meats, locally made sourdough breads, and locally made cheese from locally milked cows. This is added to the produce coming from our vegetable garden and orchard.

    I know that my food did not travel across the country or worse across country borders to feed us. The menu varies with the seasons to take advantage of what is being grown. The market allows us to enjoy items I don’t want to be bothered with growing as they produce too much too fast and don’t freeze well, or not having growing tunnels at home, grow foods earlier or later than I can get them from the garden.

    Currently, I am pickling cucumbers and jalapenos from our garden. Blanching and freezing green beans to add to the peas done earlier. Other peppers that will become dried peppers for winter cooking, or hot sauces are still growing in the garden. The tomatoes are still green, but mature ones can be purchased at the market. The market providing summer squash, broccoli and cauliflower, sweet corn (I only grow popcorn), scallions, lettuces to go with our harvests. Soon there will be peaches, then Asian pears, and finally apples from the orchard. The plums are nearly gone, the early blueberries mostly harvested.

    Later this summer, some fall vegetables will be planted, and there is a lull in salad mid winter, but the rotation variety makes salads less missed in the mid winter months.

  • Oh the wonders of youth

    This has been a week full of youth. Tuesday, Son2 and his family arrived with almost 2/3 of our grandkids. Lots of food, lots of noise, lots of hugs and snuggles. And they brought their beautiful young German Shepherd, so lots of puppy love. It is so cool to see the developmental changes in the younger kiddos. Going from throwing the blocks to the 4 year old intent on putting together the 4 sixteen piece puzzles and wanting to do it himself. Son 2 and I had to evict some mice from their RV stored here, so they slept in the house while we cleaned and trapped. The next day we worked to replace the water heater in the RV as the old one ruptured a while back in cold weather. This was a fun challenge as it wasn’t supposed to rain, but it started just as we opened the hole in the side of the RV. The big table umbrella came to our rescue , propped on the roof with me holding it in place with one hand while offering the other hand as an assistance.

    The next few days were used to wash sheets and remake the beds used by them and also the linens from the RV that had been “miced.” Their linens are now sealed in rigid totes until they need them again. Any dishes that were not put away in the RV were also sanitized in our dishwasher and put away. And daily trap checks are being done to make sure we got them all.

    There are often derogatory comments made about young adults. We loaned our scaffolding to a young couple that are friends of friends. As soon as they borrowed it, offers to do anything to help us were made. The wife has house and dog sat for us a couple of times, but still they asked for jobs to help. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I wanted to redo the chicken run but had to get the supplies. In the meantime, I decided to create a covered tunnel around most of the vegetable garden inside the fence so they could keep the weeds and bugs at bay. I had begun that task, but found pounding in T post to be challenging, so I quit with only about 12-15 feet done. There was a lot of old fence wire in the back of the barn. Early this week, plans were made for her and her husband to come assist me. There is now a tunnel around all of the garden except the gate area and enough room to the left of the gate to get to the wide path in the garden. And it is covered. Then the berry half barrels were moved, cardboard from daughter’s recent move laid every where there isn’t a tunnel or garden box, the half barrels put back in place on top where they had been, then most of a round bale of last year’s hay spread to cover all paths and all the cardboard as well as thick layer in the chicken run. We worked together for about 3.5-4 hours and did more work that I would have gotten done in weeks. All I have to do now is keep the beds weeded and that is very doable. They are going to come another weekend and help me dismantle the chicken tractor that blew over and broke a few years ago and get rid of the rotting wood, roll the hardware cloth to store. They were terrific and so gracious with their strength and energy.

    And the offer to come help anytime I need assistance on jobs that are more easily done with help is so welcome.

    The only error was not cutting an opening from the tunnel I had put in to the one we created today, but I think I have come up with a solution. Next up is creating a structure around the box where the galvanized tub is resting to become the compost piles.

    I am tired from the week, but rejuvenated by all of the youth in our lives this week. Tomorrow, daughter and I will join forces to make empanadas for dinner with her family and us. It is always fun to work in the kitchen with her.

  • The Hermit

    As an introvert, quiet appeals to me. Sitting silently in the mornings before the activity of the day is a good way to reset before the chaos and noise of the daily events begin. My hubby and children, I think, fear that if I am ever alone in life that I will become that hermit. As a result, they encourage me to participate in activities with folks that share my crafts. It is easy with the two ladies that live in the same village and we try to get together at one of our homes each week. Those sessions are relatively quiet, chatting, quietly spinning or knitting, but each of us comfortable enough with silence to not feel the need to fill it with talk.

    Noisy environments have always been uncomfortable to me and now that I wear two hearing aids, even more so. Maybe it was more comfortable not being able to hear it as well, though most conversation was missed. This is where forcing myself to become part of the event is more of a challenge. I will commit to attending the larger spinning weekly group, stating to hubby that I am going, then finding any excuse to not attend, though I made it today and there were only a few of us present. There are a couple of retreats that occur each year, and at one, I know most of the participants and feel more comfortable attending. The other, I have backed away from as many of the folks I knew for various reasons are no longer there. It is difficult for me to try to fit in then even though we are all doing the same sorts of fiber crafts.

    Son1 and daughter, helped me get set up to Zoom with an online group of crafts folk, but I find that type of interaction very stressful and our internet is not the best, so keeping a picture and sound varies, making it more stressful. I am thankful that by the time Covid sent the world in that direction that I was already retired.

    The hermit tendencies are ideal for garden work. Outdoors with only the sun, wind, and bird sounds as company. Sometimes, help would be nice, but given enough time, it gets done. It is almost time to put the tomatoes and peppers out instead of moving them out and back in the house daily. And the beans can be planted. That may happen today. Yesterday after spinning with the small group in town, the beds that had previously been prepared or planted were given a light scuffle with the hoe. The first radish and a handful of asparagus brought in.

    For those who read the previous post, the missing Marans never returned, so the raccoon episode resulted in the loss of two hens, one killed and one missing, probably caught by another predator while out hiding. That leaves a small flock of 7. Day before yesterday, they were too traumatized to lay, but yesterday provided 6. We may be okay with just the remaining flock, but there are no extras to share with friends anymore.

    The nice weather, though very windy this week has allowed a profusion of Iris blooms. My bouquet from the Farmer’s Market last week was looking sad, so the remaining blooms from it were added to a bouquet of Iris from the beds around the house. They are a favorite spring flower with their sunny colors and repeat blooms.

    So the hermit of the mountain lives on, not writing as much as some years, wondering if the garden will overwhelm this year with trying to keep it thriving, and with preserving it’s bounty for the cold months that follow. She will get out again with friends to spin, even attending an annual social/potluck on the porch of one of the members of the spinning group. As I age, the hermit tendencies grow and it requires more effort to be social, but I am working at it.

    Sometime this month, the new bees will arrive and again, an effort to keep a couple of hives alive for the year. The son that initiated this project is having better luck.

  • Just In Time

    This is a part of Virginia that gets at least a couple of several inch snows each winter, once in a while, a foot or foot and a half that prevents us from leaving for a few days as the State 700 roads are the last to be cleared, plus we live downhill about 2/10 of a mile on a dirt and gravel driveway. This winter has been an anomaly. There have been flurries and barely dusting bare surfaces, an inch or two that lasted a mere 6 hours before there wasn’t a trace left. If all the rain we have gotten since September was snow, we would never get out. Each time the forecast says snow possible, weather patterns shift just enough for it to be wintery mix or rain. There is another weather event predicted that could/might unload 2 up to 4 inches late Sunday, but chances are it will just be another cold rain.

    As I was walking back from releasing the hens into the yard, you can see a few inches of Daylily leaves emerging and the daffodils in the back garden have buds. The snow won’t bother the daffodils, the Daylilies won’t be too happy, but will be okay. The Snowdrops on one of our walks are blooming. They will be fine, they often bloom in the snow when it happens.

    In the fall, during hubby’s early months dealing with the health issues, an online friend offered to proxy shop for a spindle for me from the craftsman who makes the best Turkish style spindles available, Ed Jenkins, Jenkins Yarn Tools. They are in Oregon and only do events within a couple hours from home. Linda bought me a lovely Crabapple Finch, a smaller size that I love and wrapped it in some gorgeous black Merino/Alpaca/Silk blend roving, a very generous amount. About a month or so later, she was going to attend another event where Ed and Wanda were set up and offered again, this time getting me a Lilac Finch, and packed it in the same blend in a camel brown color. Those fibers were spun on the spindles they came with and a shawl/scarf was started for me. Last night, I cast off “Linda’s Hug,” soaked it, blocked it, and because it is so delicate, the yarn spun to 20 wraps per inch or lace weight yarn, it dried over night.

    The two yarns were used together and in spite of the light weight (50.94 g or 1.8 ounces) of the shawl, it is very warm with the Alpaca and Silk, just in time for a possible winter blast.

    I am ever grateful to the friends I have met through my Jenkins group and also my two local friends who I taught to spindle spin and hooked on the Jenkins spindles. They have been very generous in their time and support first through the Covid lockdowns and then through the early days of hubby’s issues. Each time I wear this shawl, I am reminded of love and concern.

  • Friends

    Most of my friends live far away, but a few have been made through my various fiber arts and two of them are very local to me and women that I have taught to spin, one on spindles and a wheel, the other newer and just on spindles.

    The main group of spinner/knitter/weavers that gather in the adjacent town are more casual friends and with Covid and then hubby’s health issues, have been seen only very sporadically. My plan had been to attend the annual holiday social with them last Thursday and the freezing rain/ice storm caused it to be postponed until this week. There is another storm brewing to potentially cancel or postpone it again and family obligations might prevent me from attending anyway. I had planned to take one of the local friends with me last week, the other was away midweek, but neither of them are available this week.

    We try to get together as often as possible to spin, knit, chat, and have a cup of tea. Sometimes it is the three of us, usually at our home, sometimes just two of us, but always a pleasure. Because of the week’s foiled plans, we decided to have our own little social yesterday. The house is decorated, I baked another small batch of Ginger Nut cookies and the house was fragrant with the smell of fresh baked ginger. The tea kettle hot when they arrived and we gathered to visit and craft together. Some small gifts exchanged, my first Christmas present, a wax coated Amaryllis bulb almost in bloom. It doesn’t require soil or water, just placed in bright light and allowed to bloom.

    Once it has bloomed out, I will remove the wax and treat the bulb in a more traditional manner and hope it will bloom again next year and the year following.

    The afternoon was a treat, the two ladies, true friends. The cookies enjoyed. We will gather again when we are all available, likely not until after Christmas, but the anticipation of further gatherings tides me over.

    Taking one day at a time.