When Spring comes, I’m so busy getting gardens ready for the blooming season that I frequently don’t have the chance to get all the heavy cleaning done. So, rather than fight it, I do my Spring cleaning in November. In the 16 years we have been in this house, we’ve hosted my family’s Thanksgiving dinner 12 or 13 times. Before they come, the entire house is cleaned. We wash windows and carpets, curtains, and the linens for the tables. We wash all the china and crystal, and clean all the decorations in the house. Everything is dusted, and the lampshades are vacuumed. We wash the quilts (or at least those which aren’t antiques.) Furniture is moved, and closets and drawers are cleaned and reorganized. We even change the wreaths, so that the appropriate season is represented.

Continue reading →

This morning, one of my nieces is coming to help me with my Spring cleaning. Maybe I should be honest about that. SHE is going to organize MY life. I’m going to push papers around and she will take them out of my hands and throw them away.
We’ll bring up the storage bins with winter clothes, and half of the clothes will go to Good Will or the Salvation Army or the wastebasket.
She will force me to deal with 15 years of magazines that no one is reading, and two months of catalogs that need to be thrown away.
My kitchen will be so clean that no one will ever be allowed to cook again!
Everyone should have a lovely person like this in their family, especially if you tend to be a “collector.”
I realized that things were so bad that I needed more than one day’s help. She’ll be here Thursday, too! I think my house is going to look like a showcase!
Yes!!!

I’m more than a bit concerned. The weather forecast for our area is scattered severe thunderstorms from six this evening to midnight or later.
I wonder if the roofer will put more men on the roof today, or work later to get the roof done. Yesterday they tore off shingles and tar papered at least two thirds of the roof. We figure they will tear off the rest as they begin laying the shingles this morning.
I hope we beat the storms.

Decompressing….is that the term people use when you need to relax from a difficult day??
My day wasn’t hard, but the NOISE….my god…the noise…..
I found it exceedingly difficult to concentrate. I was becoming short-tempered and churlish by the time the roofers were ready to go home. I’ve had about 30 minutes to recover, and I left the T.V. and radio off, and quietly blogged at my desk.
I think we’ll be having wine with dinner tonight.
There’s nothing I can do to avoid the situation. We need to get the roof done. I’ll just arm myself with a list of things to do that don’t require concentration and go at them full speed ahead. I think it’s going to take them about two and a half days to finish.
The good thing is….they quit at 3:30!

I’ve talked about the length of days recently, and the time of day the sun comes and goes, but I haven’t said a lot about the quality of light.
We have a stand of trees that form a crescent around our house from the south west to the northwest. At one time, the land belonged to a landscaper, so there’s considerable variety in that grove. The layer of trees that are closest to the house hold their leaves late into fall, and at this time of year, they turn a beautiful gold. It’s an old gold, overlaid with the lightest hint of blush.
During the day when the sun shines on those leaves, they reflect the most beautiful color into my living room. The west wall of the living room has twelve large panes of glass, six high, six low, that let the world in. The view is gorgeous when trees are just beginning to leaf out, or in the middle of summer with the great variety of greens, or in the fall when the leaves are burnished. It’s even stunning when the trees are bare and you see just the black trunks and branches against the sky.
The past few days the sun has shared that golden color as though it’s a parting gift before winter is on us. Mother Nature helped out on the ground. I was working in the herb garden on Saturday, pleased as punch to be able to get things almost cleaned up. Then, Saturday night it rained, hard! Sunday morning, you could hardly see the garden for all the leaves that had fallen.
Dear Husband refuses to rake until all the leaves are down. I’d rather do it in small bunches (easier on the arms, ya know?) and he’d rather do it all at once on a really cold day.
We’re supposed to have more mild weather this week, so I’m sure that we’ll be working on the grounds. I hope we’ll have a few more days to see the rooms overlaid with golden light.

TODAY’S THE DAY! WE’RE GETTING A NEW ROOF!
Pardon me, I didn’t mean to shout, but I can’t hear. There are at least a dozen, perhaps a lot more, men working on my roof. The boss said there would be about 20 men, if they could find their way to our house. They began showing up at 8:00 this morning and have been working at a furious pace. I took a picture at 9:30 when we left to run errands. They were working on the tear off of the east face of the house.
We returned from errands to find the shingles were being unloaded from a long truck that carries it’s own conveyor. The packets of shingles are all sitting on the roof ridges. Parts of the roof have black tar paper down, but you can still see huge expanses of bare wood. I took more pictures when the guys had their lunch break. And, I suckered the cat into the house. The noise has kept him away. I suspect he will choose to spend the afternoon in the basement.
SO…in a few minutes, lunch will be over and the banging will resume. There’s been a virtual orchestra of sounds going on: the scrape of a spading fork across the wood, the screech of the nails being pulled out, the hammering, and the sound of shingles sliding down the face of the roof. I think we’ll be treated to some new sounds shortly, as the guys resume their work.
I’m sure glad this will only take two days! Pictures later.