Life

I’m interrupting my personal quilt show to make a brief post about the weather in Texas last week. If you haven’t seen on the news, it was brutal. Record cold, power outages, massive plumbing and water failures, truly epic. This week we are back in the 70’s, a good 10 degrees above the average for this time of year.

I did well at Myrtlewood Farm, better than a lot of people and for that I am profoundly grateful. My plumbing is new, because it’s a new house, so the two taps that did freeze up, eventually thawed out. My water meter froze at the start of all this, but that was dealt with quickly and insulated with a big piece of acrylic fleece. Thank heavens for having a fabric stash with some odd stuff in it.

The time I was without power was weathered with a huge pile of quilts. The cat was instrumental in staying warm, it’s like having a fur covered hot water bottle. She has really been enjoying the bed piled high with 4 quilts, I think she’s going to be very disappointed when I put them all away again. It is times like this I am very glad that I am a quilter, and was able to pile on the blankets.

Next week I will get back to regular posting, but I did want to pause this week, mark the major event of last week, and to be grateful for coming out as well as I did.

I’ve been out at the farm 15 months now, going on 16 months. Over a year. It’s really difficult to wrap my head around that. I’m coming up to my second Christmas at the farm. At least this year I managed to get Christmas cards out. That was nice.

This entire time the Garage has just been a dumping ground. I was so tired from unpacking the house that I didn’t even touch the boxes in the garage. In August when we cleaned out the house in Albuquerque, I came home with a lot of stuff that again just got dumped in the garage. There was just room for my car to squeeze into the garage.

This past weekend that changed. Everything came out of the garage. Four new shelving units went in and all the boxes from the move got unpacked. That really should have taken up more room in the blog than two lines because it took almost 7 hours to do. I couldn’t move on Sunday I was so tired. I will let the photo be the other 1000 words of this post, I can’t even come close to describing it.

I’m glad I got it done. I can get to my tools again, which means I can finally start work on putting the train up in my office. I’ve wanted to do this for about 13 years, it was going to go in the front room in the other house. I’ll enjoy it more in the office here.

I have never been a neat person, and that has bothered me a lot. More than I like to admit. I have come to realize that it is impossible to be neat when you have too much stuff. Everything needs a place, and where there’s not enough space, you end up being messy no matter what. It soothes my soul to look at the garage now, there’s even a few open shelves so I have some space to put some other things from the house out there. Stuff that wouldn’t fit in the garage before. That’s a first.

So thank you for allowing me to share this topic this week, it’s not sewing but it’s a huge win for me and this year I need all the positive I can get!

I’ve really thought about what to post this week since it’s Thanksgiving. This is not the first holiday I’ve spent alone, though knowing that a good part of the world alone makes it stand out a bit more. I have some phone calls planned, some zoom time planned and LOTS of sewing planned. I will have more food than I need, honestly but there are a couple of recipes I only make this time of year and I will hold onto those traditions.

I’m working on getting my Christmas decorations out. This year I’m sorting through stuff and trying to be more mindful of what I keep and what I display. I tend to get very excited by shiny things so at Christmas I end up coming home with more than I need. I have to remind myself of that in stores. Maybe just get one or two meaningful pieces this year, but I’m still not sure.

I hope all of you out there are safe, have food and can find a little something for which to be thankful at this holiday, even if it is not how you normally celebrate. I’m reminding myself that even with everything going on, I am still thankful for what I have.

I am a cool weather gal. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I am prone to heat stroke. Other than that, most of the things I enjoy in life are compatible with cool or cold weather. I’m thinking a fire in the fireplace, a cozy sweater, a cup of anything hot (cocoa, coffee, you name it), hand knit socks, all of these are things that are not compatible with temps over 95 degrees. I suffer my way through the summer, spending very little time outside, counting the days until fall arrives.

Last week, we had a summer cold front in Texas, which means the temps were in the upper 80s/lower 90s most of the week. Going outside with Pops in the morning, the breeze was cool rather than being a blast of hot air and it was a hit of fall. I know Texas Summers go through at least the end of September, but it was just a brief reminder of cooler weather and a promise of what is right around the corner.

This will be my second fall at the farm and I’m very excited. There will be a back patio this year with a fire pit for sitting outside and roasting marshmallows in the cool evenings. I will be able to step out the back door without stepping into a giant mud pit when it rains. All very exciting things.

At the same time, I’m eyeballing more of my knitting projects. Knitting tends to get put down in my house during the summer for other activities. I just can’t bring myself to knit much when it’s 110 degrees outside. Just doesn’t fit. So I need to figure out where I left off and get things lined up for when cooler weather arrives.

I can just feel the cool breeze on my face and not dread being outside to do yard work.

It is coming up on the one year anniversary of moving out to the farm. A whole year. Milestones like this make me look at the passing of time and what all has happened. This time last year I was still frantically packing my house and I had started to move the kitchen myself. This time two years ago I wasn’t sure I was ready to build yet. This time 9 years ago, I wanted to buy property in the country but hadn’t found anything yet.

I have to remind myself often, that the dreams I have don’t come to fruition over night. They have to be tended and worked, sometimes for years, before the big payoff. This has always been difficult for me. I need to see results right away or I get discouraged easily. It is a mark to how big a dream this was, that I stuck with anything for 9 years to the point where things actually happened.

This house and tiny farm is so much more than just a house. This is visible proof to me that I can accomplish things. That even when it seems like nothing is happening, the dream is still viable. That I need to have patience as I go about things in my life.

Last year when I moved in, the back yard was just a vast mud pit. It is not much better this year because I had to regrade the east side of the house so they took a lot of dirt from the back yard, so mud pit yet again. I have had a plan for a back patio since I moved in and I’m finally starting on it. This house is going to be a work in progress for a while I think, I can’t do everything all at once. That’s another good lesson in life, sometimes we can’t do it all at once; have to plan it out and tackle one piece at a time.

August 16, will be a year to the day since I moved. I have a front flower garden, and the yard in the front is mostly green stuff. Not all grass but that’s fine, if it’s green, I mow it anyway. Next year the back yard will be more sorted out and I’ll be on to the next project. Have some ideas for some stuff in the house too. You know, because I don’t have enough to do.

Just keep reminding myself that Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are my dreams.

This week is week 10 of the stay at home directives. I don’t like to use quarantine because it’s not, and words matter. When this all started, none of us really knew how long we would be doing this. I am lucky in that I have worked from home a lot before so I have a good setup here and at work it has been easy to make the transition. The rest of things, not so much.

This blog is a good example. I used to plan out the topics I would discuss and have things rolling forward, always about a month out. Now I’m writing Monday morning at 6:30. It’s getting a more accurate view of where things are at that moment in time, but it’s leaving me feeling rushed. My creativity is strained, but I guess that makes sense, stress doesn’t necessarily support the creative mind, and there’s plenty of stress right now.

I was thinking about things last night, and I realized that most of the habits I have are built around a life on the go. Now that my life is centered at home, I’ve let all of those other habits slip away, and I’m drifting. So I need to rectify that.

That means this week, I’m going to sit down, dust off my planner (I mean seriously when was the last time I looked at my planner) and make a plan for several things. Make new habits for the things that I want to get done. I know it’s not just going to come flowing out of me, but I know if I put pen to paper, I can get a better view of things. Pen to paper allows my brain to function differently than working on a computer does and I think that is going to help.

So please excuse another Monday 6:30 am post, next week will be better.

This weekend is the first weekend of May, but in North Texas, we got into the upper 80’s to low 90’s both days for temp and Spring is in the rear view mirror with Summer looming around the corner.

I have officially hit the time of year where I have to mow every weekend, and all the associated yard work that goes along with stuff being in full swing. That includes my butterfly garden in front of the house. As gardens go, out in the country, it is a very modest garden, but for me it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever tried to keep going.

The original plants came in a curated box from Texas A&M University, all of which are perennials, that don’t mind the heat of a Texas summer, and have blooms that are attractive to the Monarch butterfly. I put the box in last September and I’m happy to say over 60% of the plants survived the winter, and my weeding attempts when stuff was still so small it was hard to tell what was weed and what was plant. There are still somethings out there that I haven’t pulled up because I can’t decide if they should be there or not.

This weekend I went to the effort to add 5 more plants to fill in the spots where stuff from last year didn’t make it. A lot of time was also spent pulling up the Bermuda grass that seems determined to invade the bed. I want it to grow in the yard but it wants to grow right up by the house first instead. I don’t get that. Maybe I should *want* it to grow in the bed so that i won’t do that. Kinda reverse garden psychology.

I noticed today as I was working that the yard is a wonderful palette of summer colors. The blooms in the garden are red, white, blue and yellow, with wonderful green foliage. So full of summer life. The quilt I’m currently working on is mostly red, white and blue too, so it echoes those colors nicely. Some of the plants are tall enough now that I can see them through the window when I’m sitting in the living room. While I was working I even saw a couple of butterflies so I guess the garden is appealing enough for them.

I have been using the time during this stay at home stuff to make sure the yard keeps looking nice, and I will have to figure out how to keep it going once a little bit more of the usual pace comes back, but I have noticed that I find riding the lawn mower is its own kind of relaxation with the freshly mowed lawn a very tangible reward, and the colors in the garden are just as rewarding as the colors in a quilt I have pieced. I keep saying I need to figure out how to keep this pace of life when everything returns to ‘normal’ and. I know that to keep the garden up I will have to do that. I’ll figure it out but in the mean time, I am sipping a glass of iced tea as I survey my progress from inside and I like what I see. All of it.