My Childhood Home

 

No, that's not it! 

When RH drove me on a tour of my homes from the past a few weeks ago, I was so excited when we got to this house because I spent so much time at our next door neighbor's home. The Grays didn't have any children and Mrs. Gray let me watch her when she was cooking supper or making preserves. 

And next came my first glimpse of a house I hadn't seen in probably 15 years, my home from when I was 4 to 13 years old. [I should have cropped out some of the tree tops!]

 

 And it is now green!

I remember the day we moved in. Mama, who was very pregnant with my sister Deb, spread out a blanket on the gleaming wood floor of the new two bedroom, one bath house. As we waited for Daddy to arrive with the truck holding our furniture, I looked around from the blanket where we were eating a lunch she had packed and the house seemed so large. 

 

And now it looks so small!

The casement windows have been replaced and has new siding.

You can tell I'm past all vanity to show myself at such an awkward age, probably 5th grade here. [My awkward age lasted a long time.] But do you notice how I'm clutching my hands at my waist? Just like the Queen does! At least she does in the episodes of The Crown that I'm watching for the second time on Netflix. 

And what happened to Daddy's landscaping? The yard was practically nude. Not at all like when I lived there with my parents and the first two of my younger sisters.

 

 Of course Mama made our three matching Easter dresses! Every single year, staying up late to hem them, although I don't remember matching ones as we grew older.

She was up late every Easter Eve and Daddy was up early Easter morning going to sunrise service at a cemetery.

That's Daddy, below, standing behind his father, my grandmother on the other end, my father's sister between them, and his brother behind them.

 I wonder what that vine was growing over the side porch? Daddy was still buying produce for the Middle Tennessee Kroger stores at the time and hadn't yet opened up the Kroger garden centers but he was always a gardener, always a farmer's son. 

And see our neighbor's house to the right in the photograph? They had two teenage daughters who used to babysit us. I snapped a picture of it, too. It's quite different now!

 

We've come this far so why don't I take you to see the duplex that RH and I lived in after we were married, after we moved out of an attic apartment. 

Our road turns into a beautiful road that runs along the Cumberland River. It's the road I always went on when going to elementary school. There were so many big old homes of stone and logs on that road, houses that sat on the bluff overlooking the river. I think the houses on that road birthed my love of old houses. 

I took pictures along it but will save them for the next post, but the road RH and I lived on in our early twenties turns off that road. Here's our little rented duplex.

 

This house is where I started trying to learn how to cook, cutting recipes from Redbook magazine and trying out recipes from a small paperback I still have, 1001 Ways to Please a Husband: The Bride's Cookbook. Here's a photo of me in the front yard at that time, with our darling Duke and my red MG.

 

We lived very near the river here and when we wanted to go to a neighboring town we drove down this road.

The sign still reads: Road Ends 1000 Ft., but now it says No River Access. But not back then, back then we took a ferry across the river to what is now the large Opryland Hotel area. It was a slow journey because it was a small ferry and if more than a few cars were in front of us we knew we were in for a long wait. That seems impossible to imagine now in this age where bridges replaced all ferries near us.

I have to include two pictures of one of my favorite houses that was near our little duplex. It was, and still is, totally out of character of all the big stone and log traditional houses. 

 

 

I thought it was cool then and am so glad it has been kept up nicely. I wish I could have snapped a third picture of it as we drove by; the house has been added to behind, in two long additions down the hill. It has been done beautifully. 

RH and I also drove by the house that my father and mother built when I was 13 and I lived in until I was married. And we bought that house from them when we had two small children of our own. Maybe I'll post pictures of that house another time.

Have any of you who blog noticed the announcement that Feedburner will soon stop sending emails to anyone who has subscribed to our posts by email? I spent two hours trying to figure out how to switch to another service for this and gave up on it. Please let me know if you've switched yet and whether you can put the instructions in words a child can understand. Thank you! 

I hope you're enjoying the cool temperatures like we're having in Dogwood Winter here right now. I'm loving it because I know how quickly we'll be jumping right up into the 90s. "O year, grow slowly. Exquisite, holy."

 

 

Upfront warning, a boring post.

 

There's probably nothing more boring than a late seasonal post, except for posting the same picture, with slightly different perspectives, over and over.

 

However,  forsythia in full bloom is anything but boring and I've wanted to take pictures each spring of this magnificent hedge of forsythia in our neighborhood that stretches across the back of a huge lot.

And so I did one day before Easter, asking RH to drive slowly past it as I snapped a shot a second.

Thankfully, the owners of this magnificent hedge of forsythia have never pruned it into any other shape than its own natural, gracefully arching lines.

 I'm playing catch up here, having fallen so far behind but not wanting to waste these pictures. Easter passed without me marking it on either of my blogs, an Easter that was very low key except for the powerful day that Easter always is, recorded with pictures or not, pandemic or not.

Our granddaughters did not miss out on the joys of a childhood Easter, though. This is one of many pictures I loved of their Easter of 2021, standing in front of their fireplace where their mother had decorated the mantel with vintage Easter things from her own childhood. And it makes me very happy that she included a Beatrix Potter picture that I embroidered when my own children were little.

 Here at Home Hill, my simple Easter decor was a jug of daffodils from the front yard, a few Beatrix Potter books, and one of Miss Potter's characters, sweet Little Black Bunny that I rescued from our daughter's yard sale after she was married. I also rescued Jemima Puddle Duck and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, whose nose was my focal point when I was in labor with my last two babies. 

 

Our daughter sent us this sweet Easter card that had to be added to our Easter table so you can tell that she's now much more sentimental than when she was selling off her childhood Beatrix Potter collection. She even has a new granddaughter herself now, with two more expected this year and may very well be wishing that she'd held onto the Potter characters. 

 

She'll have to wait to reclaim Little Black Bunny, though. He stands guard by my writing desk where his mischievous brown eyes challenge me to have fun every day, even though we're both becoming more vintage every day.

 

Future Garden Prom Dresses

 

From my journal of April 10, 2004:

Yesterday was lovely, even today--overcast and chilly--is beautiful because of all the spring colors outside, daffodils, redbud, flowering plum. The most beautiful of all is the crabapple outside my writing room window. Planted just across the creek by the finch feeding station, it is as filly as a 1950s prom dress. I could sit quietly for hours and look at it. There is another one further off, and towards the barn are two red crabapples.

Here is the tree at Valley View that I wrote of:

 It did remind me of the prom dress my mother made me for my senior prom. 

 

Three years ago RH planted three crabapple trees here at Home Hill. 

Some day they will become frilly garden prom dresses and will shade the afternoon sun that pours into the big living room window.
 

When RH clipped the lilac for me before our two nights of freeze, he cut a few small branches of crabapple, too.

 

 I would rather have these garden offerings than buckets full of expensive florist roses...

But...those pink sweetheart roses that RH bought for my wrist and hair were pretty darn nice too!

A happy and blessed Easter to all! 

 

This is my Father's world,

the birds their carols raise,

the morning light, the lily white,

declare their Maker's praise.

 

Lilacs

 

"Beauty is lilacs in a crystal vase."

Jane Merchant in "Tangibles"

 

No crystal vase but a Goodwill glass will do. Before the past two nights of freezing temperatures, RH went out and clipped a handful of lilac twigs in bud for me. Two days later they opened fully and the room is fragrant with their sweetness. 

The 1830s English Staffordshire Blue Willow platter was the first important antique that we bought as young marrieds and foretold a love of blue that has never left me. 

I think that most shades of greens are my favorite color, especially the chartreuse greens of Spring, blue comes next, but purple in the garden moves me as no other color does. 

 

 

So Me...1953 Zenith Radio

 

This is so me!

A 1953 Zenith clock radio. 

I don't even care that it can start my coffee and let me know when my time under the sunlamp is up. I don't sit under a sunlamp or drink coffee.

I wouldn't even set the alarm, or not often for I am that fortunate person, retired.

No, I would just admire its elegant little self on my bed table. 

My firstborn son collects and restores old radios, among other things. Perhaps I'll send him a link to this post.

I'm a senior citizen, my wants are few. This little Zenith radio, though, just might go on my birthday list.

It is so me!

 

Penelope's Kitchen in The Shell Seekers

 

Oh, the joy of reading The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher for the first time back in the late 1980s! Not only was it a page-turner, it was beautifully written and I've enjoyed rereading it every few years since then.

When I think of Penelope Keeling, I think of her either in her garden or her kitchen. And as that heel of a future husband of hers--Ambrose--thought when taken to the family's London home...

"But this kitchen."

He put down his grip and gazed about him. Saw the long, scrubbed table, the motley variety of chairs, the pine dresser laden with painted pottery plates and jugs and bowls. Copper saucepans, beautifully arranged by size, hung from a beam over the stove, along with bunches of herbs and dried garden flowers. There were a basket chair, a shinning white refrigerator, and a deep white china sink beneath the window, so that any person impelled to do the washing-up could amuse himself at the same time by watching people's feet go by on the pavement. The floor was flagged and scattered with rush-mats, and the smell was of garlic and herbs, like a French country épicerie.

While this kitchen was the creation of Penelope's French mother, I doubt that Penelope changed much of its character when she and Ambrose married and raised their children there. 

I would be happy to sit down to a meal cooked by either woman, although I would have gotten a little burnt out by the cauliflower-cheese that was served too often during wartime rationing. 

And Ambrose, you were so right--but this kitchen! 

 

Our Valentine's Day Breakfast (a little late)

 

I'm a week behind but here is RH cooking bacon for our Valentine's Day breakfast. 

He's wearing a special hat for the Daytona 500 race planned for later in the day.

James Mason is keeping him company in the kitchen.

He knows the kitchen is a good place to be.

BreeBree darts in and out of the room, skittish around kitchen noises, loud noises of any kind.

I mix up the buttermilk pancakes and cook the first one for our bird friends outside while RH fries an egg for himself and one for BB and JM.

Next come three pancakes for ourselves.

With lots of batter left to freeze for another Sunday.

RH gave me a large vase of purple tulip bulbs from Costco that have been beautiful growing this past week.

And I baked him cookies. 

These might not be "pretty" cookies but they were a big hit at Christmas with all three of our sons and I had extra of the special ingredients--Andes Peppermint Crunch Pieces and Andes Creme de Menthe Baking Chips. I had to order them from Amazon as we couldn't find them in local stores and they come two to a pack. Those combined with chocolate chips make this a delicious cookie. 

Here's a link to the recipe. I'm pretty sure another blogger recommended these but I can't remember who. My cookies are darker than shown in the link, maybe because I always use dark brown sugar. I also used grapeseed oil for the vegetable oil called for in the recipe.

Our snow is starting to melt here. It's been beautiful and I've enjoyed it so much, but I've watched the news from Texas and other parts of the country where the snow, ice, and freezing temperatures have brought heartache and so much trouble. I hope those affected by it get help promptly.