Saturday, November 26, 2011

A New Season of Bullfrogs and Butterflys~













The year has passed by extremely slow and has been tesiously emotional.


At the end of our visit in Tennessee, our lives were quickly changed into the life of adults having to take care of their elderly parent and seeing to the welfare and needs of our father.

This past six months has been dedicated to his move and relocation to our town and the tedious
job of liquidating of the home and items that made memories in my husband's life.

It has been an extremely emotional time as we face a new season in our lives, only reminding us that our lives too, are rapidly changing.
I chose not to post thru this time as what could be said that could express the emotions felt and decisions that needed to be made ~

Life does go on through difficulties, and we all must at some time face the realization that we will be responsible for the loved ones who once so lovingly took careful care of us.

This only brings to mind that we are to indeed getting older ourselves and have become mature adults~


It now is near the end of the year, situations are still presenting themselves day by day, yet we are setteling in and becoming more familiar with senior living and the daily routine for our father. It is not often an easy road ~


The grand children have been our breath of fresh air, and keep our life busy with the wonder in discovering of life. When they come for their weekly visit there is always something new experienced or discovered ~


This week we were out watching Steve working on his latest project, building a side fence.

My Grand daughter noticed a Monarch Butterfly resting on the picket fence.


"Grammie, look at this butterfly"! The butterfly flitted around Her head and seemed to stay nearby. We followed it around, it did not go far and we put our hands up hopeing that it would land on our hands.

The butterfly did not land on our hand but lit on the geranium bush, where we gently urged it on her finger!


The butterfly continued to allow us to hold it and investigate it's beauty for about twenty minutes, where after we set it on the plant again and left it.

How precious that the Lord allowed us the opportunity to meet this beautiful creature!

The kids named the butterfly Theresa. ~


Yesterday we were walking around the yard and we saw a butterfly perched in the old oak tree in the back. ~

"Theresa"! My grand daughter yelled out! We said our hellos and walked on.


Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Two of My Favorites For Summer~































Summer is quickly passing and the garden is full of bountiful veggies and fruits. The cherry tomatoes are sweet as candy. Mr McGregor is busy out in the garden harvesting. I am being kept busy trying to come up with new recipes! HAPPY SUMMER DAYS!!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Summer of 2011~



Summer Once Again~ Stories of Summer

How is it that the time fleets past so swiftly~
It was just spring as we planned and traveled to Tennessee to enjoy it's beauty and visit my son and his wife as he graduated from L.M.U. with his Master's Degree.
While there I connected with newly made friends from past visits and enjoyed their company.
I was able to visit with a new friend who coached me in using the 'manual' button instead of my auto on my camera and was greatly inspired by her talent.
My other new friend and I have being "Navy brats" in common, and both lived in Hawaii, as well as share the love of quilting. It is always so much fun to get together with these inspiring women and rub elbows.

I have recently started reading a Ray Bradbury book, Dandelion Wine, for a summer Book Club. The book is set in 1928 and in a mid-west town during summer.~

I have been remembering summer's past in my life, spent around the United States...
First, early years in California, running barefoot through the day on the sidewalks, walking to the five-and-dime for trinkets. Sitting on the curb, waiting for the tinkle of the ice cream trucks song, calling for us to come running for something cold and its tasty sweetness.

Then mid years in Connecticut, Playing kick-the-can through dusk, in the cul-de-sac, walking down the back dirt path to Mohegan Park to watch the fishermen tossing their lines into the pond. The first taste of pistachio ice cream and rainbow sherbet on ice cream runs with my mom. Art classes at N.F.A., the smell of the old wood floored buildings and their creaking as young students walked the halls. Playing out in the woods beyond the yard, looking for Indian artifacts, taking picnic lunches on long day hikes going out alone, looking for crystal outcroppings, but never finding any. Making fantasy towns in the back lot, using imaginations, and cannot forget playing with Barbie and the endless hours of setting up house and dressing her. The simpleness of youth and a life full of adventure and outlook far beyond the horizon.
Older summer's in Virginia as a teen, walking to the drug store for a cherry-coke at the soda fountain, Smelling for the first time Yardley's English Lavender and and English Leather, spending the day cutting paper dolls and drawing and making my own. Writing stories, visiting friends in Rhode Island, learning to make potato salad for the 4th of July....
How many memories of our past do we keep locked inside and forgotten about. The way the air smelled of new mown lawn, a street being resealed with asphalt, or the smell of tar on a roof? Have we shared any of these memories with our children who are quickly growing towards mid-age?

Yesterday, I tried to relay a story to my 4 1/2 year old granddaughter," When Grammie was a little girl , just like you, her daddy and mommy took her and her sisters,to the drive-in -movie. That is a movie that you go to and sit in your car outside and watch the movie on a big screen.
That movie was 'The Wizard of Oz'. When we got tired, we would crawl up in the back window to go to sleep. The others would sleep across the back seat and on the floor with the hump in the middle, then daddy would pick us up and carry us into bed. Ahhh... those were the days!

Can any of the kids fathom that we were once 'little'. I try to share pictures of when their mommy was little and their age, and pictures of me... but I'm not too sure that they can get the concept.~

In another chapter of my summer book, an elderly lady, Mrs. Bently deals with issues of relating to the youngsters in her neighborhood, as they run through the weeks of summer, as if each hour has a year to spend, and also dealing with her 'collections' of memories in her life. The gathering of memorabilia has kept her days ordered throughout her life, and now all she has is piles of junk stacked throughout her home.~
I am feeling that my life is parallelling this as I have a looming abyss that drowns me each time I enter. One day I straighten and then the next it is back in a mess once again.

My father's home has become a collection of memories~ So many interesting collections, yet there are no stories to tell about them, or where these collections came from and who they belonged to...

I long to hear the stories, and now that the storytellers no longer remember.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

~The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring, Tra~la~













We Are Amongst the Spring Blossom At Beverly Cottage~































~Welcome to the garden at Beverly Cottage~
We are in full bloom here and the birdsong fills the air at dawn awaking us to the beauty of nature, surrounding us~
This morning I poured my cup of coffee and stepped outside to sit in the amphitheatre of the garden to enjoy the symphony of music sung by my feathered sweets. It was amazingly awesome as they twittered,tweeted,trilled and did their best to attract and announce that they were there and owned the property they were perching near.
~What a wonderful way to start the day~ Splendour~
The morning mist kissed the petals of the blossoms blooming in the garden, and as I stepped through to the flower beds~
I met each flower with great expectation as to the loveliness it was going to provide.
I delighted in the vibrant color and am learning to love flowers that I never had time for.
The musty fragrance of the geranium which has always been a turn off to me, now causes me to turn my head in amazement at the beautiful shades and hues they provide.
These flowers as easily plucked and stuck into the dirt and they grow abundantly!
The Nasturtium, that has been a favorite and vintage flower in the garden, provides darling fairy umbrella leaves that capture the dew drops. The orange and yellow trailing flowers grace the garden wall and frame the beauty of the front yard, welcoming visitors.
The ever faithful lavender provides a lovely backdrop to the back garden along the picket fence. The Fourth of July rose that climbs the arbor and welcomes you into the back garden is filled with buds and blooms, and showers the garden with fallen petals. This is where you can find my darling granddaughter as she collects the fresh fallen petals for her special facials.
This is our nature haven, where I am so pleased to hear the birdsong and discover in delight a new bird and look forward to the return of the Monarch butterfly.
The eggs are being nested and the soft squeak of the hatch lings calling out to their mommies and daddies to place food into their beaks fills the air and I know without a doubt~ that it is spring at Beverly Cottage!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

~ Bird Song of Spring in the Air ~

As of late~ we have had more of our share of rain in Southern California. I have worried about my sweet daffodils being battered around by the harsh wind and torrential, constant downfall of rain as storm after storm hits our coast and garden. Rain and Mother nature do have their benefits though~ as the water gives birth to the flower and ground cover with beautiful budding blooms and new ladybugs hatching.~ As Spring approaches, another creation of God's is the beautiful mating song of the bird in the garden at Beverly Cottage. As I listen to my garden song every morning, I can recognise the different songs and identify some as I have come to know them, and to whom they belong. Every year there seems to be a new visitor in the garden here at Beverly Cottage. I look to catch a quick glimpse of my elusive Oriole, trying to coax him to stop and visit my hummingbird feeders, but only see him fly by infrequently. We noticed the Bluebird family choose our neighborhood as eating grounds and nesting spot 10 years ago, and love to see them join the other native birds in the birdbath splashing~ A flock of Cedar waxwings like to frequent the empty branches across the street from the Cottage and they have a lovely smooth appearance. Last year the early chortling of as new visitor had us in a quandary trying to spot him and identify what type he was. It was a Cassin's Kingbird. This week, after a strong rain, I heard the singing of a new friend and looked out into our screened patio to find a bird had found its way in. I hastened to open the door to help it exit and share it's adventure of being "locked up" in a humans outside room and freed by the larger than life, up close person and lived to tell about it. When I turned around to see where it had flitted to, it had disappeared upon it's own. hummm.... I am a collector of abandoned bird nests~ As I looked around, I noticed that things seemed askew and that the wind from the storm couldn't have possibly blown a bird nest carefully placed in a container on to the ground. I went about tidying up and thought no more of it until the next day when my little friend was singing his beautiful song, broadcasting that there was free nesting material on my screened patio! After discussing the "new song" of the unidentifiable bird, we set out to find and identify him. Each time we heard the song we searched and looked. We also looked in the bird book and thought that it might be a wren.~ Well yesterday while my husband was gardening, he spotted the bird singing on our Plumeria bush near the trash bin area on the side of the house. Watching, he saw that he and the missus were setting up home in the terracotta sun face placed on the side of the house! There in the open mouth of the sun was evidence of a nest being built. I set the camera up on the tripod and waited in the arbor to see them working diligently before it was time to lay their eggs.~ They are House wrens.~ Enjoy the pictures~ ~May I suggest you sit outside or take a walk and listen to the bird song. ~It is lovely~

Friday, March 11, 2011

Japan's 8.9 Earthquake and Tsunami A Wake Up Call to be Prepared!

Last night as I was turning the television off to retire for the night, I was startled as I switched to the local news to see a Tsunami sweeping over the Japan landscape carrying with it everything in it's path. I was instantly awake and glued to the set as I tried to find out the earthquake's epicenter as years ago I was a teacher/coordinator for Japanese students and have several I still am close to.
It was unbelievable to watch entire villages swept inland. Where did all the heavy aircraft disappear to at the airport?
My heart goes out to this nation as they recover from this extreme shock. it has only just begun.
Thank God that my girls and their families all live in the southern part of the Islands, and no one I know of as of yet, has been effected.

This brought to mind that we live near an active fault line, the San Andreas fault, and there is the impending "BIG ONE" hanging over our heads here in the San Diego/Los Angeles area that not only could level our buildings and even cause tsunami waves to hit our shores and to break off the state of California at the Arizona state line, just snap it right off! (Hence the statement California will fall into the sea!)

This past weekend we experienced massive high wind gusts throughout the night beginning at 12:00am and continuing through the early morning, in the Anza Borrego desert, 72 mile an hour gusts, experienced while we were trying to sleep in a fifth wheel, hoping that out stabilizers would hold us, and praying that we wouldn't tip over or blow off our blocks!!
I had in the back of my mind...what if.. an earthquake were to happen while we were out here?

A friend who camps with us was returning this week to give a disaster preparedness class, and as we talked we were suggesting items that you could not do without and might need to add to such a kit to keep for emergency.

This really hits home and sounds the alarm for us to be prepared.
As we watch the movement of the earth throughout the world, earthquakes are hitting and devastating our global communities. Our hearts go out to our global neighbours as we know that it would impact us the same.
Say a prayer for our friends in this time of great loss, not only here, but New Zealand and China, and by all means, it is a warning call for us to be prepared!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

~A Valentine ~ For You!

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~Will You Be My Valentine?~

February is the month of love~
When one thinks of the month of February, red, pink and heart shapes come to mind.
I remember the art project of making Valentine's "mail boxes" for the handfuls of little envelopes with sweet messages from classmates and friends.~

As the years have sifted by, I still like to remember my dear friends with a little valentine of sorts to let them know how special they are in my heart. ~ I hold each friendship dear, as growing up in a Military family, we moved frequently, and close friends were few.~

This week I hosted a luncheon for friends who are in a doll club with me. I decided since we were to have lunch, that I would treat them to a special Valentine celebration. Our theme after all ,was Valentine's Day, why not do it up properly.~

This year we made a special Valentine for one of the club members, and then drew names.
I think that we enjoyed ourselves brilliantly and the weather was appropriate for a fete' on the screened porch. It was a lovely day.~

I hope that you will make your Valentine's Day a special one with friends that you hold dear to your heart.
~After all, that is what it is all about~

Sunday, February 06, 2011

Please Join Me For A Cup Of Tea And A Chat~



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~Beautiful Spring Days Visit Us Here At Beverly Cottage~

It's a lovely day here at Beverly Cottage~

I would like to invite you in for a tour of the Cottage and for a cup of tea.
The screened deck awaits us and I invite you to sit awhile and chat and relax as I set the kettle on the stove.
Valentine's day is coming and this is my gift to you~

I thank you for your visits, frequent or few, and love to hear your comments, in fact I thrill when I see you have been here.

If you are in the area, you are always certainly welcome, and the door to Beverly Cottage will always be opened for you and a pot of steeped tea poured into one of my sweet china cups~

I will serve fresh lemon curd, picked from one of the trees in the garden, on toast or scone and we can have a chat about what is new in your life, or what your plans are for the week~
Just give me a call to set up a little visit, or leave me a comment so that I know that you have stopped by for a while~

Monday, January 31, 2011

I've Chosen Emerald Green Carpets For My New Room

Welcome~
The weather here has been magnificent the past few days, warm and balmy. We have to be reminded to put a coat on if we will be out past sunset, as the evenings cool down quite a bit.
I have been enjoying my outdoor room by reading in the sunshine and discovering the wonders of nature's beauty~
It invited me into my newly emerald carpeted room Saturday. I stepped barefooted onto the soft spring shoots of ground cover, recently produced by showers of rain that have been coming our way, more often than of past years, and into the room nature has given us, with my camera ready to record the greatness that has been going on through this winter.
The flowers are trying their best to use the nourishment of this rain to bring Spring our way soon.
The arbor even has presented a rose or two, promising that it will burst forth with glory soon with more sunny weather.
The citrus trees are laden with abundant fruit. The lemon has already given of her fruit for me to make batches of fresh Lemon Curd for future tea parties at Beverly Cottage this Spring.
The lime ,tangerine and orange as well~
The orange tree bid me under it's umbrella of branches and verdant leaves to view it's orange orbs hanging from limb, waiting for a few more weeks sweetness. I felt as a child and wanted to lay under it's shade and gaze up waiting for a bird to land and sing it's sweet song ,and smell the sweetness of the orange blossoms promising next year's crop.
The bees are busy doing their work as well~ pollinating and gathering from the pink and purple lavender along the picket fence.
The vegetable garden has been turned and awaits it's time to burst forth with seeds of delicious bounty~ But that is for yet another post~
Yes, I am enjoying my new emerald green carpets here at Beverly Cottage~

Monday, January 17, 2011

California Dreamin' on Such a Winter's Day







Yesterday was a magnificent day.The weather was a dreamy warm one, which we haven't had in quite a while. The warm weather invited and drew us out to enjoy its splendour.
We decided to take the local Sprinter to the ocean which is an easy 15 minute drive, but made an afternoon of it by using public transportation.
Having lived here in Southern California for 37 years, we become complacent in having the beach at our bare toes and tend to stay in our comfortable back yard and home and pass the day away. Not today!
We left, camera in hand and pedometer set, to take a lovely walk along the strand and out on the Oceanside Pier.
The smell of hot dogs cooking on the open grill was delicious and reminded me of days gone by as a child, when these were one of my favorites. There is nothing more tasty than a hot dog cooked on an open fire outside.
The waves were calm and rather small, but the moisture in the air caused the sky to be a dreamy pale blue and the clouds appeared to be almost a creamy pink.
I watched as the seagulls dodged and swept past.
We walked and watched as the waves lapped the shore and the sun splayed it's golden light upon the sand as a golden mantel.
How beautiful a day and how blessed to be able to enjoy it outside after the rain and dreary cold snap we have experienced these past few weeks.
Out on the pier we were able to watch the surfers from a birds eye view. It is amazing that outside the surf there is a peaceful quietness as the swells gently bob the riders over them.
As we ended our day we were treated to the most beautiful sunset.
You never know what the sunset display will be, and sadly we were on the Sprinter as it set, I wish that I had stayed to capture it properly at the shoreline.
There will indeed be another time for this.~m