Surprise, surprise, surprise! as Gomer Pyle says.

BreeBree and I are here again at Dewena's Window after a long time away. Both of us are older now, as is RH. But then, so are you.

A few other critters have joined us since I shared with you here the news of our dear James Mason's passing. A feral mama cat and her five kittens. This one RH named Pretty Boy but he might turn out to be Pretty Girl. He and his mama are the only ones that let RH barely pet them when he takes out their breakfast and dinner. 

BreeBree's pen, our garden, has become their playpen. Our vet works with a group who comes and traps them and spays/neuters them for $25 each so we're on their waiting list. 

But on to other happenings. Not only have the kittens grown but so have our granddaughters. Here their dad got a shot of them on their blow up mattress in my office on their last visit.

And I just realized that this is not my edited photo where I cropped out some of the messy background. But then I'm surprised I even remembered how to attempt blogging again and you wouldn't believe the trouble I had doing it. Snafu after snafu. 

I had other pictures, other stories but it's after 9 p.m. and this is, afterall, kind of a test to see if anything acturally happens when I click Publish. 

Here's where I try...

Here's to a smile for my 10 year blogging anniversary!

 Even though I've blogged for twelve years at Across the Way,  it was ten years ago, January 27, 2014, that I first published Dewena's Window. 

We had snow there at Valley View that day and RH caught Katie Belle crossing the barn bridge. 

Here at Home Hill this past week there weren't many paw prints in our beautiful snow. Our dachshunds said No thank you when asked if they wanted to go potty.

But I loved the beautiful and rare 8 1/2 inches of snow we got here. From the first day it started falling, I couldn't keep away from the windows...

until the pond froze solid...

and even when we had to keep faucets dripping and doors under sinks open.

Of course I'm not the one who had to go outside and feed the birds.

Or climb ladders to thaw ice dams or to shovel paths clear.

And you already know that I'm not the one who spent hours outside when the salt truck ran over our water line.

But I loved every minute of our snow and was sad to see the rain melt it yesterday. 

What I did do, always do when it snows, is cook. Not the grilled cheese, tomato soup and Rice Krispie Treats I always made when I had children at home for snow days but what we were craving; salmon mousse with dill sauce for me, pinto beans for RH, and strawberry shortcake for both of us.

The Salmon Mousse was from one of my favorite cookbooks, Helen Exxum's Cookbook, 1987. and it was from The Gordon Lee House in Chickamaugua, Georgia, served at charity fundraisers with celebrity guests attending. 

You might remember that I'm that rare person who loves anything with gellatin in it, aspics, mousses, jello molds, you name it, if it slides down the throat as smooth as gellato, serve me a bowl. 

Unusual for me, my Christmas decor is 90% packed away now but I've kept out a few things I can't part with yet. Which is better than February 2nd when I usually pack it all away. The china above is one of two patterns I love to use in January and February. 

And here's the pinto beans I fixed, Rancho Gordo's that are the creamiest pinto beans ever.

I soak them overnight in purfied water, in the fridge if I have room, and when I cook them until tender the next day I follow Rancho Gordo's advice and never add anything like vinegar to it, or salt as they toughen the beans. I know some cooks say that vinegar in it solves the problem some people have with gas but Rancho Gordo's advice to that problem is to just eat more beans. 

Normally, my pinto beans have a whole bunch of chopped cilantro added to it but we weren't running to the grocery store on our snow day. I do add a bottle of Guiness Stout to mine after the beans are tender and lime juice, chicken or beef broth, olive oil, bay leaf, cumin, thyme, salt and pepper. And sometimes a ham bone goes in the pot after the beans are tender when I have one in the freezer. 

No cornbread with our beans this night because I had my buttermilk biscuits as the shortcake for our Florida strawberries.

Thankfully I had some heavy cream in the fridge so we had whipped cream with our berries too. 

What's your favorite thing to cook when it snows? Do you ever crave something weird like I do? Has anyone ever eaten Salmon Mousse? I bet not, thus no recipe here. 

January is almost over. How has it been for you, on a scale from 1 to 10? Compared to some years, I'll give this one a 10. That's right, a 10. And this is from someone who always used to agree with author Abbie Graham:

I am not wholly committed to January. I do not entirely trust it as a month.

God bless you, dear family and friends. In January and always.  

"When it snows, ain't it thrilling?"

Feeling Overwhelmed

 

I am feeling overwhelmed. Today is officially Autumn and I wanted very much to post something, anything, for the first day of my favorite season of the year. 

I know I had files on my desktop ready for Autumn in late September but in a spirit of creativeness a week ago I practically covered up my desktop with possible future files to post and my screen is wall to wall files.

Do you ever do that? It drives my son Daniel crazy when he sees Mama do this! 

It's been a busy and yes, stressful week, but also one that makes me feel that one of the roads back to normality and enjoying this special time I look forward to all year is NOT dropping out of the blog world this time. 

And so my way back and out of feeling overwhelmed is to at least post a fall picture and this one from Autumn at Valley View where my kitchen looked serene and simple was the one.

Maybe another day soon I'll be able to untangle my desktop files and find something to blog about. Meanwhile I wish peace and serenity to everyone in this beautiful season called Autumn.

"No Time Like the Pleasant"

 Once again I've been inattentive to my dear old Window, something that always seems to happen in the summer. 

While I had stacks of posts meant for June, July, and August, it's always difficult to know what to post when I do return.

And so this time, at the end of the summer months, here's a Kitchen Window picture that exemplifies sunshine at this favorite place in my home.

 

My large kitchen window is the view I try to picture when the 2 a.m. gremlins do their best to keep me awake after a bathroom trip. 

I know this window will be there waiting to welcome me when I get up in the morning to let BreeBree and James Mason out to go potty, where I stand drinking a glass of water while they're outside in the garden.

It will mark another day made exceptional by the sheer grace of being alive.

Take that, you nasty 2 a.m. gremlins!

 

I'll leave you with wishes that your summer has been full of pleasant days and with this quotation I love that I found in one of my vintage magazines:

There is no time like the pleasant.

I found this delightful sentence by Oliver Herbert in Ladies' Home Journal of August 1952. 

Mr. Herbert, a true gentleman author of the early 1900's, a gift from England to America, was known for his pithy bons mots, and Amen to this one.

Being completely absent to that talent I very much admire those who possess the talents of brain and tongue issuing a bon mot. After learning about Mr. Herbert's books that he both wrote and illustrated, I would like to become more acquainted with him.

My very best to my family and friends who visit here, all of whom are the pleasantest!   

There truly is "no time like the pleasant," right? 

 

 

Concerning Blogging, and Quatre Epices

 Lately the world has been too much with me and in a desperate desire to find tranquility of mind and spirit, I'm pulling back my involvement in social media to a comfortable level. As a small part of this I'm suspending comments at both my blogs and, for an as yet undetermined time, will be posting only as a personal journal of my thoughts and interests.

[Tuppy thinks to herself] Seventy-seven. What had happened to the years? Old age seemed to have taken her unaware and totally unprepared. Tuppy Armstrong was not old. Other people were old, like one's own grandmother, or characters in books. She thought of Lucilla Eliot, in The Herb of Grace. The epitome, one would have thought, of a perfect matriarch.

                            from Under Gemini by Rosamunde Pilcher

I am now the same age as Tuppy and am examining how I want to spend the energy and hours I may have left. We live in unsettled times, to put it mildly, and owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to weigh how we want to spend precious time that will not always be there. 

One thing I don't want to spend my hours on anymore is elevated stress following the political story of the day on Facebook, or, God forbid, ever again participating in what Mrs. Minerva called, "tedious and unprofitable discussion...clear from the outset that neither side was going to budge an inch." 

Good grief, how such discussions drain one! 

Tuppy refers to Lucilla Eliot as truly old and maybe I am too because I agree with Lucilla in one of my favorite books, The Herb of Grace (American title: Pilgrim's Inn):

Lucilla knew always...that it was homemaking that mattered. Every home was a brick in the great wall of decent living that men erected over and over again as a bulwark against the perpetual flooding in of evil. But women made the bricks, and the durableness of each civilization depended upon their quality, and it was no good weakening oneself for the brick-making by thinking too much about the flood.

                      Elizabeth Goudge's The Herb of Grace/Pilgrim's Inn

I've come to realize that in this stage of my life I need to be careful to redeem the time (Ephesians 5:16). I will still try to see what's happening in my dear blog friends' lives during R & R time, how could I not? But I thought it only fair to warn you that I'm closing comments at both blogs in case you don't want to bother reading.

In order to have a few pictures here I'm including a recipe for one of my favorite seasonings, Quatre épices from James Beard's Love and Kisses and a Halo of Truffles. Note my own new truffle pig in the pictures!

   

Mix together 1 1/8 cups ground white pepper, 3 1/2 tablespoons ground nutmeg, 3 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger, and 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cloves. 

 Keep tightly sealed.

 Use with roasted and braised meats, stews, soups, sweet potatoes, gingersnaps or whatever your heart desires, because James would.

 

 

Sending love and kisses to you! God bless and keep you!

Dewena

Do not be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today...The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.

                       Exodus 14:13-14

 

 

 

 

Our Autumn Front Porch and 7 Year Blog Anniversary

Many thanks to everyone for your sweet wedding anniversary wishes on my previous post! 

On our anniversary I burst out laughing when I read my devotional for the day. David Zahl wrote about unconditional love:

Imagine if I locked my dog and my wife in the trunk of my car. After an hour, only one of them is going to be glad to see me.

That tickled my funny bone and it kind of reminds me of something I question anytime I publish a new post here at the Window after doing one of my disappearing acts for a few weeks, or in some cases months.

Will they still be glad to see me?
 

  

 Tomorrow will be seven years since I published my first blog post at Across the Way, here: https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2012/11/our-fledgling-flight.html

There have been times when I've stopped blogging for a while but I always came back. I even started this blog at the Window and thought I'd given up Across the Way only to end up keeping both going.

Going yes, sometimes sporadically, true.

I remember when I announced that I was leaving blogging at Across the Way and one friend asked if I could just check in occasionally, even quarterly. 

Sometimes I seem to be doing just that. Like all the things on our front porch, I'm not getting any younger. In fact we might even qualify as antiques.

We may soon even be obsolete.

There are occasions when we decide to pretty ourselves up a little.

 Pretend like we're still Spring Chickens.

Times when I ask RH to buy me a beautiful corsage.

He bought me two beautiful corsages for the porch for our anniversary and a trunk full of pumpkins for both porches, the back garden and the house. 

All without rushing me in my choices, following me around with a big cart as I wandered around the Nashville Farmer's Market, a special place to me as I'd gone there since a child with my little sisters and our father who bought produce for the middle Tennessee Kroger stores.

The best anniversary present ever!

RH also planted a new tree, (see picture above) his 4th Japanese maple since we moved here almost three years ago, his 12th new tree planted in the front yard alone--how's that for a man past the three-quarters of a century mark?

You can also see the new project he started behind the new Japanese maple. Not sure what it's going to be when he finishes it but a trailer full of beautiful rock sat on the grass in front of the park bench for two months while he pondered the design. 

I'd asked for a pretty sidewalk/path but I have a feeling this is going to be more than that. And it may be spring before it's finished as my guy started another project in our back yard that's now taking up his time.

Meanwhile, I decided the old girl--I'm talking about our front porch--deserved at least one new accessory, a pretty rug.

I spent hours online searching for one with just the right colors. I hope you like it because I am so in love with it!

Thank you so much for visiting here! Even when I sometimes play hide-and-go-seek with you. 

Old and cracked as I sometimes feel I still want to make like The Terminator and say...

I'll be back! 

 

A Tudor Vegetable Garden and A Pause

I have been captivated by this illustration of a Tudor vegetable garden ever since I saw it in my 1935 Woman's Home Companion. 

I'm familiar with Tudor Knot Gardens but I've never seen a picture of vegetables planted in this style except for those dreamy but luxurious vegetable gardens in Monty Hall's French Gardens. 

One thing I love about my vintage women's magazines is that they are full of the most beautiful paintings done by the great illustrators of those days, many who went on to have their work in museums and art galleries. 

This illustration is by Harrie Wood and the article it illustrated was written by Marni Davis Wood. Related? I couldn't find out but the illustration is of her actual Tudor vegetable garden. 

She describes each and every planting in it but admitted that the one drawback was how to keep the garden symmetrical when they pulled a head of lettuce. Key to the garden was "intensive cultivation and succession planting of crops."

I love it for its artistic beauty but I also love it because it is so beautifully tidy. Which is strange because I prefer gardens that are English cottage garden blowsy.

But don't you think that if Marie Kondo had a vegetable garden it would look much like this?

I guess I love tidy gardens and blowsy gardens. I even love wild gardens. In this 2 1/2 acres surrounding our house, there is a big patch I asked RH not to mow and so many unusual wild things (weeds?) have grown there. But I would not want our whole yard and garden to be wild. 

 A certain amount of weeding must be done, both in our gardens and in our lives so that the terribly paralyzing feeling of being overwhelmed is addressed.

And so, I'm giving myself permission to pause posting here at Dewena's Window for a while to pull some weeds in my life and tidy up a bit.

This is only a pause, God willing. And I'll still be visiting a couple of blog friends each day.

A woman must find time for a little inspiration. A whole day cannot be devoted to weeding, can it?

Of course not! 

[RH would never forgive me if I didn't make it clear that I'm speaking of weeding figuratively as he is the one who does the actual weeding in the yard!] 



 

On Becoming Serene, and Blogging

Ever wish you had taken computer courses before becoming a blogger? Perhaps you did just that.

But I, I whose ignorance assured her that she who had to be dragged into the computer age from her trusty typewriter could throw herself headlong into the hypnotizing world of blogging, went ahead, understanding absolutely nothing about computers.

I believe in doing things too soon. In striking before the iron is hot, in leaping before one has looked, in loving before one has been introduced.

      Beverley Nichols in Down the Garden Path

Are you like that about a passion? And do you have your blogging degree in passion only or in a tech education?

And if you answer "in passion" do you ever suffer a crise de nerfs when technology comes crashing down around you as it did on me recently?

What do you do about it, pray tell?

Here's how I handled my own crise de nerfs , my faithful, patient friends. That is, after I had taken hours and hours of help out of my son's life, by phone and by text, to fix the major problems.

Every day after trying to fix the rest of my computer problems I would run out of the office that I grandly call My Writing Room and grab one of these books to take to my bedroom reading chair.

I believe that these books I ordered one at a time during January and thus far in February have been sent to me by the Wise Physician who knew so well what I would need during the attack on my nerves by the evil god of technology (and yes, I could name him here but won't), along with his minions Pop-Up-Ads and My-Computer-Keys-Are-Stuck-in-Molasses.

"How slow can I go?

Very Very S.....L....O....W."

  

And there was their pal HaHaHa who signed me out of everything I had signed into for years and then threw away forgotten passwords set eons ago.

And lest I forget another wannabe kingpin, Mr. Scrolling? That function became a test, no, a con-test to see how much time could pass before either the icon stopped spinning or my head did.

"I can't do this, it's driving me crazy," I screeched to BreeBree and James Mason as I stormed away from my desk and out of the room of torture that it sits in. 

And then I sought an antidote. Either I could climb the walls or eat Rocky Road ice cream or grab one of these old four books, House & Garden's Guide to Interior Decoration.

Page by page I disappeared into the world of homes of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Each time I was transported so fully to homes of those years that no LSD trip of the 1960s, if I had ever been someone who did such a thing, could possibly have offered as much mind-blowing happy feelings, such heart's and mind's ease as these four books offered.

 

I studied pages on furniture styles and table setting and terraces and it became as real to me as if I were personally expecting the garden club women to luncheon before showing them around my own Eden. 

And at last I would emerge from that world into my own, a far gentler woman.

And instead of being the woman whose chin is dragging the ground like this poor soul who can so easily become my alter ego...

 [story herehttps://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2013/02/february-faces-white-swan.html]

Instead of her, I would become more like my other more desired alter ego....

 [story here https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2019/02/i-

dreamed-i-wore-pink-raincoat.html]

Thankfully, all at last seems well here in my blogging world, after the mysterious, complicated technical procedure called "Restart Computer" took place.

Who knew?

Now, dear reader, what turns you from a sad frantic maniac into a serene goddess of the hearth? Would you share a secret cure with us?

And what is it that brings on your own crise de nerfs? 

[No, I don't speak French. I'm betting that phrase has stayed in my mind from an old Edith Wharton novel.]