A post in January, by the skin of my teeth.

 

Faith Baldwin, pictured in the header of Dewena's Window all these years, writes of wanting to express her thoughts but not always being able to:

...to pin the butterfly wing of the valid emotion to paper with the key of a typewriter is usually to destroy it.

If talented Faith Baldwin felt this way can you imagine how often I doubt my ability to put into words my thoughts here? Today as I try to get in one January post after one of my frequent absences from my blog, it seems even more difficult for me. 

And so, I'm starting back with another picture of the current year's beautiful Karen Adams calendar that my sweet daughter has given me each Christmas for a decade. 

 It is always a pleasure to open my new calendar because I know that Christy is opening hers too. You can bet we're thinking of each other every first day of the new month. Both Christy and I love pretty packaging too and Karen Adams' packaging is always a delight. Here's a link to this year's just in case anyone is interested.

Here I'm packing last year's calendar away where it went in the cabinet of my bed table along with those from years past.

I wonder how long it would be before they would fall on the same day and I could reuse them? Probably not in my lifetime?

And to add another picture to this post, here are RH and I at the family Christmas party at a son and daughter-in-law's house.

I hope that all of you had a beautiful Christmas and a happy and blessed New Year's Day. So many friends of mine have gone through another bout with Covid or have had their first bout of it recently. Take care!

I won't go so far as to wish you all the bliss of winter days because I don't think there are many who love January and February as much as I do, but spring really will be here before we know it. So I'll just end with wishing you daily comforts and joy until she arrives.

Here's a picture of our darling daughter taken one Christmas morning that seems like only yesterday:

See you soon! (That's one of my resolutions for 2023!)

 

A Faith Baldwin poem for her birthday

 Although Faith Baldwin, born October 1, 1893, was a prolific writer, I have never owned any of her novels. I guess they were considered chic lit of the 1930s. 

But I do read her four autobiographies year round and she inspires me--otherwise I wouldn't have kept the picture of her at her desk that serves as my blog header above all these years.

This past year I've been picking up her novels as I found them in thrift or antique stores, and on particularly stressful days I often choose one for relaxing bedtime reading, remembering each time that she was bosom friends with dear Gladys Taber.

 

 The red covers are pretty and give me a chance to show you a treasure RH found at Goodwill this summer, a 1950s type of sunburst clock, only with petals on the rays, that shines on our old dark v-groove plank walls.

 

To honor Faith Baldwin on her 128th birthday, if my math is right, here is a blessing/poem she wrote that I have always loved, never more so than now.

I have come back to quiet ways; to

     Things of silent wonder, instinct

          with delight;

To dusk, that closes in like darling wings--

     To primrose dawns and lamplit,

          hearth-warm night;

To mending bag, to laughter, and old books,

     To loud-voiced clock and table laid for tea

And that brown urchin of a dog who looks

     From sandwich plate to mistress,

          wistfully--

Thus, Lord, my spirit keep--in humbleness,

     In still simplicity of gentle days,

This house, the love within, lean to bless

And hold our feet upon the homely ways. 

 

 

A House with Twelve Rooms

It's not just a coincidence that I'm turning today to words of Faith Baldwin as I think about 2020 ending.

She's pictured in the illustration above that I begin every blog post with here at the Window. I begin every new year reading one of her books about her thoughts, this year with her Testament of Trust. 

  

This dear friend of Gladys Taber writes of the New Year as a house, "swept and garnished, the floors and furniture polished, all the clutter tossed out, and everywhere, for welcome, flowers."

 

How I always loved to think of the New Year as that! 

Can I do that this year? Can I toss out the worries and fears and frustrations of 2020 and go into 2021 with my mind swept clear? 

I've decided that would take Herculean effort that I just do not have so I am going to take the New Year as it comes, just as I did its older sister.

 

 

  I expect there will be some dust and clutter along the way but I also will be watching for little miracles every day.

 

 I pray that each one of you visiting this post will have a safe and healthy New Year, and that each month will bring you a myriad of lovely "astonishments".

Pretend that someone with a much better voice than mine is singing Auld Lang Syne right now as I leave you with the wise words of Faith Baldwin:

A year is like a new house; each of us has lived in such a house before; at least the shape looks the same and we know before we enter that there will be twelve rooms. It's funny how we can settle in, while knowing that someday we must move.

Each year's house seems familiar from the time we set foot in it; the furnishings are, to begin with, the same. But they may change, little or much, during our tenancy. And always astonishments await us. There'll be views and vistas we didn't see from last year's house; and almost certainly a step we'd forgotten, down which we'll stumble, or a light switch which will fail, at least temporarily.

There are certain rooms which we'll redecorate, according to our own customs, and there are rooms which will assume new contours--those of pain or mourning; and other rooms will be warm with joy.

Walk with me through the house of one year, all twelve rooms.

Faith Baldwin in 1958's Testament of Trust

 

Real Winter Comfort

Anything can contribute to a spring-in-winter mood--an understanding friend, great words in an enduring book, the sound of music or laughter, the inner silence when the emotionally cold world holds its breath, a job that must be done, or helping someone in greater difficulty than yourself.

Faith Baldwin in Harvest of Hope

Blog friend Nan of Letters from a Hill Farm motivated me to get out my 1920s women's magazines when she wrote about the real Roaring 20s.

I've kind of ignored my 1920s magazines, focusing more lately on the 1930s when our house was built and what the people who built it might have been experiencing. And I always naturally am led to the 1940s and 1950s, what I consider a more romantic time period. 

But the 1920s were fascinating too, that jazzy age before the October 24, 1929 Wall Street crash. I find that I'm curious about the homemakers of that decade, wondering about the similarities and the differences between them and myself.

But that's for another discussion. Today I'm interested in Real Winter Comfort and what we can do to bring it on!

 

This full color ad for insulation is from my January 1929 issue of The American Home. Isn't it gorgeous?

I could list all the things that speak of comfort to me in this picture, including the purple dress she's wearing (extra points with me for that and its cuddly feather trim), but why don't you tell me what's comfy and cozy in this picture?

And tell me what you are doing to bring yourself Winter Comfort!

While you're considering that, here's what Ella, Dimity, and Winnie think about January comfort in Miss Read's Battles At Thrush Green. 

'And now we've January to look forward to,' sighed Ella. 'Talk about the January blues! What with the bills, and the general damp and gloom, and so long to wait for spring--it does get one down!'

'I cheer myself up,' said Dimity, 'by tidying a cupboard. It makes me feel so virtuous and efficient.'

 'I buy a new pair of shoes,' said Winnie.

'A packet of bourbon biscuits pep me up,' said Ella. 'Or putting out a new tablet of soap. Very therapeutic, putting out a new tablet of soap, I find.'

The floor is all yours, friends and family--and I'd faint if any family did comment! Some of them do read it though so I always write as if they are.
 

   

Pure Bliss

I can't remember  when I finally grew into that snowsuit,

but I do remember that snow was always pure bliss.

You might have noticed that it is always snowing

in the banner picture at Dewena's Window.

And it will remain snowing,

even in the dog days of summer.

The frontispiece in Faith Baldwin's book 

is more than a picture to me,

it is a recognition of having reached a stage in life

where this is pure bliss--

to stay home and view life through my own window.

I have grown to enjoy a bad day, even with thick snow and zero temperatures,

if I am indoors.

It is satisfying to sit by a window, nursing a cup of tea,

hearing the fire snap on the hearth,

and watching the wild-white world outside,

kept at bay by good walls and insulation...

The winter weather is conducive to hard work;

I don't want to go anywhere,

and seldom can.

The cupboard is stocked, and the freezer.

So I stay home and work.

Faith Baldwin

I hope February days have held pure bliss for you. If you're hankering for Spring, I promise you that it will come. Next July when it's 100 degrees in the shade, you can always come look through Dewena's Window and see a blanket of snow.

A Christmas Nightmare

[British Homes & Gardens December 2014]

No, not the Christmas tree above.

I actually loved this "tree" when I saw it last year in the

December issue of British Homes & Gardens.

My Christmas nightmare is dreaming that it is

Christmas morning and NOTHING has been done.

Do you ever feel like that?

We haven't even had Thanksgiving Day yet,

those of us in the USA,

and I'm feeling panicked that I can't possibly be ready

for Christmas.

Am I the only one who is having a Christmas nightmare--

already?

 

An Unfamiliar Room

"Entering the new year

is like going into a big and almost

unfamiliar room."

Faith Baldwin

Evening Star

"Having tried to travel light,

I hope I haven't brought the brittle,

broken disappointments with me--

they can cut like glass--

or the faded shopworn things

that should have been thrown out long since."

Faith Baldwin

"But some old things, the good ones,

without which the new-year room

would be very empty,

are the qualities,

emotions,

and attachments we have cherished;

these fit into the room

like a hand in a glove."

Faith Baldwin

"Love and loyalty--

a quality rarer than one thinks--

gratitude,

remembered without embarrassment,

and joy recalled,

without mourning."

Faith Baldwin

"No new room becomes one into which we

can fit with ease

and live with security

if it lacks these."

Faith Baldwin

"It is easier said than done,

this moving only the good memories

into the new room,

compelling oneself to discard the unhappy ones.

But I find as the years go past

and I move from one year's room into another,

that I manage to take less with me

of the things I do not need

and should never have kept."

Faith Baldwin

Shall we travel light

into the unfamiliar room of

2015?

No Need To Hurry

"Writing in the midst of a busy season--and what season isn't busy?--I think about the increasing tensions and pressures in our world, and in our bodies, minds, and spirits. It seems to me that never has our haste, hurry, and impatience been as marked as it is now. I sometimes feel that we are like sheep rushing headlong off the edge of a cliff into some bottomless abyss."

Faith Baldwin in 1956's Face Toward the Spring

"Nature is never in a hurry. She stages storms, floods, hurricanes--and sometimes we feel she is acting according to a sudden whim…But in reality, beyond the small deviations, the cycle is much the same: a slow, steady growth, a slipping from season into season in an orderly way."

"I know that I must slow down, for reasons having nothing whatever to do with physical health. Of course such a slowdown is an aid to an overworked heart or a soaring blood pressure. It is also a help against rapid aging. But I think of it as a spiritual remedy."

"I believe that everyone must learn to discipline his own drive. It is like having a team of horses--either you drive them--or they drive you. If you give them their heads, you find yourself with runaways on your hands--and runaways can carry you to disaster."

"There is no need to hurry. We have Eternity."

[All quotes above by Faith Baldwin in her 1956 Face Toward the Spring.

All photos by Dewena who is trying to learn from Faith Baldwin.]

Lollipops from Heaven

I called to R.H. to get the camera.

Lollipops were falling from heaven.

They were everywhere.

Yellow and red.

Lollipops were falling from heaven.

We looked up to see a few more.

"Call my baby lollipop, tell you why
His kiss is sweeter than an apple pie…"

September is here and lollipops are too!

"Spring is spendthrift,

summer is lavish,

but September has unexpected gifts

to offer her special legacy of jewels in berries,

orange and garnet,

ruby and indigo,

or black as jet,

scarlet as sunset."

Faith Baldwin

The World In Which You Live

"See it now;

the world in which you live,

the world around you.

You don't have to travel to do it…

beauty is where you find it."

Faith Baldwin

A July Day

"Well, you expect July to be July."

--Faith Baldwin

July is my second least favorite month, August being my least favorite.

Why? 

Because as our daughter-in-law illustrates in the photo above, it's hot.

I'm trying this summer to learn to love July because each month should be a gift.

Shouldn't it?

And a July morning is pretty near perfect here at Valley View.

There's a little breeze to stir the flag.

And if a July morning gets hotter with every hour,

what should I expect?

Samantha finds a shady spot.

Otis goes straight to the fan in the picnic shelter.

The July day passes and R.H. fires up the grill.

It's been a perfect day for him to wear his old watermelon shirt,

although he's been known to wear it at Christmas too.

A perfect day for R.H. to cook our dinner outside.

The day cools off as the sun goes down.

It's been a perfect July day.

I've Had It With Ham

I've had it with ham. 

Three posts in a row on ham? And a fourth one planned? What was I thinking?

As Faith Baldwin said: "I don't know anyone who irritates me more than myself."

Ever feel that way?

In desperation, here are some pictures I took this morning looking out Dewena's Window, captivated by the fluffy pink North Carolina shrubs in bloom.

To the left and to the right of the kitchen, they were glorious, much more beautiful than my beginning camera skills could capture. (R.H. handed the camera over to me after I made a completely innocent remark about him not getting the picture I wanted, but he is the one who planted these beautiful shrubs.)

"Now if you are going to make a window,

it is obvious that you must first acquaint yourself

with the view which the window will give you."

Beverley Nichols in A Thatched Roof

I think part of my frustration with the thought of publishing one more ham post came from browsing through blogs last night. Blogs that set the bar pretty high. Blogs that made mine seem so inadequate. Bloggers that made me seem like a rank amateur. 

They reminded me of someone Laurie Colwin wrote about in her wonderful Home Cooking:

"Years later, I entertained a newly married friend. This friend had married a goddess and lived in the country. I of course was a slob and lived in the city. The goddess had built their post-and-beam house with her own two hands, raised chickens, milked cows and was a veterinarian as well. On the side she was a glassblower. She had built her own studio. All the glassware, jugs, pitchers and vases in their house were made by her. Of course she baked her own bread, raised her own vegetables and made her own clothes, although she didn't yet know how to spin. At that news I heaved a sigh of relief."

Colwin wrote that in 1988. Can you imagine this woman as a blogger today? I can and she would not be alone. There is so much talent in blogland, women and men who do everything, although it doesn't seem to discourage me so much when I see talented men bloggers. I admit it, I stand in awe (read jealous).

So no ham post today, maybe never.

Instead here is another picture looking out Dewena's Window but one that shows the lampshade I finally found for my Italian fish lamp. In my previous blog, Across the Way, I once showed the lamp and asked advice about whether to buy a black shade or a white shade. Most readers recommended a white shade but one friend stood up for black. The one I chose off eBay is black with white polkadots! 

I'm pleased with it--that is until I start wondering what a style blogger would have to say about it. No, I'd better not go there. I can only stand so much mental anguish.

Here's another picture of favorite black and white kitchen adornment. Milo and Katie Belle were posing so prettily this morning that I had to include them in this post of adieu to ham.

And they don't give a hoot if I'm a glassblower or not.

They already think I'm a goddess.