"Welcome, Kind Fall"

Four months from today will we all be saying, "Hurry up, Spring! Hurry up, Summer!"? I hope I won't be. I'm truly trying to embrace all the seasons in their turn now even though August makes me forget to appreciate summer. 

That's all behind us now and Autumn, glorious Autumn is here at last! My bed gets dressed with   linens of a darker hue.

The old cranberry spread comes out and the faded ancient pillow with pink deer.

Otis registers his disgust with the whole Fall Housecleaning of his bedroom by crawling under the bed, bushy tail and hindquarters stuck out.

I go around the room dusting every single book and vacuum Zack's Teddy, being careful not to catch his tattered cravat in the vacuum. He always guards the books that sit bedside, current nighttime reading close at hand. 

Below the old green chair that was one of the two we found in the smokehouse when we moved here is a very special trashcan. And believe it or not, I'm going to show you a closeup of my trashcan. Oh, the depths that bloggers sink to.

Why am I showing you my trashcan? Because, as Dolly Parton's character said in Steel Magnolias, there's a story there.

First of all, it's a pretty trashcan. Second, it is almost 53 years old. And the third reason I'm showing it to you? It caused the first married argument between R.H. and me. In 1961 I paid $14 for it, almost half of my weekly salary--in our first week of marriage. What can I say? I lost my heart to that trashcan. And that $14 trashcan has lasted longer than any trashcan R.H. has ever bought.

On to clean the family photos on this table made out of the base of a Singer sewing machine my father gave me and to the books I simply must have close to me as I sit in my Quiet Time chair.

More books hidden behind the door, all cleaned for Autumn. Books that are special to me, all of Alexandra Stoddard's books, all of Jan Karon's, and now Louise Penny's mysteries are there as well as others that I don't want to get lost in other bookshelves in the house. 

Beatrix Potter's Little Black Rabbit on top gets vacuumed too. I rescued him from our daughter's yard sale years ago, and Jemima Puddleduck. What? Selling all her B. Potter stuff? Home they came with me, and many of her Breyer's horses too. 

(See, Tammy, how can I ever hope to become a minimalist like you?)

No books here but a few pieces of precious Royal Doulton plates. Precious because I once bought them for my mother and in her 80s she let them come back to me. She loved them. I love them.

And a Caldwell rose lamp that is one of my most favorite inanimate things in this house. I got it from my sister and it stood in my kitchen for a long time until an Italian fish lamp seemed more appropriate there. Now it's back in my bedroom with all the other roses.

My favorite chair, my slippers, books around me, a lamp over my left shoulder. A window.

And a picture of something that didn't get Fall housecleaned yet. It will take hours to clean this bookcase that sits on top of my dresser. It holds the books that I never lend out, not because they are first editions. Some are but mostly it's just books I've collected over the decades that I read over and over. 

The books of Gladys Taber, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Beverley Nichols, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, David Grayson. Special old Christmas books.

And momentos such as the first little black bottle of Joy perfume that R.H. gave me long ago. One pretty Autumn day I'll spread an old sheet on the bed and take everything out, clean it and put it all back, no decluttering here. 

But that's for another day.

"Ode to the End of Summer" by Phyllis McGinley

Summer, adieu.

                            Adieu, gregarious season.

Good-by, 'revoir, farewell..

Now day comes late; now chillier blows the breeze on 'Forsaken beach and boarded-up hotel.

Now wild geese fly together in thin lines

And Tourist Homes take down their lettered signs.

It fades--this green, this lavish interval,

This time of flowers and fruits,

Of melon ripe along the orchard wall,

Of sun and sails and wrinkled linen suits;

Time when the world seems rather plus than minus

And pollen tickles the allergic sinus.

Welcome, kind Fall, and every month with "r" in

Whereto my mind is bent.

Come, sedentary season that I star in,

O fire-lit Winter of my deep content!

Amid the snow, the sleet, the blizzard's raw gust,

I shall be cozier than I was in August.

Safe from the picnic sleeps the unlittered dell.

The last Good Humor sounds its final bell,

And all is silence.

                                            Summer, farewell, farewell.

"Ode to the End of Summer"

"Summer, adieu.

Adieu, gregarious season.

Good-by, 'revoir, farewell…"

Phyllis McGiney

"Ode to the End of Summer"

in Times Three

I celebrated the end of summer by putting away the summer bedding in the pictures here, linens that were so welcome last Spring and now, on this day with the windows open to a chilly breeze blowing through, seemed as faded and tired as most of the flowers outside. 

Even the embroidered peacock on a vintage sheet I bought at a flea market in the '70s has lost its charm. Time for him to hibernate. 

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the bed all dressed for Autumn--and finish Phyllis McGinley's poem. I'm sure she would have been thrilled to know that her poetry was illustrating my sheets. She most likely would not have liked my weird assortment of patterns in my bedroom but this is one room where I indulge my love of Cozy Farmhouse decor. And I haven't bought matching sheets in over 30 years, ever since I purchased matching everything for the bed and was stuck with it for years. 

Do I sound as uninspired tonight as I think I do? It's been a long day. R.H. and I have done fall housecleaning all day. Okay, I admit that I mostly did basic stuff while my husband vacuumed walls--he pointed out how dusty they were with a flashlight--mopped floors, mopped under the beds, cleaned his bathroom from top to bottom including washing the walls, cleaned baseboards, vacuumed and aired all 8 dog beds outside, AND grilled chicken outside for our supper. And other stuff that I can't remember.

Is he a keeper or what?

Ode to the IRS

"I'm a middle-bracket person with a middle-bracket spouse

And we live together gaily in a middle-bracket house.

We've a fair-to-middling family; we take the middle view;

So we're manna sent from heaven to Internal Revenue."

By Phyllis McGinley

From "The Chosen People"

In Times Three

Happy Tax Day, Everyone!

The Other Side

This old 1932 book, Pen Pictures of the Presidents, ends with President Herbert Hoover, our 31st President. I bought the book years ago at a library book sale in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. I couldn't resist the embossed cover and engravings inside.

As I have become somewhat apolitical in my advanced age, I wonder if I would have voted for these men who were elected to the highest office in our country, or for their opponent. President Washington was unopposed so there would have been no question about him--if we women had been allowed the vote then.

When Abraham Lincoln was running for President, I wonder if I would have belonged to his Republican Party, or to the Democratic Party whose candidate Steven A. Douglas is reported to have been a much more eloquent orator than President Lincoln. Since President Lincoln is known to be just a tad rememberable at speechifying himself, I might have been swayed either way when listening to them. But then there were several other men also running so I might have supported moderate John Bell of Tennessee. Who knows?

Why am I no longer a staunch Party person? Why do I not align myself with any Party with my Facebook Friends? Why do I steer clear of political arguments with my husband now? 

Simply because I am no longer an either/or believer, and I shy away from labels and from issues that divide us as Americans. I believe there are good things and bad things about all Presidents and always have been. 

I remember a news video that has stuck with me for decades. The Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neil, Democrat from Massachusetts, was being interviewed and was asked about his relationship with former President Richard Nixon. Even with the debacle of Watergate still fresh in our nations's memory, the Speaker seemed almost sad about his political foe and pointed out things he admired about the fallen Nixon. 

The interviewer seemed puzzled at this, and Speaker O'Neil laughed and talked about how surprised the American people would be if they realized how members of Congress from both sides of the aisle were often good friends after hours, having dinner together, wives socializing with each other, caring about their children and grandchildren. 

I never forgot this. I realized I could disagree with someone but I could still consider their point of view and most of the time find things we both agreed on. And I could still be friends.

If they were willing to.

            Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint

           by Phyllis McGinley

I want to be a Tory

                         And with the Tories stand,

         Elect and bound for glory

                              With a proud, congenial band.

        Or in the Leftist hallways

              I gladly would abide,

           But from my youth I always

                  Could see the Other Side.

            How comfortable to rest with

                    The safe and armored folk

      Congenitally blessed with

           Opinions stout as oak.

        Assured that every question

              One single answer hath,

       They keep a good digestion

               And whistle in their bath.

        But all my views are plastic,

                    With neither form nor pride.

         They stretch like new elastic

            Around the Other Side;

         And I grow lean and haggard

                   With searching out the taint

    Of hero in the Blackguard

         Of villain in the Saint.

            Ah, snug lie those that slumber

               Beneath Conviction's roof.

           Their floors are sturdy lumber,

                 Their windows weatherproof.

        But I could sleep cold forever

            And cold sleep all my kind, 

Born nakedly to shiver  

                    In the draft from an open mind. 


Happy Presidents' Day!

[I don't know why the last two lines of McGinley's poem appear larger in published print here. I tried to fix it but could not.]