Hello Again & A Followup Post

Hello dear friends and family! While I haven't posted here very much this past summer there is something about October arriving that makes me want to create more often on my blogs. 

All of your comments on my Labor Day post about the jobs you first held as a young person meant so much to me. I feel as if I know you a little better for it. 

If I recap some of those jobs here would you overlook that the pictures are tail-end of summer pics and not in any way reminding you of our beloved Autumn? Which has not actually showed up here in Nashville yet. We're still breaking records for high temps.

I was first hired as a shopping center sidewalk Easter Bunny and one commenter, Obscure, once had to don a Hello Kitty costume at her first job as cashier in an upscale supermarket. She did not say whether anyone tried to pull her tail. 

Melanie worked in her father's grocery store before a wide variety of later jobs, and Brenda worked in the same one that her mother had when she was her age. Sweet!  

Karen put the curly Q on the top of iconic Dairy Queen ice cream cones, and Vicki worked at the local Wee Tee Golf.

Both Lorrie and Madame Là-Bas had berry picking jobs, raspberries for one, blueberries for the other. And if these jobs were in the amazing climates where these women live now, that wouldn't be a bad job at all.

Many of you were babysitters but only one, Kim, had a paper route too. That was RH's first job, starting when he was eleven years old. 

And hurrah for the nice woman on his route who called his stepfather on the phone one bitterly cold snow and ice morning and demanded he come pick up little RH. She insisted it was too cold for him to be delivering papers on his bicycle that day. She's my hero!

Of all those who said babysitting was their first job, one babysitter's mother-of the-children also left a list of chores to be done. Tammy, Christy had one that did the same thing and she never went back. I mean, really!

Diana began as a timer in a lingerie factory while Sandy worked in one that made televisions. Later on Diana worked for NBC in the same field as our Christy is in for CBS. I'd like to match those two up for lunch!

Sheri's first real job was a stenographer, and Beach Gypsy was a waitress.

 Poppy was a hostess at Kentucky Fried Chicken but as a senior in high school was chosen to read announcements on the loudspeaker. If you've ever heard her voice on Instagram you'll know why they chose her.

Carla started her sons out working on their grandparents' dairy farm when they were little boys -- and now one of them is proudly serving in the defense of his country!

Cathy packed things to be mailed out at a relgious store, which made me think of my first post-high school job that was typing things up to be mailed from a religious publishing company. I hope she was as lucky as I was.

Much earlier than Cathy, I'm sure, my workplace was as far from the Mad Men 1960s office atmosphere as was possible. I never saw any male executive make a pass at a girl working for them. Women were treated with courtesy by the men, who were all gentlemen.

I know you're waiting for the "but" or the "except" --there isn't any. Squeaky clean. Whether we wanted it that way or not.

My last two pictures are of foraged wild stems that RH cut last week, my attempt to bring a little Autumn feeling into our house that is as yet still bare of pumpkins and gourds. My annual trip to Nashville Farmer's Market must wait until we at least drop 10 or 15 degrees outside.

But the glorious red gladiolas are always a summer must for me, and this year I only remembered them as summer was ending. 

Thank you for visiting me! Are you decorated for fall or Halloween yet?

 

What were your first jobs?

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

I love this old photo of our three sons taken back in the 1990s. I remember stopping them that hot summer morning, when they were leaving for work with RH, to take this photo. I also remember feeling so proud of the hard workers they were.

There's not much these three guys can't do--and their sister also! Only one is still working in the family business of roofing and remodeling, and he took it over a few years ago when RH went to semi-retirement and I retired fully from the bookkeeping and office end of it.

This picture made me start thinking about my first jobs. I wonder if any of you have as odd a resume as I did as a child?

When I was little my father was produce buyer for the Kroger grocery store chain in mid-Tennessee, and in October my little sisters and I would dress up in cute Dutch costumes from his Holland bulb rep, complete with wooden shoes.

Each Saturday that month we would go to different local Kroger stores in Nashville where a big spring bulb display was set up in the parking lot. Music played on the loudspeakers outside and my sister Deb and I passed out Dutch cookies to customers. Our little sister Teresa was in costume too, an adorable toddler holding tight to Mama's hand. My fourth sister Jenn was still only a future gleam in our father's eye.

I doubt if we got paid anything but we got to keep our costumes and eat cookies so we were happy.

I hated my second job but it only lasted a few weeks. When I was 15 my father found me a job as a sidewalk Easter Bunny for a local shopping mall where every bratty little boy pulled my fluffy tail as I handed out candy Easter eggs to children, hopping up and down the sidewalks outside the stores.

Thanks for that one, Daddy.

The next one was better, also found by my father for me with a man we went to church with who owned a soda fountain shop. I was good at this job and my milkshakes were to die for.

During my junior and senior year of high school I found myself a job for the month before Easter at a local dimestore owned by a wonderful couple who were so sweet to me. My job was to make up beautiful Easter baskets and I got to combine all kinds of toys and books with the candy in the baskets, add beautiful pastel colored cellophane to wrap them in and a big floppy bow at the top.

This skill came in handy later in life when we had four children.

 

Mr. Doochin tried his best to get me out on the floor waiting on customers after Easter was over but I was too shy for that. Later on they turned the store into an art supply store that I shopped at as long as they remained in business. And each time I went in, Mr. Doochin teased me about being too shy to wait on customers.

The summer I graduated from high school I went to work part-time in our church office. This was mostly volunteer work as my boss, the pastor's wife who was church secretary, assured me that I should be paying her in exchange for the office training she was giving me. That was fine with me because I knew she would be giving me a good reference to a job I wanted at a large religious publishing house in Nashville. 

Silly in love me, an engagement ring on my finger, wanted a job, not college. It wasn't until our first two children were in elementary school that I went to a community college.

I worked a few days a week that summer at church, typing and learning to run copies off on the large messy mimeograph machine. I learned to answer the telephone properly and be discreet enough not to discuss anything said on it with my friends. I listened to a lot of advice on proper business procedures and business etiquette. And each week I entered the Sunday offering amounts from envelopes into a ledger. One time I found a $20 bill in one envelope and gave it to Mrs. Harrison. She smiled a funny little smile but didn't say anything.

Later on in life I wondered if that had been a test. If so, I must have passed it because by September she helped me find a good job at the publishing house uptown as receptionist for one of the magazine departments where I got to type up accepted articles for the magazine after they had been proofed by an editorial assistant. 

After a year they transferred me to another department as a stenographer, a promotion. A couple of years later I passed the test for editorial assistant and was waiting for an opening for that when I decided to leave work when RH and I bought our first house and decided to start a family.

Those were my first jobs and I'm grateful for the experience of them--well, maybe not for the Easter Bunny impersonation. What were your first jobs? Any Easter Bunny embarrassing moments for you?

Happy Labor Day to RH and our four children, and Happy Labor Day to each of you!

Remembering Mr. Bradbury

Born August 22, 1920

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating.

Ray Bradbury

Bradbury Speaks

Garden Art and Blogging

It was July of 2003 and two of our sons were home from college and working on a red metal roof job with their dad and older brother out in the country.

The boys were fascinated by all the garden art at this beautiful farmhouse.

I loved hearing about it all and wished they had taken more photos, but you can see the reflection of the red roof in the round mirror. I hope the beads kept birds from flying into it.

Zack liked this farmer taking a rest from his chores.

Maybe Defee thought he was Rodin's The Thinker?

I remembered these photos this week when I was reading one of my vintage magazines, a June 1965 House & Garden. The theme of this issue was "The Delights of Summer At Home," and it made this Autumn, Winter and Spring aficionado fall head over heels in love with Summer for the first time since I was a schoolgirl set free from lessons and homework.

Two pages celebrated garden art and one photo took me back to the fun our older two children had playing in their sandbox. I don't think our younger two had one--do kids play in sandboxes anymore?

I would love to have this one for my granddaughters, a canopy of roses above their heads and a large stone turtle nanny to sit upon.

House & Garden said that "one playful conceit can make a summer" and that this gingerbread dog below was perhaps awaiting a calico cat.

I think they had him mixed up with the gingham dog and the calico cat, side by side at the table sat, but I've always loved pictures where a grand house has two stone or iron dogs in the garden. Tara Dillard believes the dogs should always face each other, not out. Wouldn't that be much more companionable?

At Valley View we had various pieces of garden art scattered around, mostly farm relics, all left there when we sold the place because they belonged there and were left in caring hands.

The only garden art when we moved here to our new home was a green rabbit that I brought inside to save for Easter tables and a little blue bird that I yanked up and threw aside one cold winter day after we moved in. It was only when a little granddaughter visited, spotted it and wanted it put back that I began to look at it as worthy of keeping.

Now I wouldn't dream of throwing it away. It keeps visiting songbirds company at the bird feeder that sits on top of an old well. The birds and squirrels and this little piece of garden art entertain me through my kitchen window.

Recently a piece of garden art came to live with us that has great sentimental value, a pineapple, symbol of hospitality.

This pineapple is at least 35 years old and was an unsold item from our family garden center, first owned by my father and then sold to RH and his brother Bill.

The pineapple sits below our front porch in front of a large rosemary bush.

We hoped that other herbs would surprise us in this bed but instead there are many succulents and odd little plants blooming successively.

There are also patches of this plant in the bed but there are many bare spots in the sea of old bark. We hope to fill the bed in with perennial herbs and more succulents, a few plants at a time.

Everything is a work in progress here.

For now my herbs are in pots on the kitchen porch, seen below through the storm door, handy for me to use.

Bill knew we had left all our garden pots behind when we moved and said we were welcome to the old garden center pots that were still at his house.

So these 35 year old Italian pots hold my herbs for now under some lathe to protect them from the sun that shines here almost all day long. That porch will get a pergola roof eventually, knock on wood, and hopefully the large smoker out by the fence will be moved someday. It detracts from the view to the neighbor's pond. 

Perhaps I should just pretend that it's a piece of garden art? I do love garden art. What about you? Anyone have an interesting piece of art in your garden?

I know Doreen does at that beautiful log cabin of theirs that is now up for sale.

Anyone else?

I started to say that plywood cutouts of dogs peeing in the garden don't count, but hey, a lady whose garden art is a concrete pineapple, however beloved, shouldn't set any rules, should she? 

That's the Garden Art part of this post, the Blogging part of it has not been as easy to write.

Rodin's Thinker has not been the only one a-thinking. The past few weeks while I've been missing from blogging have been a time of reflection for me.

And it's been a time of waiting. Are you a good wait-er? Isn't waiting the pits?

Is there anyone who likes to wait for a doctor's report, for lab work to come back?

Before you start thinking the worst, let me tell you right now that all is well.

But I've waited for lab work reports since an annual skin cancer exam recently turned up suspicious spots. And after I learned that once again I had squamous cell carcinomas to deal with, I waited to hear when I could see the surgeon, and then waited for the surgery and then waited for that lab report. 

Don't you just wish we could just smash cancer into smithereens? 

Decades ago I waited for a surgical breast biopsy for cancer. It was benign.

Then I waited for a hysterectomy because they thought I had ovarian cancer. That was a difficult wait but it was endometriosis, not cancer.

In 2004 I had Mohs surgery for squamous cell cancer on my face and nose.

Last fall in Florida I was told that a growth removed from my nose was most likely malignant. Nine days later the lab report showed that it was benign.

I was lucky last week after the surgery on my shoulder. The lab report said they got it all, it had not metastasized. It has not been fun but cancer is fun for no one. And I am very grateful for all the prayers of family and friends.

But it has been a time of thinking, of deciding what is important. And the answer to that is that each day God gives me is what is important, a day.

A gift to be used wisely.

During this time when it has hurt to type much or hold a laptop, I turned back to pencil and paper. I worked on the books I've been writing on for years. I finished editing one for the dozenth time, worked on others, spending hours and hours each day instead of stolen minutes.

Some of you have been through this with me before, back at Across the Way. I gave up blogging then, missed it, began Dewena's Window. I don't want to stop blogging again, but I do want to cut back on the time I spend on it.

So I'll be trying to post only a few times a month at Dewena's Window.

Ha! That's about all I've done anyway this last year, isn't it? Only now it will be by plan, not by procrastinating. So you won't have to wonder where in the world Dewena has been. I'll still be here, I'll just give in to being a slowpoke.

It's summer, a time I usually want to pass quickly, to get on to the wonderful months of autumn, then to the holidays, and then to spring. Poor hot summer, how I've neglected you. Not anymore. Cancer has a way of making you appreciate each month.

What do I want now? I want what all of us want. 

I want art in my garden, I want art in my home. 

On my table, on my plate. On my mind.

I want artful work.

I want an artful life and I want to enjoy it. And I guess I'm admitting that at my age it all takes time. Especially for a slowpoke like me.

Thank you so much for listening! I hope your summer and mine is filled with days of joy, with days of contentment....I just plain old hope it is full of days--a gift from God.

Much love to you all,
Dewena

Glimpses of A Non-Blogworthy September

Not that my husband isn't blogworthy, no indeed. In fact he's rather magnificent here, don't you think? Especially at 73 years old and carrying 40 lbs. of rock in those buckets, up on top of a customer's roof.

But we're nearly at the end of September and I don't have beautiful fall decor to show you yet, nor any great projects completed, nor any of my stories written of days gone by.  

All I have to show you the rest of September are some glimpses into our life. 

Remember the story about the cobbler whose children had no shoes? We're in the roofing and siding business and yet our house here at Valley View had a roof leak and rotted siding on one side of our house.

One day R.H. and two of our sons decided the work had to be done between jobs. They fixed the roof and tore off old siding.

 Zack brought his baby, Bentley, along. Poor Bentley has had a time this past month, first with hot spots that required him wearing a cone until they healed. And now he's been having so much pain in his legs and the vet has diagnosed degenerative arthritis. 

 There's our Brown Eyes outside the kitchen door keeping him company.

And here's our Katie Belle and Sammi Gayle too, keeping out of the way of work outside.

The area the men were working on faces what was originally the smokehouse for the farmer who built our house and made sausage back in the 1920s.

In past posts here and at my old blog, I've had blog friends tell me they would love to have an old building like this to make a potting shed out of. And one of them would have transformed it into something worthy of a magazine shoot, I'm sure. With a tea party inside!

But it would take a lot of work because here's what the smokehouse looks like inside now:

I can't believe I'm actually showing you this, but it is R.H.'s building.

Let's hope he doesn't figure out how to blog and put a picture of my office on it!

Anyway, here's what the work looked like after they finished the repairs.

There's still painting to be done and I see a ladder still there but home repairs don't bring in any money so it was back to work for them.

This time it was to a client who wanted their 12 ft. rock chimney taken down. 

The house was built in the 1920s and there was about 7 tons of sandstone rock in this chimney.

It was taken down very carefully. We did their roof in steel shingles about 10 years ago.

Here's something fun that happened at our house this month. 

It isn't a blog-worthy table, just some old really heavy divided Buffalo China plates.

But our young guests who joined us for Sunday dinner are absolutely blogworthy!

Our grandson Alex and his beautiful wife Melissa came! They will soon be celebrating their first wedding anniversary!

Alex will graduate with his MBA in December and Melissa is an architect, already designing houses and commercial buildings.

I gave Melissa my copy of architect Anthony Lawlor's Home for the Soul, and R.H. snapped a picture of us together. Where am I? Cropped out--someone remind me not to wear striped shirts, please.

Our grandson Caleb came by that afternoon and got to visit with his cousin.

Here's two other young ladies who are always blogworthy, our granddaughters!

So there you have some glimpses into my non-blogworthy September here at Valley View.

I hope your own non-blogworthy moments are happy ones too! 

And be sure to give a kiss to all your loved ones!

The Dignity of Labor

 

Doesn't this handsome male look dignified doing his job as sentinel?

He guards this old house that's been in the same family ever since it was built. 

So does his sweet mate.

They never go off duty. 

Ever so often, R.H. and our sons are called on to work on this lovely house,

for two of the nicest clients anyone could ever have.

As you can see in the above picture, lower shutters have been removed,

pots on the veranda not filled with flowers this season.

Work has been taking place.

We have worked at this much-loved family house for many years.

This time the original copper roof that was causing too much
condensation and leaks had to be replaced.

We installed Arrowline lifetime warranty steel shingles.
And it was time to replace much of the wood siding with Western cedar.

Notice where we installed snow guards over the bay window above?
This should prevent chunks of ice from falling off and breaking
the skylight again.

After the roofing and siding was completed, we replaced a unique
old skylight that had been cracked by falling ice.

Don't you love this cute skylight we installed?
We are the only company around that will warranty these old skylights.

If you look at the picture below, the room where you see the chimney is a 20 x 30 
kitchen ell that opens up to a terrace where they have breakfast.
We did the roof on the kitchen about 10 years ago of copper
that has aged to a beautiful patina.

And we just installed these new Azek Pavers decking material so that the owners now
will be able to put a table and chairs out to enjoy the view that looks 
out on their 26 acres.

Below is a beautiful garden room.

The skylights you see in the lower part of this picture we
installed years ago.

Almost forgot, it was time for a new roof on the pool house too.

It is always such a pleasure working for these nice people and helping them

with new projects. And old homes are our favorite to work on.

There are other buildings on the estate that we've worked on in the past such as 

an upper story breezeway to the garage for an office, and the barn,

but my photographer missed some shots.

He did take pictures of a few interesting areas around the property 

that I thought you might enjoy seeing. 

These steps lead to a terrace

that in turn leads to another terrace.

There are many, many terraces tucked around the house and property.

 

Isn't this a lovely path to walk?

There is a peony garden in the back

and one of the many rose gardens on the land.

Here's another garden far away from the house by the barn.

Don't you love this noble eagle?

He's made of bronze and welded with lead 

and the squirrels have nibbled on him over the years.

Ever watched Blast from the Past?

Here's the fallout shelter!

 

Now, don't ask me who these guys are.

In fact, if you know who they are, please tell me.

"In the month of September we have in New York and so many other states a holiday which everyone of us should remember. It is called Labor Day and should bring to our minds first of all the dignity of labor. It is a dignified thing to work, to pay one's way in the world through the work of one's hands or the work of one's head, and it is something in which every worker should take pride."

Eleanor Roosevelt

1934

Happy Labor Day to all of you!