Painting project & Watts Pots

Good afternoon Folks ~ Here we are in our last week of October.  Our weather down here in s.e. FL has cooled off a tad and it sure is invigorating.

As many of you know, these last 22 1/2 months since losing my dear husband have been quite an adjustment in my life. I’ve more or less hibernated inside, on the computer hours on end, blogging, reading, watching movies, shows, etc. all to help fill up the void and the quiet here in our little Plum Cottage. The missing him never abates, the grieving is just lessened. I’ve been so ready for cooler weather this year, and it is finally starting to happen. I am thankful. The cooler temps make me feel more alive and wanting to do things. It has been hard getting used to doing things by myself, trying to figure out how to do things, and just getting the gumption up to do them.

But each day is new, a gift, and I want to be thankful and be creative.

I’ve got an old half-filled 5 gal. bucket of plum colored paint, that needs to be used up. Yesterday I got the urge to get out the paint, to paint the picket fencing section on the west side of the caravan. I enjoy painting, there is something therapeutic about it.  Once I did the west side, I decided to paint the fencing on the east that we’ve had up for a good while now. It was a creamy/white color. Our old plum paint looks different in different light depending on what time of day it is.  Sometimes it looks more plumy, others brown, and even gray. 

29th ~ I only did errands yesterday morning, no painting happened.  I did paint again today, still more to do. Another coat on the east fencing from the gate over, then the whole backside.

Before:

Here it is painted.  You can see that the pickets on the left side of the gate need a second coat.  I love this color.  We had it made up especially for us, but the company has gone out of business, like so many businesses in the past 6 years or so. Really sad, as they were an old painting company.

 

While I was painting, I got the idea to see if the light fixture, that we found several years ago thrown out in the neighborhood, would fit the wonky fence post. I was excited. We were going to put on the roof of the caravan, but alas, that’s not going to happen now. So, I put the paint brush down and got the light fixture to see if it would fit, and sure enough it did.  I just had to put some shims between lamp material and the post.  I laughed right out loud, and am pretty sure DH would get a kick out of what I did. I’m going to paint the metal, did two sections to see if I’d like it, and I did.

The sunlight is hitting it from the west. I thought of putting one of those LED candles on the inside that has a timer. Wouldn’t that be neat for night time?

Penelope roses.

My friends Nanci and John gave me this neat old Watt’s Pot. Watts was a company that made cement flower pots here in the area for years and years.  The pots are highly collectible.  This is a shortie, 8 inches high x 13 inches across. I’ve not seen one like it before. 

I thought to myself, do I have any of these in my gardens. I just looked at my pots, as pots. Well, lo and behold I have 12 of them, that we either found curbside, or bought cheap. I don’t even remember where we got any of them. Some are in better shape than others.

Nanci also gave me a nice piece of linen that is old and I plan to do embroidery on it of course.

The other night I was watching a ribbon embroidery tutorial on you-tube. 

Miss Tork was watching from my lap.

I learned a new word from Terry Hershey’s newsletter the other day. It is called Sabbath Moments and comes in the mail each Monday.

The word is numinosity.

“ Numinosity is the potential for unexpected mystery and insight where one comes into the unshakable presence of the divine; a sacred transformative space that integrates and heals the mind, body, soul, and spirit.”

***

Also from the newsletter this lovely piece.

***

O Taste and See 
The world is
not with us enough.
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination's tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.
Denise Levertov

***

That’s is for now from Plum Cottage

FlowerLady

Revamping

Good morning Folks  ~ I hope all of you where the temps are cooling down are enjoying the fall season. It is ‘still’ miserable here.  Yesterday and this morning the humidity was so heavy, I could only work outside for an hour. I didn’t check yesterday but did today to see about the humidity and this morning it was 86%. After an hour I had had enough. We had thunderstorms yesterday afternoon with very heavy rains. More rain is expected through Friday. Cooler weather is expected in November.

I took some pics this morning. The little weathered sign is to the left of the gate in the following picture.

This is looking through the gate into front patio area. The wall with the flower and stems is the east wall to my little creative space on the inside.

This is taken from inside looking back at the gate.

While I was out there I smelled a wonderful rose scent and lo and behold the bloom on Rose de Rescht had opened. I just love this rose.  Thanks again Deb & Charles.

Next are blooms from the Queen Crepe that is on the east side of cottage. This is it’s second blooming this year. There are three clusters of blooms right now. 

Next is my revamping project. I laid this little heart patio the beginning of this year. It soon became weed-laden between cracks and all around. I bought some weed barrier cloth this summer for half price from Big Lots but it was too hot and humid to work on this project then. After making the little picket fence section last week, I wanted to tackle this project.

I moved the marble pieces onto the roofing material patio. Weeded and leveled yesterday morning.

This is how it looks now. I still need to tweak it a bit. I want to put the weed cloth under the birdbath too. Or I may move birdbath, haven’t decided yet.  It was too humid and miserable to think that far, much less do it this morning.

That’s it for now.

FlowerLady Lorraine

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses. ~ Hanna Rion

I’m pooped ~ :-)

Good morning Folks ~ Hurray, the trailer load of iron has been cashed in. My friend and her son came over Wed. morning, hooked up the trailer and off we went. I was shocked to learn that the weight of the iron loaded into the trailer was, 3,160 lbs. All of it loaded, except for two things which my friend’s son loaded that morning, by two ladies in their 60’s.

This was taken after she and I loaded on two different mornings. Between then (May) and Wed. I loaded in some other things and then her son loaded the last two things and there was no longer a path. This trailer has a hydraulic lift so it was GREAT for dumping the load at the scrap yard. My dear husband is thrilled I know, that I’ve made forward progress in getting rid of iron. We had started to do this before he became ill, and now this load is gone. YIPPEE! I now have an ID # at the scrap yard.

Here was the view with the trailer and a pile of iron I had moved from around the property for us to load. As I was doing this, I did keep out pieces that I think I might use later, or that were artistic to me. We used different pieces through the years of collecting this stuff curbside,  DH just couldn’t stand to see stuff go to the landfill. He knew it had a cash value, either by us using it and not having to spend $ or turning it into the scrap yard for cash.

Here’s the view yesterday with my van back in its parking spot, and a container garden with roses and herbs, where the pile of iron had been. This is one of the sunniest areas for the roses at this time of year.

My plan yesterday morning was to get out the weed wacker to take care of high grass, etc. that had grown up in middle of the driveway and was covering concrete, but as I was looking at overgrowth in another area, another idea came to mind.

Overgrowth between two buildings, plus havoc wreaked by fighting raccoons the other night, when they had knocked off plastic gutters from where they had been stacked, were a mess to behold. Then I noticed (again) left-over pickets from our ‘curbside found’ picket fencing. I thought, hey, I need to get to those to make another small section of fencing. To do that I had to clear out weeds  and restack the gutters, throwing some to the side to throw away.

Pickets back where arrow points to.

Forward progress.

I scrounged up materials, posts, and cross pieces for fencing. Got out my favorite shovel to dig holes, and on the last hole, my shovel handle broke!!!! I’ve used this shovel for years and years and it was great. It’s actually a trench digging shovel, but just right for my purposes of planting plants, etc. In my stash of shovels, I found a shorter version and used it. This photo below was taken after supper last night, which by the way, was a Marie C. chicken pot pie. It was so nice to just pop it into the oven and eat. No fuss, no muss.  DH and I both enjoyed these when I didn’t feel like cooking.

I was so sore when I got done I could hardly move. More work and clean up in that whole area between fencing and workshop needs to be done, all in good time. I am happy with my fun project yesterday.

I like being separated from the parking/storage area, this feels cozier. I’ll show more photos later.

Below is another area that needs working on. It’s on the west side of the workshop. I’d not been over there in awhile, and was shocked when I looked over there the other day. With all of the rain we had things just grew like crazy. I had gone over to this area to get a ladder…

and looking to the south saw this. YIKES!

That’s it for now. My stomach is growling.

Have a good day and a great weekend.  The weather here yesterday was beautiful. One of the reasons I could do the work I did.

FlowerLady

Music, needlework, house colors :-)

 

Dear Friends ~ You all are great sports!

So far, no one online has picked what I chose. A widow friend of mine met me at church this morning and had a sticky note on a little book she's loaning me to read, and she guessed what I have chosen.

I will tell you that when I first started looking at colors lately,
smoked mulberry was my first choice. Another color caught my eye though, but it's still all in the thought stages.

I am thinking of getting paint samples. Especially of the plum colors.

This is fun getting your input.

Why I chose yellows to go with plumy colors is because they are complimentary to one another.

Smoky Mulberry and straw hat have the most votes so far.

If you haven’t seen the color choices go back to this post.

Before I started this post, I was working on the latest needlework heart.  The  embroidered part I did probably about 3-4 years ago, but I cut it out into heart shape then sewed it onto felt, then am stitching another piece of felt to the back to hide the stitching. While doing this I have been listening to the you tube video posted below. It’s almost over.  I recently found Jesse Cook and I LOVE his music. It reminds me of Spain, and that’s where Mark bought his acoustic guitar. In a little shop on a cobbled stone street. Sweet memories.  This music makes me want to move something, so I’m either wiggling in my seat as I stitch or tapping my feet. This was a good long run, not quite 3 hours.

Anyway, here’s the piece I was working on and stopped to take pics and start this post to post the you tube video.

Here are several other pieces that I embroidered also about the same time 3-4 years ago.

This is a piece I created this past week.

I did some rearranging of my shelves in the bedroom. I needed to be able to get to drawers of stashed created pieces.

I’m trying to get things more organized so I’ll know where things are that I’ll have listed in my Etsy shop.

This is my view this afternoon.

That’s it for tonight.

For those of you who have the holiday off tomorrow, enjoy.

FlowerLady

I will close with the following quote that I posted on my music blog.

***

How does one put the spiritual significance of music on paper?
Music transcends all languages and barriers and
is the most beautiful communicative skill one can have.
Music makes us all experience different emotions.
Different types of music,
whether it is vocal or instrumental,
Eastern or Western,
Classical or Pop or folk
from any part of the world
can all be spiritual if it has the power
to stir the soul of a person
and transcend time for the moment.
Ravi Shankar

 

Upcoming Project

Good morning Folks ~ Well, it’s morning here in s.e. FL, just starting to get light out.

The other night I dreamed about painting my little cottage again, because it is on my mind. We painted it in 2004-2005, paint is peeling and fading and it needs to be done again. I’ve had two estimates one high and the other a decent price for me to afford, with a good recommendation.  I will be helping too, by painting the grooves in the siding, for one thing, plus moving plants, etc. away from the cottage. I’ve painted before although not in a long time.

I know the colors won’t be the same on everyone’s monitors, but we’ll give it a shot to see which color gets the most picks. One for the house color, and one for the door color. Trim will stay white. I already have the two colors I really like in mind, I just wanted to see what you all would say.

Here are some pics of the workshop and cottage after freshly painted. The color looked different depending on the time of day. You can see by the photos that the paint definitely looks different depending on where the sun is in the sky.

The next few photos are from 2004-2005

Workshop south wall.

Cottage east side.

Cottage Front

Cottage Back – north

Here are my choices for Behr Premium House colors:

Smoked Mulberry

Plum Swirl

Exotic Orchid

Zinfadel

Here are my choices for the doors.

Cheerful

Joyous

Straw Hat

Sweet as Honey

***

Okay.

Which colors do you think I chose?

Which colors do you choose?

The color does not have to match the color the house is now, but out of all the plumy colors on HD’s website, these are the ones I chose to finally pick from.

This is exciting! It will be work and I hope I am up for it. (My right arm and hand bother me a lot, broken arm from car accident in 2000). Don’t know when this project will happen.  Waiting for the weather to cool down and no rain in the forecast.

Have a great week ~ FlowerLady