An Apple a Day

As

if

we

didn't

have

enough

to

contend

with

here

in

the

country...

Mother Nature has seen to it that we are being kept on our toes. What was a leisurely day a few weeks ago turned into an all out fiasco that had my six foot five husband and yours truly doing a jig dance of some sort while trying to catch a Brown Recluse before it sprinted into the plank flooring. My husband was lying on the couch and casually glanced toward the southeast window in the great room saying there was a spider web behind the curtain. I got up to examine the situation and knew immediately this was trouble. It was huge, tornado shaped, and disappeared into the hemp curtain. What was worse, it was just inches from our daughter's play kitchen. I motioned for some help and watched my husband's eyes grow big as he saw the full view of the structure. He pulled the curtain down from its place in one swoop because we weren't going to take any chances of this thing biting us as we fiddled with the web. Now the problem was coaxing it out, which was no problem at all as the thing sprinted immediately across the floor. I screamed scaring the tar out of both Wren and my husband. We threw the curtain back over the spider and my husband's size fourteen shoes called an end to the saga. The thought of that thing getting away was hair raising. I spent the next few hours looking for more webs. We found three on the back porch last week. I nabbed one in a beautiful Red Ware paper towel holder just this afternoon. I am over the spiders already. We have Wolf spiders the size of small rodents... this is the last thing I need. We began a quest to find a friend with Hedge Apples. We found a lucky owner and brought home a paper sack full. I was so reluctant to call an exterminator- I just hate the thought of chemicals. But I wondered about the Old Wives Tale of the Osage Orange. Would it really work? Well, let me tell you, after today's encounter in the paper towel holder, I dug into that paper bag faster than lightening. So I am about to find out. The fruits are hard and bumpy and it took a very large steak knife to do the job of getting one into six slices. They bleed a milky substance that is like glue, though they do not have a very pungent odor. If the scent can be described at all, it is like that of orange cleaning solution. The slices are resting happily in the tops of the windows on the main floor. We shall see how accurate the Old Wives really are. All I know is that if I have just a few more heart stopping encounters like the ones I have had recently, I am going to be sporting some Old Wives white hair! Just in time for Halloween...

Rescue Remedy

Being
that
my
husband
is
a
skilled
antiques
restorer,
all
manner
of
chairs
and
such
arrive
at
our
house.
It's difficult to pass up a deal, more like a steal, when you are around furniture so often. We receive all kinds of calls about antiques restoration and end up going on a lot of "go-sees" to see if we can be of help. Often times, we are able to pick up things at good prices while we're out and about on these calls, and sometimes the odd item just leaps into our truck from the curb. These little chairs we picked up in Florida for a song. But someone had done that ever popular late eighties silk stripe dining fabric upholstery and it had been sitting there ever since. The seats were in pretty bad shape, and at first glance so were the wood finishes. But often times, all it takes is a gentle cleaning and wax to bring back the luster. It goes without saying, never refinish a piece that you do not know the value of. If it's old and/ or rare you will plummet the value by taking away the old finish. This presents a problem when you really wish to have a painted finish or different stain, but it really is best to leave well enough alone when it comes to woods. My husband is called in for repairs, great and small, and all the work is done with care to add value, not take it away.

These chairs just needed a good cleaning and simple Williamsville wax. I shed the old fabric, replacing it with a more homespun look to match our Saltbox style house in creams, eggplants, and reds. This is in part my summer education of soft restoration. I am diligently learning the trade of seat upholstery, wing chair upholstery, couch upholstery, shaker tape seating, and rush work- God help me on the last.
My Father in Law is a wonderful craftsman and at one time a skilled rush worker. It is like a bicycle, he can still do it, but he says it takes a great deal of painstaking time.


Here are the old and new versions side by side right before I get ready to tear into the second chair. These will go happily in our dining room as extra seating right next to our Windsors. I like things to compliment each other and a house put together over time never matches exactly. Next I am tackling a set of four ladder back chairs that have been in our family for ages. Their old torn rush seats are being replaced with Shaker fabric taping in evergreen hues. I cannot wait for them to come back into everyday use.

Paring Down

Lately I am
finding
that what
I want
most for
my family
is room
to breathe.
I have had this vision of emptying the house down to the bare walls, putting everything out into the yard, and slowly putting only what we need and regularly use back into the house. For months now we have been cleaning out corners and cupboards and letting go of things. Once you have a little space that is pared down and feel the openness and simplicity, it becomes fairly an obsession to spread the effect around. Decorative things have been the first to go. If we cannot use it for something as well as admire its beauty, it is out the door. What is left is taking on greater meaning as we finally begin to notice things.








We had curtains in the great room that were Colonial swags. They did not match our saltbox, and worse, they did nothing. They offered no protection from light or cold as they could not be lowered or drawn. I had a roll of fabulous hemp fabric just sitting around in a closet and we are in the process of changing over all the curtains to a simple rod pocket and iron pull back style. The one window that is finished is blissful! Wren can play in her kitchen in the hot afternoon sun and barely notice the glare from the windowpanes.

We had a lot of pottery displayed about and it was collecting a lot of dust. If we cannot bake with it, put flowers in it, or store something in it, for the most part it left the house too. What we are left with are small groupings that work well together and get a lot of use. I appreciate the workmanship a lot more and notice how the colors change throughout the day.

All of a sudden I see things differently. I love old worn leather and the pieces we have are so comfortable. They now stand out in the room as main focal points because so much of the other clutter has been cleared away.

A hat stands ready at the front door stair banister and a little saddle pouch hangs over the rail. Wren likes to take these items and put her little treasures in the pouches and play cowgirl in the hat. An old saddle sits atop an ottoman nearby and every child who comes to our house loves to ride this imaginary horse.

I am amazed by how little we need these days. We have always needed so little...we just got a bit lost along the way. I still have months of cleaning and giving away to do, but there is light in the tunnel now in so many areas of our home. It feels wonderful with each new day of paring down and my burdens are getting lighter and lighter. It gives me time to think about those things in my home that matter most...my three family members. I hope they remember these times of letting go of things and I hope it sticks with all of us. What we enjoy more than ever nowadays is our time together, and that's something worth collecting.

A Barrel of Monkeys

Real Life sometimes hits you in the oddest of moments.
This has been a busy morning. We have yet another rainy day and I have a list of things to accomplish a mile long. There is no school for my oldest pumpkin today and she is bouncing off the walls. During breakfast I was able to do my writing for one of my favorite "foodies", and the subject matter made me HUNGRY! Once the kitchen clean up was finished after breakfast, it was immediately time to make lunch. I wondered if I could fit in a batch of homemade cookies in the process? Sure, why not? When you have this much to do in one day a batch of cookies does not make or break you. An added benefit is that it grabs the attention of two children for a full forty five minutes. Once lunch was over and the promise of cookies after a nap is lulling around in their heads, nap time is coming along pretty nicely. One down one to go... I am sitting on the couch fumbling with a Barrel of Monkeys and my three year old is showing me how "Daddy does a double monkey". I am intrigued I realize, not because of the feat of the double monkey, but because I realize that my house at times is just like this game. A Barrel of Monkeys, and I am trying to string everything together nicely. Let's face it, one mom, two children under four, a big lumbering dog, and two cats spells chaos in any sense of the imagination. House clean and perfect- no. Children clean and perfect- no. Mom- most certainly no. One of the cats has just chased the lumbering dog in a round about that has ended with the papers from my morning's writings everywhere. My phone conversation with my little sister in Florida earlier had me thinking the tiredness in her new mom's voice echoed mine. I jokingly said, "it takes a village". A large part of me wasn't joking. It is no wonder we are all so tired all of the time. I think we now live in an age where demands on each family unit are so great that the "village" no longer exists. I used to think, too, that the reason of people living apart was the main foible. Now I know this is not the case. Even people who live right next door do not always have the ability or time to pitch in- and this goes both ways. I cannot tell how many times I have been phoned for a favor that I just could not do at that moment. You feel terribly about it but also realize that one more thing under your nose at that moment and all things might just go haywire. Just like that chain of monkeys, the likelihood is that it will all fall apart if I try to do one more thing. The economy demands that we use every spare moment right now just trying to survive, but none of the other "work" lets up either. It is the busy time for growing food, maintaining the house outside, and most families have children at home now that school has let out. So how do we cope? I find that we have to begin to get a "village" mentality back in our lives. I find this a topic of conversation more and more amongst my friends. A very close friend said recently, and I am paraphrasing, that we have to find a way to keep what is good in our circle. I have taken this to heart. What changes will occur in my life as I get back to the business of survival in this tough economy will be taken with this advice in mind. Who knew a little children's game could open up so much space for reflection?

Busy Bees

They are
all out in
full force...
the giant
fluffy
bumblebee,
the smooth
smaller
honey
bee,
and the nectar
loving wasps.


Flying, zooming, everywhere.
I feel like these tiny flying creatures these days. We have been on the go, just like them. So much is going on everywhere around us that nightfall comes and I feel like I have hardly time to catch my breath...and my to do list gets longer and longer by the day. My knitting remains in the basket, my curtains remain uncut and the sewing machine idle, the mandolin is still atop the quilts. Let's not talk about the real tasks on my list such as laundry and mopping. Outdoors beckons. These days have been utterly amazing in their beauty. Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow has been carted back to the compost and burn piles with hardly a glance at the clock. It's difficult to call gardening a task on days like these. It is more like a privilege. Baby ducklings were born at our friends farm last week, preceded by a baby goat a few months before. Their garden is springing anew. It is difficult to just drive by. I cannot. I enjoy their company so much and these added delights make it impossible not to visit. The next farm down the road, again such good friends. Two new lambs in less than twenty four hours. One big and robust- there other so small, and rejected. Hearts go out to this little creature and we do everything we can to coax mama in to being...well, a mama. It is so difficult to watch. You keep telling yourself, this is farming. It is the cycle of life. But it is not, because at the end of the day, your new lamb is in the house and you are bottle feeding it four to six times per day. All these lessons are so good for us. Someday all the lessons learned with our friends will be put to good use in our own barn. Twice now, I have been caught without my camera. I will hopefully make up for this in the next few visits. I also photograph most of my husband's work, some of which can be seen above. This picture is of a bird feeder he hand carved for a collector in Florida. It is perhaps one of my most favorite things he has ever done, even though it is one of the most unadorned and simple. I miss my bird feeders welcoming our feathered friends. When we began having puma sightings, we were told to leave the feeders empty for a while to discourage all wildlife from coming so near the house. The birds are still here in great numbers but it is now more difficult to watch them for lengthy periods of time. We have been "cat less" for a few months now here at the farm, at least as far as we know, so I believe the seed will once again be all right. Just in time, as we have a pine that needs to be removed and we are going to keep the base. Just perfect for a hand carved bird totem. But we all know the saying, "the dentist's kids teeth are falling out." It always seems difficult to find the time to work on projects for ourselves. The bird feeder is behind re framing some windows, replacing roof shingles, and putting new seedlings in the garden. Patience is a virtue, and I guess we have a lot of virtue!

The Wish Book

When I
lived in
Naples,
Grange
had one
of the only
free
standing
interior
shops in
the States
in our 3rd
Street District.
How I loved to go into that shop and daydream. I would spend about an hour there and leave with my head full of so many new ideas. I began a notebook to stash away ideas and concepts, color and materials, places I'd like to see someday- or places I had been and couldn't wait to get back to.

Fabric swatches and paint chips nestle in its pages and they inevitably influence they way we style our home. The quilt that the Wish Book is lying on mirrors the colors in the swatches laid out within its pages. Originally chosen to cover wing chairs, the chairs ended up being reupholstered in hemp burlap but the colors were picked up in the bedroom none the less.
This page shows a very simple old fashioned pantry, not too unlike the one we have here at Hawks Run. The trouble with my pantry is that it is perched within what should be a fabulous spot for a cast iron claw foot tub. Once I find my tub, I'll pull this photo back out and reconstruct the pantry to look more like this one. It has more shallow shelves and I will be able to see things a whole lot easier.

My Wish Book is filled with a lot of gardening clippings. If I live to be one hundred I don't think I'll ever feel like I had enough time in the dirt. Each Spring is like starting life all over again- only with so much more knowledge gained the past season. I find other people's gardens so fascinating and NEVER EVER miss the garden scheme here in Lebanon when the good gardeners open their masterpieces to the public. Some are so elaborate and others are just beginning their plot. Maybe someday we'll be able to open ours...another dream.

There are a lot of pages filled with farm animals. I simply adore chickens. Our milk house is slated for a chicken house overhaul and I am so looking forward to baking with our own eggs. I talk about having chickens so often that I think I may have subliminally influenced my husband into believing it to be the most brilliant idea ever. He is now talking chickens too. The only dilemma here is that with Mr. or Mrs. Big Paws running around, the hen house will have to be built like Fort Knox.

There are a number, really a large number, of pictures depicting saltboxes in my Wish Book. I find this both intriguing and immensely satisfying that I seemed to know what I wanted even before it was shown to me. One picture in particular could be a room in our home. It is of the great room, only the owners of the house made this room their dining area. There is a long tavern table directly in front of the cooking fireplace. The windows have been greatly enlarged to twenty four over twenty fours. It is snowing outside but what with the fireplace ablaze and the well worn roof timbers, it could be our great room here at Hawk's Run. It is a room of simple beauty- really the theme of this home. Hawk's Run has such good bones that I continually find myself attempting to pare it down. On the first page of my book is a clipping from some long lost Grange catalog of yesterday...it simply says this.

"In the beginning a house resembles its owner. Time passes and with it the generations. Nothing changes even if everything evolves. One day the house changes family and the new owner can be seen to resemble the house."

There is such a fundamental truth to this statement that I still find it to be as potent as the first time that I read it. I hope it holds true for the future generations at Hawk's Run.

A Remembrance of Things Present

This year more
than any other
has found me
with a
desire to be
no where else
but home.



The period from Thanksgiving to now has flown by unlike any time period that I can remember in recent history. My days have been really wonderful here at home with the children. While I enjoy the views looking out the windows, I am really enjoying my time within the walls of our home. There was a time when I was in my twenties and I was so busy. Busy with studies, with work, with life in general. I was on a mission then but at the time I didn't know what that mission was. The twenties are a strange time of trying to figure out the what and wheres of your life. I had a strong sense of who I was and what I held important, but I found I had so little time to just be in that life of the person waiting inside of me. I was a hunter gatherer from an early age. I collected things I wanted my future children to have. I would keep a box open in my office and drop little treasures into it as they made themselves known. Nothing extravagant or expensive, but something that pulled at my heartstrings. This may sound so odd for a twenty-something but I kept a box open for my later years as well. The things that went into it were for a time in my life when I would have an empty nest. Things such as old gardening books, and interesting yarns and textiles. A box would fill up, I'd seal it, and off it would go into storage. After about fifteen years of this squirreling away, I had quite a few boxes. There was a definite pattern emerging though, and I realized quite suddenly I was creating parts of my own childhood in those boxes. I was also creating a later life of people I admired. I noticed that certain themes kept coming up. Huge dinner plate variety peonies that my mother grew in my childhood home, the chartreuse green of my Nana's bedroom, nature oriented items that reminded me of my nanny Ellie's home, especially her chickens. I would find these things going about my normal days and there was never a plan, or even a conscious reason. But here I am, a mother of two, staying at home to raise them, out in the countryside, and I find that my boxes have intersected. When we moved to Hawk's Run, all those boxes came with us. I began putting things away that were hidden inside. It was a surreal experience. A set of very old fashioned paper nursery rhyme animals now grace my son's Christmas tree. My few but very special cookbooks I use almost daily. The yarns sit in my basket and have started to become actual things made for my children. The gardening books I read like a daily newspaper because there is so much wonder about the things I see growing here. The children's playroom is filled with toys I once played with as a child myself. None of this took a lot of money. Hardly any at all when I realize that each thing that went into the box was sought out in some strange Filofax manner in my head. There was an unwritten list and when the item was found at a next to nothing price, it came home. So now in my thirties I come to the realization I was on some sort of scavenger hunt that has become my life. I know there will come a time when a career calls me forth again, but for the next few years, my career is submerging my children in a life somewhat like I was shown by those who raised me. Perhaps the last month it has all come together. My children and I are in a pattern of living here at Hawk's Run. My husband, bless his heart, now can see that some of the nonsense in the boxes now makes sense. A remembrance of things past is now our present, and our future.

The Best Week Ever

On September 15 the power went out.

And stayed out.

The children and I had been in Columbus for the third annual Country Living Fair and Sunday was predicted to get nasty weather wise. We enjoyed two blissful days of artisans and smiling faces and made it home late Saturday afternoon. By Sunday afternoon the winds had really begun to gather momentum. When I saw the tall Locusts out front begin to look more horizontal than vertical, the kids and I retreated to the basement. My husband was trying desperately to finish up an entry way in an old home in Indian Hill that was being photographed for a holiday issue of a large retailer. He arrived home as the power went out. We're used to power outages here as they happen all the time. Car accidents on these lonely roads are usually to blame, and storms do their fair share. But when we emerged from our hermit hole we knew this time was going to be different. Our beautiful Bradford Pear tree was split in two and had just missed the house. I had just reminisced the day before how I couldn't wait to see that tree in flower again next year. It had been a breathtaking sight. I was grateful we still had one other that had been left intact. The Locusts in front had weathered pretty well, a testament to their flexibility. Only two had snapped in half. The greatest damage had been to our vehicle when walnut fruits were flying through the air at an estimated 70 miles per hour. My guess is that next spring walnut trees will venture forth where no walnut has gone before. We were beginning to hear estimates that the power would be out until at least Thursday or Friday which was five days away. I dutifully grumbled but on the inside I was blissful. No television, computer, or phone ringing. I envisioned candlelit nights telling stories to the children, cooking meals over the open fire in the fireplace, and bathing outdoors in the sunlight. That is exactly what happened over the next five days and it was wonderful. Venturing out to the store was interesting as I noticed we were one of the only families not upset by this lack of electricity. My husband jokingly said one afternoon, "Should we just call up the electric company and tell them to take a hike?" I laughed and secretly wished we could do just that. All of a sudden my days were longer. I was no longer running around trying to fit 28 hours worth of work into a 24 hour day. I was genuinely sad when the power kicked back on Thursday afternoon. I also realized without a doubt that this week would go down as one of the best of the summer of 2008 in our family memories. The power has gone out twice since then and each time a thrill goes through me. Then it returns all too quickly. Maybe I will make that call to the electric company...

Where Hawks Run

"You should take a walk and go see the place down the lane," my husband said.

It was my first visit to Ohio to meet my husband's family. It was a few years before we were married and it was a bitter cold December day. Having lived in Florida for five years I was up for anything involving cold. While he had something to attend to, I bundled up and set off across the fields towards the lane. All along the west side of the lane are trees, shrubbery at first but this soon gives way to dense wooded ravine. The view down the mile long dirt and gravel lane is thus somewhat concealed until you reach a point half way down. At the point half way down and looking East the view is of three large lakes scattered about the setting. Everything is much more visible in winter when the leaves have fallen to the ground. A small creek begins at this midpoint running from the East to West, travels under the lane, and spills into Hall's Creek some miles away. Coming up the small hill from the wooded ravine revealed yet another lake to my west side and a huge old barn directly ahead. From this vantage point, the road appeared to run straight through the huge barn doors and out the back. Two more lanes branched out from this main road, the one to the East towards a smaller barn and the one to the West to a pretty home way off in the distance. As I neared the big old barn I could see just part of a weathered structure off to the West but it was clouded in a sea of evergreens. To the northeast of that was a large group of tall willowy Locust trees. I pondered the grouping of evergreens and realized that what I was seeing were years and years of Christmas trees that had been planted out. Their varying heights and species gave little doubt. As soon as I passed the greenery, the house came into view. It sat just opposite the barn across the lane which I could now see jogged around the barn and continued North. Yet another lane jetted back out to the East. I didn't get that far on this walk because the house had my full attention. A three story saltbox with eight over eight windows and the silvery hue of wood only time can create sat nestled in a grove of trees. From the main road, there was no way that you would ever know it even existed. It looked well cared for but had that mysterious aura about it that said that it was unoccupied much of the time. From this moment forward I began a love affair with the saltbox. The setting of this one was incredible as vast views stretched from both the front and rear of the structure. Never in a million years would I have believed that day that in eight years time this setting is the place I would call home. I will never forget the first visit back to the property in November 2005 right after we had signed all the papers. My husband and I were driving away from the house to the airport so that we could return to Florida as we were not yet able to move back to the Midwest. My heart was heavy and I didn't want to leave the place. I had learned that his Grandpa Ray's first house had stood right to the north of our house and that my father-in-law had been born there. At that time the farm was one hundred acres and not much else except the old farmhouse and barn stood on the land. Our eleven acres now comprised a long tract, five to the East of the lane and six to the West. Our land was surrounded by forest on all sides. From the air, our eleven acres looked almost like a landing strip with clear views into the tall grasses. My husband was saying something about carving a sign for the end of the lane. I had noticed that people in these parts had a habit of naming their land. "What would you want to call it?" I asked him. He turned to me and simply said, "What it's always been called- Hawk's Run." My surprised look prodded him to explain. Grandpa Ray had named this land decades ago and the name had stayed with it. Our tract having been the site of the original house meant that the name was designated for our parcel. A warm feeling came over me and I wondered at the chosen name. Were there nesting hawks here? There was certainly enough forest and water to support them. The layout of our land also gave the hawks a superb hunting range. My visit back in the summer of the following year did not disappoint. I heard the call from the open kitchen window and my husband ran for the camera. The hawk sat less than twenty feet from the house in a low branch. He was majestic and he was not alone. On any given day if one takes the time to gaze upward into the air currents the hawks are there circling the fields looking for their next meal. Those days when you feel like you are being watched, you most likely are. The hawk's eyes are piercing and they watch us just like we watch them. This is their home. This is where Hawks Run.