M. I. A.

I've been absent from here for almost two weeks.  It's all been good ... working on stuff and getting things done. 

Grab a beverage of your choice and settle in, while I tell you about some of the things that have happened here in Hartwood during the past two weeks.

1.  Early fall is time to harvest the grapes in the vineyard next door at Hartwood Winery.  Friends of the winery gathered when the time is right, and we spent two days laughing and picking grapes ... Chambourcin red grapes on Saturday two weeks ago and Seyval white grapes last Saturday.

Morning sun shining through the Seyval grapes.

The Chambourcin vines were loaded with fruit!

2.  On the suggestion of a friend, I downloaded the Purina Cat Fishing app to my iPad ... it's a video game for cats.  Dorothy loves it to the point of obsession, and she will sometimes go over to the iPad and stare at it to let me know that she wants to play.  Her high score so far is 580.

3.  I tried a new flower in my garden ... fall-blooming giant Colchicum.  They are blooming right now in a part of a new garden by the driveway that I'm working on.  Colchicum produces foliage in the spring that dies down in the summer, and sends up flowers without leaves in the fall.

4.  After a lull during the summer, Greyhounds Rock Fredericksburg is back to working our booth selling dog-related wares at events and raising money for canine cancer research.  My main responsibility in this is MAKING a lot of the merchandise that we sell.  I restocked our inventory of martingale collars, added a new design to our hand-painted leather wine glass lanyards, and made some new Tiny Dog Totes,  I am pleased to say that sales have been brisk!

Martingale collars.

Hand-painted leather wine glass lanyards.

Tiny Dog Totes ... like the one that I use to carry Winnie when we are out and about.

As I started making the totes last week, my sewing machine's pedal died ... it's probably a broken wire.  Thank goodness I have a vintage machine on hand, which worked flawlessly!

You can see how I found this beautiful White machine in THIS post from 2012.

4.  We have a large wild Persimmon tree in the back corner of our pasture.  It's not the kind of Persimmon that is good for cooking or eating.  The fruit is too small and full of huge seeds, and it never really gets sweet enough for humans to enjoy.  The tree is loaded with fruit this year ... more than I have ever seen on it before.

I set up my game camera in this spot last week, to see what kind of critters come to feast on fruit as it falls.  With this bounty available as bait, I hope to get some good images.  So far, there has only been one opossum show up in the photos.

Persimmon-eating 'Possum.

5.  We have a new vehicle parked in front of our house ... our Deputy Daughter's patrol car.  She graduated from the Academy in May, and finished her field training last month.  We are so proud of her!

6.  With the digging and destruction of replacing our water main behind us, I have begun to lay out the new shade garden in our backyard by the deck.  It's going to be a simple affair, with Hellebores, Hostas, and other easy-care shade-loving plants ... it is designed to cut down on mowing and give something nice to look at in this area.  

7.  What I have mostly been doing is enjoying the lovely fall weather, getting out often with the dogs.  We walk the property to give Ruby and Winnie some exercise and a taste of life in the country, and to try to keep Winnie's weight in check.  (Now that she's healthy, she's starting to get a little heavier than she should be.)

Ruby loves to roll in the grass.

Winnie found a small pile of wild animal poop to sniff ... eewwww.

Winnie has had enough and is trying to head for the house.

8.  My birthday was last week, and husband's birthday is at the end of the month.  Our daughter came up with the most wonderful idea for a combo birthday gift for us.  Inside of a beautiful rhinestone gift box (that she made), underneath a handful of silver jewels, was a slip of paper that detailed flight arrangements for our middle daughter to fly from Montana to spend a week with us!

This was my reaction ... I still get teary just thinking about it.  Happy tears.

Finishing up ... here are some gratuitous Winnie images for you, because she's so darned cute!

As you see, stuff here was normal.  I kept to my usual pace of making and doing things.  In addition to all of this, I took time to watch football, visit with friends, go on a garden tour ... I just didn't take time to come here and share stuff as it was happening. 

I hope all of you are doing well and enjoying whatever happens in your neck of the woods in fall.  (Tell me about it in the comments, if you are so inclined.)

Sunset

This evening's sunset was beautiful.  I decided to play around a bit, and I captured this image of the sunset reflected in my glass of wine from my neighbors at Hartwood Winery.

As I was walking back toward the house, I saw this reflection in the window.

I hope you take time to notice the beautiful things that happen around YOU.

I've Been Working in the Vineyard

Good Morning!!  Today I'm sharing with you a less-than-flattering photo of myself, doing something totally fun ... 'cause we're all about fun and sharing here in Hartwood.  (My FB friends have already seen this.)

 

 

This what I looked like for most of the day during my last two Saturdays ... dressed in work clothes, no shower, harvesting grapes in the vineyard next door at Hartwood Winery ... and thrilled to be spending beautiful sunny days working along side friends.

 

I have lots of photos that I took of people and grapes and butterflies ... but I like this one best.  (I played with it a bit using PicMonkey) 

 

Now that I think of it, I should sort through my harvest photos and share some of them with you ... sort of like a small winery, farm worker, harvest documentary.  (It may take me a few days to get to this, because this weekend is one of those where I will be running here and there and won't be home much.)

 

Speaking of the weekend .... I hope all of you have a really good one!

Seemingly Random Photos

I have been holding onto a few random photos that I have taken and saved over the past few weeks.  I love each of the shots, but there doesn't seem to be enough to talk about individually to make a full post out of any of them.  

This was what the sunset looked like one day last week.  I shot this photo as I stood on our back deck, amazed as I watched the colors intensify and change as the sun got lower and lower in the sky.  This photo is straight out of the camera ... not altered in any way ... not even sharpened ... okay, I reduced the size, but that's absolutely ALL I did to it. 

I love the view out the windows from the back of our house.  This is what it looks like when I'm standing at the kitchen peninsula looking out the dining room window.

The stained glass that's hanging in the window is one of five identical windows that I bought on eBay a few years ago.  It is the source of the MacIntosh rose image that I use as my Hartwood Roses logo, on the header here and on all of my nursery materials. 

While I was looking out the window yesterday morning, this hawk caught my eye.  I think it's a Cooper's Hawk, which are seasonal visitors around here.  Seeing him sitting on the fence made me wish that I had a mouse that I could give him for breakfast.  (The rose behind him is 'Silver Moon'.)

Speaking of birds ... one afternoon a couple of months ago I was working on the greenhouse and I noticed a group of Turkey Vultures soaring over the vineyard at Hartwood Winery next door.  A couple of the 'vultures' looked a little bit different than the others.  A closer look revealed that the two odd-ball vultures were, in fact, two mature bald eagles.  It's not unusual for us to see a bald eagle here from time to time, but TWO of them is quite a sight ... and the fact that I was able to get both of them in the same frame using my point-and-shoot camera is a miracle.

You have to look closely, but there are definitely two eagles in this photo of what appears at first to be empty blue sky.

I have mentioned before that the most emotional part of our annual 'Take a Bite Out of Canine Cancer' event for me is Sunday morning's Blessing of the Hounds.  Our officiant is a cancer survivor (and the minister who married our daughter last summer) and I always cry as she addresses the gathering with a group blessing.  She then blesses every dog individually, asking their owners if they have any particular things they want her to pray for.  For Daniel and me, we needed peace ... since our Emma had died a short 4 weeks earlier.  (I showed you the photo a friend took of Daniel and me in THIS post ... and I now use it as my FB profile photo.)  What I didn't show you was this photo of TJ, our Greyhounds Rock poster boy and 19-month osteosarcoma survivor, with his owners Andy and Kim.

Finally, please consider this your morning reminder to click the link below to vote for our grandson Caleb in the Parents Magazine cutest baby contest.  He is now #112, up from yesterday's #260, which means that we still have lots more voting to do to get him to the top.  Between you and me, he is WAY cuter than the little girl that's in first place right now.  Run over and cast your vote (you can vote once a day), share the link on FB and/or your blog, and let's do what we can to put Caleb in the lead.

Click HERE to vote:

Kitchen Crown Molding.

One day, I will sit and gather photos to do a comprehensive post describing the renovation of the kitchen in this old place of ours ... perhaps it will take a series of posts, because it has been a long process with lots of twists and turns along the way.  The design of the kitchen itself was fairly straight-forward.  Cabinet installation went well ... and this is where things stalled.  It has been six years since the first hammer was taken to the walls, and we are finally, FINALLY in the home stretch!

The big hold up in the process has been the installation of the crown molding on top of our cabinets.  It's a two-piece crown, solid cherry with a natural finish, like the cabinets themselves ... and it must be installed on the cabinets, not the ceiling, because the ceiling is 3/4" out of level across the length of the kitchen.  I have had three trim carpenters come look at the job, each of them tried to convince me that I should run the molding along the plane of the ceiling and that I'd never notice the unevenness on the cabinets themselves ... WRONG!  I want the molding to be parallel with the opening of the cabinet doors, no matter what happens at the ceiling line.  They didn't get it.  Bye bye.

Since 2005, this is what the top of our upper cabinets has looked like.  That 'trim' is a piece of 3/4" plywood, which is there to act as a backing for future crown molding.

In early December, while we were mingling with guests at the Christmas party at Hartwood Winery, we made a connection with Jim, a fellow guest and a cabinet maker who appeared to have the skills necessary to maybe, hopefully help me get this kitchen finished.  I asked questions, he gave great answers ... we see eye-to-eye on the project ... and yesterday he arrived here to get to work.

The first piece of the two-piece crown is up!  The lighter wood is a wedge of poplar which will support the second piece of the crown.

I am totally thrilled with the results so far!!  Jim is meticulous and his joints and corners are PERFECT ... which is what I demanded on this project.  Natural cherry molding means there's no room for error, and he is definitely up for the job.

Our one unforeseen challenge while Jim was working yesterday was our dog Daniel's reaction ... Daniel is deathly terrified of loud sharp noises (nail guns and hammers), and he spent the afternoon panting and drooling and whining on his bed in the office ... which was the farthest he could get from the kitchen.  While Jim is working here later today, Daniel is going to spend the day at our friends Andy and Kim's house hanging out with TJ.

Alice says, "Look, Daniel, nail guns aren't scary.  I'm sharpening my face on this one."

(I have to go now, to get Daniel out of here before Jim arrives.)

A Fabulous Fall Day

The weather today was perfect!  The sun was shining, with puffy white clouds accenting the bright blue sky.  The air was crisp and cool (sweater weather) but not so much as to be uncomfortable.  A perfect day to spend the morning working on projects (I'll show you later what I was up to) and the afternoon with a friend.

I was on the deck enjoying the view, while Daniel was outside at lunchtime, and I noticed that the trees across toward Hartwood Winery are starting to change into their fall colors. This will be an even more beautiful view in about a week. (When I say that I live next door to a winery, I mean RIGHT next door. The foreground of this photo is our field, and the other side of that board fence is vineyard.)

Some of the trees between the house and our barn are beginning to shed some of their leaves, and the barn is coming back into view.  (We can only see the barn from inside the house when the trees are leafless.)

Looking toward the south, I loved the way the sunshine was illuminating the branches of our enormous pecan tree.  Blue sky, green leaves ... ahhhhh.

Thank you, all of you, for your kind compliments about the painted bed I showed you yesterday.  I am a bit surprised at what retail prices must be in shops.  (I'm a bargain hunter, after all ... retail shopping and buying is something that I almost never do.)  The consensus in the comments was that $250 would be a good price ... perhaps it is, with commission and booth rental figured in, but it makes me squirm.  I was thinking it should be more like $175.  This would leave enough $$$ to buy a lovely nightstand, or perhaps a dresser or chest to go with your little girl's bed ... repeat customers and word of mouth satisfaction is the ticket ... I hope I'm on the right track.

Have a great weekend, Everyone! 

Slices of Friday

Most of yesterday was spent on small tasks to get ready for the art event that we are having here today.  The morning started in the garden as it almost always does, but not in my garden this time ... I went next door to Hartwood Winery to their garden first.

I didn't go over there to photograph butterflies ... but, I had camera in hand, and the butterfly was right there ... I had to do it.

My neighbor had told me that one of his plants was infested with yellow aphids.  Since I had never seen or heard of yellow aphids, I HAD to see this for myself.  Sure enough ... yellow aphids.  A quick Google search found that these are called Oleander Aphids, and they are a pest of milkweed ... which was what they were infesting in the winery garden.  This truly proves that we CAN learn something new every day, if we are just open to it.

Icky aphid photo.

In my own garden, I found a perfect flower on Blossomtime rising above the weeds that still choke that area of the Rose Field.

I was back in that portion of the garden to FINALLY install blue wine bottles on my bottle trees that flank the entry to the Austin Garden.  I have never shown these to you, because they didn't have any bottles on them, because I hadn't removed the labels from the bottles I have been collecting for the past two years.  A couple of hours of work over the past few days, and I cleaned up my 40 bottles and I arranged them onto the welded rebar structures.  I still need more bottles, but at least I have enough now to look pretty respectable.

The sky over toward the vineyard looked for a while like we were going to have a storm, but we didn't.  Though it never came, it sure made for a pretty picture.

With my outside work taken care of, it was time to go grocery shopping ... but I made a trip to the thrift store first.  This fantastic little solid wood two-drawer chest was too good to pass up.

While I was grocery shopping, I saw this display of t-shirts in the Halloween department. 

Back at home, I was putting away groceries while Dorothy slept on the church pew in our dining room.  At least it LOOKED like she was asleep, curled up there on the baby quilt.  Looking closer, I realized that she was playing 'possum and one of her eyes was wide open.

We have an hour and a half to get the final preparations in place for today's art event.  Let's hope that lots of artists, and art lovers, come today to support canine cancer research.  Speaking of canine cancer, I heard from my friend Kim that her dog TJ went for his quarterly chest x-ray on Thursday.  (TJ is 16 months post amputation for osteosarcoma.)  One of the most common places for osteosarcoma to metastisize is to the lungs.  His lungs are clear, his attitude is great, and he will be here today to greet our guests.

I'd better hush and go get things ready.