Tiny Bubbles

This is not carbonated water but just plain tap water that has been sitting in this glass overnight. Every night, I have a glass of water at my bedside in case I wake up thirsty which doesn't often very often. I always marvel at the tiny bubbles that form overnight. I jiggled the stainless steel straw to get an action shot. Have a great Sunday. Mine is full of bright sun and a lovely blue sky. xo

Blue Skies Reflected in My Birdbath

The slight shimmer of the water when nothing else is moving is amazing to me. I am still exploring the magic of live photos converted to GIFs. You never know how they are going to turn out. If you want to get good ones, just be sure to make multiple photos and delete the ones that didn't work out. That's what I have been doing with my bird photos. I have a busy Monday morning ahead of me. Snow is coming and I have to get more birdseed in addition to ingredients for my morning smoothie. More about those later. Stay snug.

xo

Cold Weather Walk

Nothing earth shattering here. I walked around my property a couple of times on a single digit day and took off my mitten to take this photo. There's not much color around but I liked the slight movement going on with the vines and leaves in this photo. They are moving but the background is not. It's much warmer now and I'm grateful. I'm looking forward to Episode 5 of the three PBS programs I will be watching tonight. Enjoy your Sunday evening too.

xo

View from My Window

Overcast Saturday Morning

View from My Pantry Window

It rained like cats and dogs all night long and thankfully my gutters were cleaned recently and I could hear the water rushing through the downspouts very clearly. When I woke up the rain had stopped and my balcony was as clean as can be so I didn't have to sweep the area below the bird feeder. I have to go food shopping today and that's one of my least favorite things to do. I always try to talk myself out of it until there isn't anything in the house to eat and that's nearly where I am today. I'm going to clean my refrigerator first though, another task I dislike, but it makes me feel good when I finish. Enjoy your weekend. xo

Alien Visitor this Evening

This alien-looking creature was not camera shy in the least. He let me get super close to him for his portrait session. I wonder what he told the others when he returned to the mothership? Click to enlarge.

Along Came a Spider

I was greeted by this large spider at my front door recently. I am not afraid of them and this one let me take his portrait. xo

Flower Petals Unfurling

This is an iPhone I photo I took on Sunday morning. The petals of one of my African daisies was starting to unfurl and looked like a pinwheel. I am enjoying these flowers so much in my containers. They do require constant deadheading to keep the new blooms coming and so far I am keeping up. I think they are waiting for some really hot weather and they'll get their wish on Wednesday when it's going to be in the high 80s and I will be wilting. I posted this photo on Instagram so it's not new to some of you. Happy first day of June. xo

A seldom seen wall in my living room.

My antique bookcase with sliding glass doors in the living room is filled with my collection of antiquarian books with fine leather bindings. It is impossible to show the bottom two shelves going all the way down to the floor as the space is too tight without moving heavy furniture. The top is lined with my Georgian glass decanters and other suitable items for drinking if the decanters were ever filled. It's a pain to dust and when I do, I have to refer to a photo in order to get everything back in the proper place. Enjoy the last full week of May. xo

Red Geranium Thru A Window

I took this geranium photo this afternoon after I worked in my front yard for hours tidying up the weeds and dead grass and leaves along my brick wall. The violets have just started and I wanted to give them room to spread. It was a good way to work off the sourdough pancakes I made this morning. I have gone back to the early 1970s with my cooking from scratch. I prepared my first batch of sourdough starter on Monday and prepared my overnight sponge for the pancakes last night They were delicious and I can heat up the extras in my toaster. 

This as the sky at 7am on Monday morning. My mother always called it a buttermilk sky. I posted it on Instagram and a couple of people said Cogey Carmichael had a song by that name that was popular in the late 1930s and 1940s. We always had buttermilk in my house when I was growing up and I always thought this sky got its name from the way buttermilk dries on the inside of the glass when you don't rinse it out right away.

I took this photo on Monday with the geranium inside my living room and me outside on the balcony with a reflection of the buttermilk sky in the background.

I hope you are all doing well with staying inside during this time of quarantine. So far, I know only one person who had Covid-19 and she has recovered, but it did linger for quite a long time. I am thankful we are going into warmer weather rather than winter. We are all learning new things. One neighbor who has mastered grocery delivery says she will never go grocery shopping again in person after this is over; she loves online ordering and having them delivered to her door. Another neighbor (across the street from me) has been doing it for 10 years and she's teaching all of us her techniques. Neighbors helping neighbors is a good thing. xo

Still Life Saturday

Still life with raspberries and cherries
Eloise Harriet Stannard (English 1829-1915)
via

Still life at my kitchen sink.
Posted on Instagram here.
*Baby pilea plant.
*Antique opera glasses for looking out my kitchen window in style.
*Antique porcelain funnel.
*Old one-cup porcelain coffee filter.
*Happy Easter rabbit dish picked up at a resale shop.

Happy Saturday and have a great weekend. xo

Two 19thC Farm Buildings

These two 19th Century farm buildings or ice houses were partially buried for cold storage before refrigeration and are still useful. I photographed them at a Broker Open House on Thursday. They are lovely and are currently being used for storing gardening items.
Have a great weekend.
xo

Antique Wirework Find

My Valentine to myself. Yesterday's find at an estate sale is so exciting. I love this piece of wirework and will have fun finding things to display in the baskets. Fruit for now. I used the portrait mode on my iPhone for this photo. Have a great weekend.

Clouds Viewed from My Cottage

It has been a strange 27 hours. When I drove through a ferocious downpour and arrived home at a little after 5:00pm I heard my generator when I got out of my car. I am thankful I have it but I am always anxious for the power to be restored. It finally came back on at 4:00 this afternoon. This photo was snapped on Friday qt 8:30. It's the same sky as my previous photo but a different orientation. Click to enlarge.

Friday Night Eventide

I snapped this photo out back just before the end of the day. My lacecap hydrangea is to the right and it's more beautiful than ever this year. My field is looking very nice with some golden tall grasses mixed in with the weeds. The sky had some nice color too. I wish I could capture the fireflies that will be blinking after dark. They are absolutely amazing now that we are having hot summer nights. I finally went to the attic and put a new filter in my air exchanger and fired up my central air for the first time this season. 

Stay cool and have a lively weekend. xo

My Peony Garden

I took this photo late Saturday afternoon, the last day of May. This morning the peonies have opened showing their beautiful yellow centers. The ferns I dug from my woods are spectacular this year too. Will post a photo later. Happy First Day of June. The ferns I dug from my woods are really thick and healthy this year because of all the rain. xo Click photo to enlarge.

Saturday Morning Snowfall: My Cottage

I have yet to open my front door since the snow stopped a short while after I got up. This photo is the view from my bedroom window looking toward the well-plowed road. I am so happy I live on a County road that is plowed frequently!!! The melting has already begun but I'm going to wait until after lunch to start shoveling when it's even warmer. I think I got 4 or 5 inches. Not too bad. See you later. xo

March First: Lion or Lamb?

I really wasn't expecting to wake up to snow this morning, on the first day of March. I am calling this arrival a Lamb because all I have to do is shovel my front walk and clean off my car. No plowing is required on my circular driveway since I have 4-wheel drive. I might have to change this to Lion weather depending on the snow that's predicted for both days of the next two consecutive weekends. Fingers crossed. I usually depend on the sun to melt my balcony and my car but it will be hiding until Monday. Be safe wherever you are. xo

Christmas Eve at My Cottage with Luminaria

Christmas Eve 2018 at My Cottage

I finally edited an iPhone photo and made it good enough to post. I used the photo editor built into my phone. I am so happy my across-the-street neighbors invited me to participate in luminaries to set out on Christmas Eve. I did my walkway too and it was magical. The long-burning fat candles amazed me. I had no idea they would burn between 10 and 12 hours depending on the wind conditions. My neighbors ordered the bags and candles here. This is going to be a tradition for me for sure. I took this photo about 10:30 pm when the full moon was above my cottage and the stars were plentiful and bright. Only 6 families signed up, two next to me and three contiguous properties on the other side. Several friends said they drove through and commented on how beautiful it was. Maybe more will participate next year. I hope so. One more day until year's end. Where did it go? xo

Apples and Fall are Perfect Together

This is the big antique wooden charger in the middle of my kitchen farm table. It is 25-1/2 inches wide at its widest point and is out of round due to shrinkage. I love it. I bought an 8-pound bag of Cortland Apples yesterday at Wegmans, a large new grocery store just beyond Morristown. It's not a big box store but it does have family packs of certain items. Yesterday there were all varieties of apples in 8-pound bags for $5.99, what a bargain! I counted them when I got home and there were 18. I put half on the table and the other half in my crisper. They are everything I hoped they would be in an eating apple -- crisp, juicy and sweet but not too sweet. I love an apple that snaps when you bite into it and I would have been crushed had they been mushy. Now I am all set with fruit for two weeks. They don't have stickers on them either, and I like that. They remind me of the old-fashioned apples my mother and I used to pick at my oldest friend in New Jersey's house but she moved a couple of years ago and now I have to take my chances with apples and buy before I can taste them.

I put this photo on Instagram yesterday but liked it enough to put it on my blog too. I am looking forward to Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages tonight on PBS. After that, I'll watch something I have recorded because there's nothing else on that interests me. Enjoy your Friday night and have a great weekend. I turned on the furnace for the first time on Wednesday and last night it got below freezing. I am so glad I emptied all of my galvanized watering cans and put them in the garage yesterday before they froze and exploded. I learned that lesson the hard way. xo

A Painting in My Collection

Lillian Cotton (1892–1962) was an American artist known for her portraits, especially of high-society figures and well-known actors, writers, and artists of her day.

She was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was Nathaniel Hugh Cotton, a West Indies shipping merchant born in Barbados, and her mother was Harriet Emma Clapp. Cotton developed an interest in art as a young child, drawing detailed portraits in sketchbooks as early as age ten, and attended the Boston Museum School. Between 1915 and 1917, Cotton studied at the Art Students League of New York under Robert Henri and George Bellows. In 1924, Cotton moved to Paris and studied at the André Lhote Academy. While in Paris, she met Arthur Elia Impey, a British army officer, and married him in 1926. The couple lived between Paris and New York.

Artist Information found here.

I have always wondered who this adorable child is, ever since I bought this painting with a left bid at an auction. It is signed lower left: L.Cotton 1913 when she was still at the Art Students League studying under the famous artists mentioned above.

I just discovered the magnifying glass on my iPhone and decided to use it on the horse embroidered on my baby painting's smocked outfit. You can see the texture of the canvas and the brush strokes of the oil paint.

I adore babies in smocked garments, a trend that is long out of style here where today's babies are dressed as miniature adults. Why rush it? They have their whole lives to wear khaki pants and button-down shirts! England's Royalty dress their children in age-appropriate styles from an age gone by. I love the way Prince William and Duchess Catherine are dressing Prince George, Princess Charlotte and I can't wait to see more of baby Prince Louis' attire. xo