Blow, Wind, Blow!

56 this morning, after a wild night of thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Today the wind is incredible. 

The power and the phones have been off and on all day. It's not safe to be out, so we are hunkered up and waiting it out, all other plans on hold. I did seed two more kinds of tomatoes: brandywine black and Giant Belgium., and some cayenne peppers,  all in pots in the little greenhouses now. Expecting cold tonight but not freezing.

I am feeling so sad for all those who suffered from last night's storms. How terrifying it must be to find oneself in the path of a tornado. It seems like there is really no place that us completely safe from some type of natural danger. Canadians have snow and ice and extremely low temperatures,  we in West Virginia have floods (although we personally are safe, being high above any streams). Out west is drought, flashfloods, avalanches in the mountains, the South gets hurricanes, tornadoes and floods...and the list goes on. It certainly keeps us humble in the face of Nature, doesn't it? Maybe the day will come when man controls the weather, and I bet we'd make a right mess of it!

Larry went out this morning before these winds arrived to look for molly moochers, the local name for morel mushrooms. And look what he found! 

While he was gone I made one of our favorite breakfasts,  one that we don't have very often: toast spread with guacamole,  then a slice of ham, then a fried egg, a slice of tomato, and topped with a spoonful of Greek yogurt. Absolutely sinful, I swear. But leave out the ham and the toast, and it is fairly healthy. Here is mine after I began demolishing it. You should know, this is a salad-size plate, not a full dinner plate!

So, back to doing pretty much nothing while the wind howls. We are not complaining though, we are both just enjoying the rest. Tomorrow I expect we will be right back at it as usual.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Marietta Booth--but for how long?

44 this morning, cold and showers again. Around noon, freezing rain and snow mix; hasn't warmed up much.

It's a good day to be inside, for sure. Larry's been out of course--the man can't help himself, especially now that it's mollymoocher season. What's a mollymoocher, you might ask? 

Most people call them morels, and they're delicious and easy to identify so no worries about poisoning ourselves. The trick is to find them. I can rarely spot them, but Larry's found enough for us to cook for tonight's dinner. Yum. Another thing I love about this photo besides the delicious morel--that moss in the top right of center. Look how it's sprouting up.

Today I'm inside, listening to NPR, cleaning, and getting ready to paint another table. But here's a look at what we did at our Marietta booth the other day. Speaking of Marietta, we may be moving out of there sometime in the next month or so. A vendor mall has opened in our county seat, and I stopped to talk to them while we were out on Wednesday. I showed them photos of our booths and they said they definitely wanted us to have a space there. So if that all works out, we will close our Marietta location and move that booth to Ripley. We shall see. The rent is more, but more than offset by the travel costs, as Marietta is about 60 miles from home, and with today's gas prices that trip is a consideration. I'll miss the mall, because I like being there, and love shopping there when I have time after setting up my booth. But again, we'll see if this actually pans out.

You might recognize the little table from our Riverbend booth. It was there for several months, so we moved it to Marietta to see if we can sell it there.

Some things sold off the wall, and we took down some tools to move to Ravenswood where we have put together a tool corner. That's the up side of having two locations--being able to shift things around to find different buyers.

Paperweights are always a good seller for me.

Jadeite sells well, unless it's cups and saucers. They're slow sellers, but I won't be lowering the price on them.

I have a thing for colored glass bottles, and it shows.

Lamps sell well at Riverbend, not so much here, but I still keep some in stock because they do sell, if slowly.

Vintage kitchen tools still sell well. I need to replenish this area if we don't move.

Another move from Riverbend--this stenciled table. I really thought it would sell fast, but 8 months later, here it still is, so we moved it. Fingers crossed that we find a buyer here.

Single chairs also sell well, the painted ones faster than the stained ones. But this chair was in such good condition I won't be painting it.

Blue and white continues to be a thing in decorating, especially with the "farmhouse" decor style.

As for me, I'm partial to green. I took these pitchers and bowls out of my own kitchen recently. One can, I have found, have too many!

These shelves are really catchalls. I try to theme shelves a bit, but these end up with a little of everything.

Cake plates--I have found quite a few lately, so I am hoping that this is the season to sell them.

The idea of packing all this up is daunting, but it won't be the first time we have done it. Meanwhile, until we hear yea or nay on the new place, we'll continue to keep this one stocked--even if it means moving it all out before long.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Surprises

35 and snowing after a day in the 70's. 

This was our surprise this morning:

Well, well. And Larry just put out 4 tomato plants yesterday. He covered them last night with milk jugs so they'll be all right, but what about the more tender plants now coming up? It will get colder tonight, so I'm afraid we're going to lose a few things.

April weather, like March, can be so capricious in these mountains. We've had snow in May in the past, although usually just lasting for a few hours. And if it's 35 here on the hill, it will be at least 5 degrees colder at lower elevations. I sure feel for my neighbors who also have gardens and fruit trees. I also have small tomato and pepper plants in the little greenhouse--we may have to provide some heat for them today and tonight. A lamp would be enough, I think.

The other surprise news: I started training yesterday to work at the Riverbend Antique Mall where I have some booths. I'll basically be backup to the backup to the backup, as there are a few others who fill in when the owner is off. But there have been times when she's been in a crunch, so I will hopefully be able to cover those times. I honestly never thought I'd work in a place where I have to be there at a certain time, but here I am. The good side is that I can work on my own booth in slow times, and bring some items to list on eBay while I'm there too. This is volunteer work--it will be a nice change of pace from time to time, I bet I will hear some good stories too.

Yesterday I took in these two pieces, just finished. We'd sold a small chair and a dresser, so I just filled in the gaps. 

Monday Larry went up our driveway to cut down a big stump, and was surprised to find morel mushrooms growing around it. He'd been hunting for them all over the hills and had found enough for a couple meals but these were right in full view, and we'd almost missed them. He checked our ramp patch too. We planted some wild ones on a cool, dark holler on our place, and have been waiting 10 years for them to spread enough for us to harvest. He got enough for a nice miss of ramps and fried potatoes. If you've never heard of ramps, they're a wild onion/garlic cross that grows only in certain areas of the Appalachians and are considered a spring tonic by mountain people, and a delicacy by chefs in big cities like New York and Philadelphia--I remember a delicious meal in Philly some years ago that featured trout "with ramp". Sounded so funny because they are never called in the singular here. 

And the last surprise is a terribly sad one. My friend and poet Susan Shepherd passed away Monday in the early morning hours. She fought a brave fight, but in the end killer cancer won. Her voice will be so missed; her presence was magical, down-to-earth and yet ethereal at the same time. A medium, seer, poet, writer, actress, and so much more. Her obituary surprised me with all she accomplished in her life; although we were friends as members writing and poetry groups, and with a common interest in ghost stories, I found that I knew little about all the other aspects of her life. She was the inspiration for the ghost walk I lead, as she led such walks for years in Parkersburg, WV. I will miss her smile, her voice, her presence. 

Life and death--so inexricably linked. Small plants growing, while death stalked my friend. This path we walk is no easy one.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Morels, Washing Machines, Painting and Glass: What We've Been Up to

It is such a beautiful time of year. 

Redbuds are in bloom, the dogwood is just starting,

and Daisy still doesn't like thunder.

She wanted in last week when we had a stormy day, and who could resist those eyes? She did give us a scare the other day and we are not sure what's up, but have an ominous feeling about it. She couldn't get up on her own. Not even a bribe with a treat would get her up. She came inside, laid down, and didn't get up again for about 12 hours. Finally we gave her some ibuprofen in desperation, and after another half hour or so she wobbled to her feet and went outside. By mid-day she was back to normal. What we are afraid of is those dreaded tumors that are so common with this breed of dog. I remember my son's dog behaved something like this for about a year before he finally died. I hope it was something simpler--maybe a pulled muscle or something like that, but we shall see. She is getting older, and yellow labs usually have a lifespan of about 10 years, sadly.

On a happier note, we got this old wood washing machine base in the online auction the other day, and now are in the process of using my old machine that fell apart to make this one whole again. It will be a little more work than we had hoped but it will work just fine once we're done.

And we've made progress on the typewriters I got in the first online auction a couple weeks ago. One is cleaned up and ready to go, and Larry has worked on the other once since this photo was taken.

I also won this cabinet in the auction. Talk about dirty! The photo on the auction site only showed the top right corner, so it was a veritable pig in a poke. It is larger than I thought it might be, so that's a good thing. I've scrubbed it up since the photo and now it is loaded in the van to go to the booth tomorrow.

This is the cool part of the cabinet--those little holes covered with screen wire. I supposed this was used as a pie cupboard?

I am just about done with this little dresser too. The mis-matched knobs are because I was trying to decide which ones to use, but have now settled on the one on the top right. That's because...

I painted the drawers pale pink, with this little flower stencil in the center of each. I really wanted this piece to have a springtime look, so I went for spring colors.

Outside is greening up nicely. The bridal wreath spirea is outdoing itself this year.

Some of the other auction finds:

This large black vase was a surprise. It was in with a box of blue glass--actually there are two of these. This one has clear "threading" which is actually spun glass; looks like silver, doesn't it? The other has amber threading that looks like gold. They're about 12" tall each. I wasn't much interested in them and to be honest thought there were something from Walmart or similar place, but that glass threading--and the fact that they were black glass and not pottery/ceramic--made me pause. After cleaning them up, they looked really nice so I posted this photo to a Facebook glass group. To make this long story shorter, these are HC Fry Glass and are fairly rare! So now I've ordered a book on Fry Glass to learn more.

Some of the other glass from the online auction, after being washed up. It was all so dirty from years or being stored in a buiding right by the road, so years of dust and dirt and dead bugs. Yuck. But all of this plus the black vases cost less than $20 so I didn't mind a little elbow grease. All is now priced for the booths or listed on ebay.

And one other thing: it's mushroom season! Larry found these lovelies last week and went back and got more over the weekend. He calls these mollymoochers but most people call them morels. Delicious eating, I assure you, once they've been cleaned up.

That's a bit of what's been going on in our neck of the woods. What's happening at your place?

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Into the Woods

Morel hunting requires close examination of the forest as you search because the mushrooms can be difficult to spot. The added value of this kind of careful mindfulness to the task is that you also see many other things almost as interesting as the elusive morel.

Here are a few of the things that caught my eye last Saturday as we scoured the woods: 

Creasy greens blooming just behind the house

Someone's little home--could it be a fairy house, or perhaps just a fairydiddle's house?

A rock pile signaling the past--long ago wheat was grown on this steep hillside.

Do you see that tiny hole in the ground just below the tree? George spotted this; I am sure I would have overlooked it. But in this little hole were

two tiny baby rabbits! So snug they were in their little nest. Even though we knew we'd soon be chasing them out of our gardens, we left them to their slumbers.

And finally, back home over the hill to cook the day's haul.

Tomorrow I will post photos that Grace and Haley took when they went venturing with Larry in search of mushrooms in another location. They didn't find any, but they certainly saw some neat things.

Have you been in the woods this spring? What did you see?