SPENDING TIME WITH JANE...

WELCOME...

If you have a little time to spare,

 I would love for you 

to come over to the Cottage today.

 

 The smoke

 from the fires around California 

has driven us inside once more

 so I thought it would be 

a pleasure to spend some time 

with Jane Austen.

"You cannot imagine 

- it is not in 

human nature to imagine- 

what a nice walk we had 

round the orchard".

May 31, 1811

I am hoping 

that you will find this little visit

 of interest to you.

 

 Jane was a woman 

who knew the meaning of a good word and 

she traveled in 

comforting but exciting 

circles.

"We dine at

 Chilham Castle tomorrow and 

I expect to find 

some amusement".

November 3, 1813

Friends were very important 

to Jane and her way of life, and 

she also knew 

what it meant to keep

 a happy home and 

to enjoy the time 

that she spent there.

"The Milles of Nachington 

dine here on Friday and

 perhaps the Hattons".

June 26, 1808

Jane would have been a terrific blogger. 

 What she could have told us

about her travels and her way of being. 

 I wonder how she 

would have decorated 

her home for fall.

The last paint by number painting finally finds a place.

"There are more 

gooseberries and fewer currants

 than I thought at first. 

 We must buy currants 

for our wine".

June 6, 1811

I have gotten a bit more energy 

these last few days.  

I have been cleaning and 

polishing bits and pieces 

in the sitting room. 

 The thought of Jane, 

and all of you, 

coming to pay your respects 

was just too much

 for me to ignore.

"They say that 

there are a prodigious number 

of birds hereabouts 

this year".

September 1, 1796

The blue jays 

that spend time 

in the old walnut tree above the Secret Garden

 have been beside themselves 

this past week.  

When our power was turned off,

 we used our generator for the first time.

  It sits right below 

the tree and makes quite a racket, 

but the birds squawking

 could be heard

 over it all.

"For elegance and 

ease and luxury, 

the Hattons and Milles 

dine here today, and

 I shall eat ice and

 drink French wine".

June 20, 1808

All our ice melted 

during the black-out and 

it sure would have been nice

 to have some of 

Jane's French wine.

"We drank tea again yesterday 

with the Tilsons, and 

met the Smiths. 

 I find all these 

little parties

 very pleasant".

April 18, 1811

If this cool weather

 that we are now having keeps up, 

I think we will be serving tea 

in front of 

the fire soon.

"The widgeon and

 the preserved ginger 

were as delicious 

as one could wish".

December 27, 1808

I have to admit

 that I looked up 

the definition of widgeon. 

 I would be too embarrassed 

to show my ignorance to Jane,

 by asking it to her face, 

 so I googled it. 

 I had never heard the word before.

 As it turns out, 

Jane and company

 had duck with preserved ginger for tea.

 All I could come up with

 was oatmeal raisin cookies,

 store bought even!

"We have got 

the second volumne of

 Espriella's Letters, and 

I read it aloud 

by candlelight".

October 1, 1808

In just a few short weeks 

it will be 212 years 

since Jane lit that candle.

"Yesterday was

 a very quiet day with us,

 my noisiest efforts

 were writing to Frank, and 

playing shuttlecock 

with William".

August 24, 1805

As I mentioned earlier, 

the weather these last few days 

has been very strange.

  The skies are filled with smoke and

 the temperature went from

 high 90's down to the 60's. 

 I am not complaining at all,

 except for the unsettling reason being

 the destructive fires all over. 

 We are not that close

 to any one of them,

 but it is amazing 

how far the smoke

 can travel.

"I do not know

 what is the matter with me today,

 but I cannot 

write quietly".

June 11, 1799

We switched chairs 

from the parlor and the sitting room.

 I really like 

the blue ones in the parlor and 

the flowered burgundy ones

 fit nicely into the fall scheme 

in the sitting room. 

They are especially better

 when our poor backs

 need a straighter

 sitting position.

"You often wore

 a white gown in the morning

 at the time of all 

the gay parties 

being with you".

January 3, 1801

I hope you enjoyed 

your visit here 

at the Cottage with Jane.

  I wish we could always 

have a guest like her. 

 I feel so fortunate

 that she had time 

in her busy schedule to spend with us, and 

it was just the experience I needed 

to get the sitting room 

all done up for fall.

 

 Now

 that the excitement is over and 

we go back to our "normal" lives,

 Jane leaves us 

with a parting comment:

"There is nothing like 

staying at home 

for real comfort".

Jane Austen

I second that.

Stay smart, 

stay well,

and 

in case you hadn't heard...

 

Last week I told you 

that one person had died 

as a result of that wedding 

in the small town in Maine.

 The number now stands at five dead.

As I reported at the end of July, 

our little county had 242 cases, 

we are now 

topping out at 500.

Wear your masks, please.

...Judy...

All quotes from Jane Austen came from my old copies of Victoria magazine, way back in the 1900's!

All other nonsense is my own.

Who can answer this question:

Where did my header photograph go?

Who had permission to change it without asking?  If you can answer this please do.

At some later time, I will let you know if I like it!!

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EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN...

 

Happy Labor Day!

You are reading this post today 

instead of the usual time,

 as we will be losing our power

 sometime between 9:00 PM and 1:00 AM and 

it will not be turned back on

 until Wednesday after 7:00 PM.

 (If we are lucky).

Last week's star of the show with added autumn touches

Everything old is new again. 

 What a cliche.

  How many times will we hear that phrase

 used over the course of our lives? 

 Too many to count but never, 

I repeat never,

 has it been more true 

than at this time, at least in my life.

 

 Staying in, 

as the Coronavirus is beating down our doors,

 I have not been out to a store 

since last March. 

 I even looked back 

at my blog posts 

to find the exact date when 

that happened and that was March 8 

when I bought 

the plain green wreath.

As summer is wearing down 

it seems to be taking 

my ambitions with it. 

 Last week, I straightened up the entry hall

 but that is the first real cleaning 

I have done in the Cottage

 for awhile now. 

 Outside of making the bed and 

doing dishes, 

very little attention has been given 

to this sweet Cottage.

  Even though I talk to myself every day 

to get up and get going,

 I haven't felt that urge 

to accomplish much.

  I am hoping 

that the hot weather is the reason and 

when the cooler days

 of fall start happening,

 I will get back to what 

I actually love 

to do.

  What is a good thing though,

 is writing my blog, 

 It is something I love to do and

 what it mainly boils down to is 

I need photos to accompany the writing and 

I would rather use ones 

that I have just taken

 over older ones. 

 Therefore,

 since I am stuck in the house,

 there needs to be things 

in the house to photograph.

  And those things in the house 

need to be photo worthy. 

 So, therefore, 

the house needs to be clean!

 

 I think that was pretty smart of me

 to give myself a kick in the butt 

to get me started...

 

Even a tiny little bit of Moonlight and Magic has creeped in

...and that brings us back to 

that old cliche. 

 Everything old is new again 

when it comes to fall decorating this year,

 so I looked back at one year ago 

to see where we were 

when all our troubles 

seemed so far away...

...in the first post

 of September, 2019, 

I wrote about our new

 little kitchen island and...

...the fall decorated garland and 

wreath to match 

on the parlor mantel, 

so that just seems like

 the logical place 

for this week's post to go. 

(Both here) 

With a little glass cleaner and

 a squirt of lemon oil, 

the parlor mantel is again ready for fall.

  I was going to use 

the same garland and wreath like last year,

 with a small change up, 

but the Captain was busy and

 couldn't get the boxes down for me 

so I decided to go with 

whatever I could find around the Cottage

 that would fit in with fall.

 Of course,

 blue and white is always appropriate and

 with a little strand 

of autumn leaves and dried hydrangeas 

from last year,

 it worked out quite well.

 Taking photos of the parlor mantel 

does not always turn out great.

 With the big mirror

 reflecting the doorway across and

 the entry too, 

it seems a little busy and 

takes away from the actual decoration.

 I split it up in two or three parts

 so you can still get the idea 

of what it looks like

 all together.

You might also notice 

that the blue chairs

 from the Sitting Room

 are now in the parlor. 

 What happened to the other chairs?  

That is another story 

for another fall day. 

 Obviously, 

that burgundy carpet 

is still there also.

 Will that be gone 

on another fall day?

One can only hope!

The little Ikea island 

is really one of our better investments. 

 It takes up

 just the right amount of space 

in the kitchen and 

works well for 

some vegetable and dish storage and 

for the cutting board. 

 It is really 

the working part of the kitchen. 

 I have spruced it up and

 made it look a little more

 autumn presentable.

Thank you, Gold Country Cottage,

 for giving me some encouragement

to getting back on track. 

 I didn't plan on being 

so neglectful of you but 

sometimes things just happen 

that are out of our control 

but little by little 

we will get back to being

 right side up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FYI:

 The following is not a political statement but there are ones

 who might see it that way. 

 I can't help how you see it,

 I can just know what I mean 

when I say it. 

I just wanted to make you aware

 of the possibility and 

to give you the choice

 of whether you wanted to 

read any further.

 

It is just a

 summery of the facts 

of the world we are

 now living in and

how I view it.

I have written from my own memory 

so some of the numbers may be off 

but the events in question

have been fact checked.

  

  

As you know,

 I am a huge advocate of wearing masks and

 from the comments I have been getting,

 I know that most feel the same as I do. 

 I just heard a story 

that maybe some of you have heard too. 

 But, just in case 

you might not think that

 masks should be

 an important part of our lives now,

 think again.

There is a 

very small town in Maine 

that had no Covid-19 cases 

from the very beginning. 

 They lasted a long time that way 

until a wedding was held 

on August 7 with 62 people in attendance.

  It was a wonderful occasion 

as most weddings are. 

 They celebrated, drank and made merry, 

all without masks and social distancing, and

 the fun lasted 

until 30 of the 62 guests

 came down with the virus, 

ages 4 through 78.

After the celebrating was over,

 they all traveled back to their homes and

 infected 123 people, killing one.

 

 A nurse went back to her 

Senior Rehab agency that she worked at,

 a guard went back to work at the jail, 

a number of employees

 of the host venue became sick,

 a teacher went to her class 

on the first day of school and 

infected a number of staff 

along with the Superintendent of Schools, and 

an 83 year old woman,

 who wasn't even at the wedding,

 contracted the virus and died 

while her husband, a WW11 veteran

 went into the hospital 

a week after she passed.

The pastor who officiated at the wedding

 is a pilot and flew his own plane

 to the destination from a neighboring town. 

 He was diagnosed on a Saturday and

on Sunday held services at his church 

with a large number in the congregation and 

 a fifteen person choir  

all without wearing masks. 

 A number of firemen

 who attended church services became ill.

  The church is now known

 as a Super Spreader.

 

 The pastor went ahead

 with his church service

 because he doesn't believe any of this.

  He says the Coronavirus and 

all that it involves 

is a made up situation by Democrats.

  He says that his church 

is in the front line of a culture war and 

they are battling against

 a "socialistic" platform 

that mandates mask wearing and 

distant learning in schools,

 all so that the religious communities

 can be stopped from the advancement

 of the gospel.

At a rally 

in New Hampshire recently, 

 it was said that Democrats 

don't believe that 

law abiding citizens 

can go to church together.

 

 Not only 

are those nonsensical statements to make,

 no matter what party you are affiliated with,

or who you are,

 they all are blatant untruths.

  The concern is that 

large groups congregating,

 without masks and without social distancing, are spreading the virus and

 190,000 and counting

 have died.

 It is only as simple as that.

  I hope you know me

 well enough by now 

to know that I am not an hysteric and 

that I try to be 

a logical thinker.

The election is coming on 

fast and furious.

  Whether you are a

 Republican, Democrat or an Independent,

 we are all in this together, and 

it is imperative 

that we use common sense,  

good judgement and good intentions 

and pick whom we vote for

 very carefully.

  Anyone who promotes

this type of misinformation

 or who believes it as truth, 

should be given hard scrutiny.

 It is very important

 who we choose as our leaders.

 The outcome could be 

 devastating and 

even deadly.

 

This is not a political statement

 or a recommendation for 

any one candidate running for office

 over another. 

 It is not an attempt

 to throw anyone under a bus

 for their beliefs,

 as your beliefs are as important to you

 as mine are to me. 

I welcome your comments 

whether you agree with me

 or not.    

Stay smart,

 stay well and 

wear your masks.

...Judy...

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BUSY WORK...

 

Life is moving slowly here 

at the Cottage. 

 The smoke comes and goes.

  The fire, closest to us, 

is reported to be

 100% contained. 

 The far away mountain 

still looks hazy 

but our air, up close,

 seems less so.

We did a little house cleaning. 

 The entry has been swiped and polished

 so there are photos 

to be shared this week. 

 The entry measures 11 ft X 5 ft,

 so you can see

 how busy we have been!

The Captain has been 

sprucing up the garden. 

 He is a wizard

 when it comes to pruning and shearing,

 therefore, 

I haven't dared to go outside! 

 There is very little

 that he and I disagree on usually, 

but pruning and shearing

 is not included in that.

 As you know,

 our kids were doing our grocery shopping. 

 It was a task

 that they took on

 out of kindness and

 their concerns for our safety. 

 It was such a long drive for them, 

especially after Tim had been up

 since 2:00 AM doing his day job. 

 We are so grateful and appreciative, 

but decided to try 

ordering on line from Raleys. 

 We did a dry run yesterday and

 it turned out just fine. 

 They never complained 

but we felt the time on the road 

was too much and 

we (put our foot down) and 

reached a compromise.

I finally received

the paint by number kit

that I ordered back in June.

 I am anxious to

get started on it.

 That seems to be all

of our busy work for this week.

  Hope you all are enjoying

 the busy work that you have to do. 

 I think we are

 rested up enough

 to tackle another week.

...Judy...

Stay smart,

 stay well and 

wear your masks.  

Our county has now reached 

over 400 cases.

  I think this virus

 has more busy work in store 

for all of us.

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and

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