RAKING SHATTERS

SHATTERS are a valued commodity here on the Shore. To inform you folks from other places, shatters is the local name for long pine needles. Further down the county, they are sometimes called Shatts. They are used as a mulch or ground cover, for weed control and also as a ground conditioner for acid loving plants like camellias and azaleas, daffodils and even strawberries. In the Old Days, one could buy a shatters rake at the local hardware or farm supply place. They were hand forged and set in a special way on a long handle. Today they are a rare find. When our old place was sold, I grabbed our old shatters rake and brought it home. I wish I had grabbed the hand plow, too and the old wooden wheelbarrow. They were real treasures!

 

The tines on the shatters rake are longer, further apart, and angled. When I needed a new handle (the old one was older than I and actually in worse shape) I had to find someone who had an understanding of the value of the old tools. The first guy that looked at it told me they didn’t have those things in New Jersey, where he came from, they used “normal” rakes. Well, that told me not to let him get his hands on my rake! Phew! He said, along with putting a new handle on it, he would straighten it, “See how crooked its got?” (Yeah, it was made that way!) See the difference in a “normal” rake and a shatters rake? My shatters rake is close to 100 years old dating back to around the time the old house was built, 1914.

My Uncle has been talking lately about carving new tines for his hay rake. I have another friend who makes (carves and assembles) his own hay rakes, too. I am so impressed. I would love my Uncle to get a picture of his rake. I wonder how big it is. Another friend made one to go behind his garden tractor to rake shatters as well as hay. It is about 5 feet across. Impressive. That must be on my project list, but when would I have time? I guess that is one advantage of having long cold snowy winters… nothing else to do. That doesn’t ever seem to happen here.

  

Anyway, I found someone who was as impressed as I at the age of the rake… it took him about a week to put a new handle on it. He was so careful to not damage any more than he had to since the old rake had a metal piece go right thru the old wooden handle and was welded in place. No wonder it never came off! So, the other day,  I happily got it out of the barn and raked up a few loads of shatters and bedded down the newly transplanted camellias and azaleas. I discovered the late December camellias were starting to open. Well, it was 70 degrees. The bees were happily buzzing along in the open camellias, it really looked and sounded like springtime. I also noticed the new miniature holly bush is in bloom! Go figure that! Someone suggested I decorate this camellia (with the first white bloom) for Christmas since it is shaped so perfectly.

Then, this morning… well, you know, every once in a while the light is just perfect, there is that special glow things get first thing in the morning… I am so glad I am not one of those folks that lay in bed half the day – mornings are so magical! Anyway, the little maple out front was just glowing… I guess it was showing me that we really could have red maple trees here! That is Yule Tide next to it on the left. Those green spiky things on the right are yucca.

As I walked back to the house, I noticed some bright yellow out at the edge of my woods… I am not sure what these trees are. They get pink flowers in the spring, but I never see any nuts or fruit. Any idea what they might be? Tomorrow it might be even prettier! Stay tuned!

MID-NOVEMBER COLORS, MORNING SUN

It was a chilly, frosty morning this morning… the sun finally peeked thru the trees and lit up bits and pieces of the maple trees, Yule Tide, and the Pyracantha. The contrast with the leftover night and early morning shadows made me grab the camera and head outside. The leaves crunched under my feet, a couple birds scolded me for disturbing their space. The sun struggled with a couple clouds and the shifting of the leaves still on the trees across the street quickly changing the early morning glow on the leaves, colors changing by the second, it seems.

 

How lucky I feel to be able to live where I can see these things out my window… to be able to walk out in my yard and touch their beauty. It is easy to get lost in the sounds of daybreak, a dog barking for its breakfast down the street, dry leaves tapping on empty branches on their way to the ground. A flock of geese fly over somewhere in the distance hidden by the woods behind me. The Carolina wren scolds as I trespass into his territory. A squirrel rattles his way thru the pile of leaves blown under the bushes now devoid of their flowers by the heavy frost of the previous morning. A little cat peeks out from under a faded hydrangea, his tummy full, he begins to wash his whiskers. I hear the Redtail hawk off to the east way above the newly cut cornfield hunting for his breakfast. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by nature even though I am actually in the Town limits and only a mile away from the highway. The hum of traffic has not started yet – or maybe the breeze is blowing the sound away from my ears, for it is quiet enough to be miles out in the country.

I shuffle thru the fallen leaves amazed by the colors as I am every year… always amazed by the beauty around me, and think how lucky I am to live in a place with flowers almost all year long. I wonder if this will be a hard winter since we had 37 snowflakes go past my window a couple days ago. Didn’t anyone tell them this is only November? Did they get lost? Are they warning me of things to come? Of days, maybe even a few weeks of NO flowers? Looking around I can see huge amounts of berries starting to redden. Is that to make it easier for the birds to find them in the winter drab colors or to give us humans something bright to break the monotony of the dull winter landscape? Well, whatever, I will enjoy the beauty that is here today and be grateful I can see it and walk well enough to get out and photograph it.

I wish the people who gave me these plants were still here to see how big they have grown, how beautiful they are after all these years… and I think how their loves goes on in the beauty that lives outside my windows.

the COLORS OF NOVEMBER

The leaves changed suddenly this year. One day they were green, 2 days later the yellow was blasting away from the tree tops making people stop and look as if they had never seen those colors before.

Personally, I love the contrasts that we have this time of year… with the camellias starting to bloom, the deep, deep green of their leaves and the bright yellows of autumn on the Eastern Shore. We have very few bright red leaves. Generally bright red warns one of poison ivy here. The red maples of the Poconos and New England are few and far between. So for reds, we seem to have a plethora of berries. Old wives tales tell us that this many berries mean a bad winter. Well, we shall see. The birds definitely will have plenty to eat here! Of course, not all berries are red… the beautyberry bush is loaded with rich purple berries, branches so full they are all the way down on the ground.

   

The St John’s Wort continues to bloom, 2 or 3 blooms at a time. I liked this view with the golden carpet of leaves behind it. Next to the St John’s Wort is one of the few reddish leaves from a young dogwood. A new azalea is in bloom as the pink and lavender azaleas start to fade.

 

The sidewalk is pink from my birthday camellia, the hosta is changing color.a different pink camellia is in bloom, and Ice Angel made the camera take her picture again this time with a yellow tree in the background.

 

With all this color going on in Mother Nature, we started coloring up the old Train Station. We had several days with temps in or near the 70s, so we took advantage of that and finished priming, then painting the track side of the Station. On Saturday then, Niall and Tom climbed up and began to paint our trim. Another coat will be awesome! Paul started the door… Between taking pictures and passing buckets of paint around, I played inside with an N scale train that will be going in the old showcase. See how tiny it is? I can get an entire layout in this 2’x6’ showcase. I just need to decide what I want to do. (A note for Ginnie, it is perfect height for laying it out from a wheelchair!) 

 

END OF OCTOBER, BEGINNING OF FROST

Well, it finally happened, our first frost… fortunately it was a very light frost. Also fortunately I have all the house plants inside the house and most everything that could be killed by frost outside is in the greenhouse. I was so embarrassed to have to call someone to come and help me move the grill… the tank is full so I could not lift it. Fortunately I had some paperwork for someone to take care of and 3 gallons of water-seal that needed to go to the Train Station, so I let one stone take care of 3 birds. Then I rebuilt the “greenhouse annex!”LOL It filled up quickly. I had taken cuttings from most of the coleus, the frost got the ones left out in the yard.

I covered the tomatoes and they made it… likewise my last serving of beans. Guess I will get to pick them end of the week.

Ice Angel opened early this year and is blooming up a storm. Someone suggested I do a post on a different camellia each week. Sounds like a fun idea except I get so busy, I just don’t have time. Ice Angel is probably about 15 feet tall by now… maybe taller. A beautiful bush! See how little the Buddha is and only 3 feet from the bush. Those wooden posts are 4 feet tall.

My Birthday camellias out-front are well up over the roof. They have been blooming for over a month now.

Also higher than the roof is this double pink. Yule Tide has started to open. There are still some azaleas blooming.

But it is going to warm back up. How do I know this? I put the electric blanket on the bed. Yep. Works every time. Put your summer clothes away, storm windows in, close the house vents… and I promise it will warm up.

We have lost some leaves, but the colors, muted as they are here, have finally started to change. Maybe I will have some pretty leaf pictures next week.

I hope October has been beautiful for you!

TODAY’S MESSAGE

Just sayin’……….

The TREE HOUSE

Since so many of you have asked about the house in the Poconos, I decided to repost this from 2006.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

THE TREE HOUSE

The Tree House
Do the words Tree House conjure up some image from your childhood, a place where you could go and hide out, hang out, do pretty much what you wanted with no thoughts about the rest of the world? Most people associate tree houses with carefree little boys, messy places, usually, I mean, who “cleans” up a tree house? Most tree houses are in trees but I remember a friend who built one high on the rocks back behind his “real” house in the mountains overlooking the trees below, accessible by a torturous little path up the cliff face. It looked out into and over the tree tops.
Well, some years ago, Anna named the apartment we have in White Haven the Tree House, partially because it is on tree level in the front but mostly because when we went up there, we would have to spend several days cleaning up after my father and brother who had spent time up there the previous fall. Well, my brother used to come up more often when his aunt lived next door. With the aunt gone, he no longer seems to have any interest in going there. And, my father just turned 89 in May, so his visits are fewer and fewer. Pennsylvania is a long way from Florida, especially when you are 89 years old and driving all alone. I live 300 miles away and dread the drive up!
Four generations of our family have lived in this house and my great-grandparents were not the first owners of the house. I remember coming here to visit my father’s parents as a very little child. My grandfather and I used to sit in a big old swing on the front porch during thunderstorms. It was on this porch that he taught me how to tell how far away the lightning was by counting the seconds from the light to the thunder. He taught me distances and directions this way, also. “Now that one hit over near Freeland. That is 8 miles away,” he’d say. And he’d point and tell me the compass directions for Freeland.
The house is divided in to the Big House and a small 2 room apartment. Well, it isn’t all that small, really, but it is 2 rooms and a bath, an entry way and the “cave,” a small storage room in the hillside where we keep the garden tools, snow shovels, coolers, camping equipment, etc. The temperature in the cave stays in the 50-60º range year round. The living room doubles as a bedroom. The kitchen has a modern electric stove and an old wood or coal cooking stove that used to bake the best cookies! Years ago, Gram used to rent out the little apartment, then she moved into it in her old age when my step mother and brother were evacuated from Vietnam and they lived in the big house. That side has a lot of rooms. When my dad was young, it had 6 bedrooms. Now most of the bedrooms are storage rooms or empty. Dad took two of the rooms and made them into one very large master bedroom. We rent out the big side of the house – well, sorta. E is a tenant but also the caretaker. She keeps the grass cut in the summer and the snow shoveled or plowed in the winter and lets my brother know when something isn’t working right.
You can enter the house from different levels as it is built into the mountainside. From the road, there are 6 steps up to the front yard where there is a porch with a door leading into the cellar. Personally, I would love to turn that into a little apartment – stone walls, etc. The cellar is divided into four rooms, one completely underground, one partly in the side of the hill. There is a set of steps up the side to the first floor level, the front porch, a flower garden, the patio, a sun porch and around back to the entrance to the apartment.
We have a driveway at what amounts to a block away (as measured by the block across the street, but we don’t have any streets crossing on our side) and it goes up to a parking area level with the second floor. Therefore one has to go up or down a flight of steps to get in or out of the house no matter where you park. In my old age, this sucks! The old stone steps are narrow and steep. The property then continues on up the mountain where Bill cuts little paths up to the old stone walls and some great old boulders where I used to climb up and have my morning coffee and watch the sun come up over the mountain and the morning fog burn off the river which is probably about 500 feet away if measured in a straight line. However, in the mountains, there is no such thing as a straight line. There is a very steep bank leading down to the river owned by the state now and is part of the Lehigh Gorge State Park. I used to climb up and down that bank like a little mountain goat when I was a kid. It has its own tiny waterfalls, two of them, actually, from the creek that runs thru my lot across the street. The Lehigh River, even on the hottest day of the year is cold. Seriously cold. But, we used to swim in it as kids.
There used to be a house down there, a great little place, and the people had kids my age and they used to let us run all over their place. Their yard was our “beach!” Then the state wanted it for their Park. The people would not sell. This went on for a couple of years. The state tried to take the place by condemning it. The owners fought back. Then one night, it mysteriously burned to the ground. The fire Marshall could not determine the cause of the fire. Right. But I digress, again. So, of course, the people sold it – the land, that is, since the house was gone – even the garage somehow burned down, too. Amazing, huh? And now it is all weeds and rock as part of the naturalized park.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the house, the mountain side (if you live in the Rockies, please don’t laugh at my use of the word mountain here – that is what it is called) the steps, the view from up back. The plants that line the road for a few hundred feet are peonies my grandfather planted eons ago. Grandpop died in 1954. The trees around the house make it impossible to get a picture of the house in a way to show its size, etc. I will do my best to put the pictures on so you can tell what is what, but I haven’t figured out quite how to arrange things on blogger yet. 

Arthur, Lancelot, and the Witch

 

Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom.  The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals.  
So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question.  Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and if, after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death. 
The question? ... What do women really want?
Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query.  But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch's proposition to have an answer by year's end.
He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone:  the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester.  He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer.
Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer.  But the price would be high as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.

The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch.  She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first.

The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's closest friend!

Young Arthur was horrified.  She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc.  He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life. 
He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur.  He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur's life and the preservation of the Round Table. 
Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur's question thus:

What a woman really wants, she answered... is to be in charge of her own life.

Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur's life would be spared. 
And so it was, the neighboring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding.

The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom.  But, what a sight awaited him.  The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed.
The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened.  The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half.  Which would he prefer?  Beautiful during the day.... or night?
Lancelot pondered the predicament.  During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch?  Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments?

What would YOU do? 
What Lancelot chose is below. 
BUT
....make YOUR choice before you scroll down below.

OKAY?

 

 

Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself.
Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life 
Now....what is the moral to this story? 
The moral is.....
If you don't let a woman have her own way....
Things are going to get ugly!

Just sayin’….