A MONDAY MAGAZINE AND A HURRICANE

Happy Tuesday, friends.  Hope you are having a good day and are safe.  We just had Hurricane Isaias come through Philadelphia.  It moved really quickly -- was here only about 6 hours.  It did enough damage though.  Trash cans thrown about, flooded streets, power lines down.  We were very fortunate here with very little damage.  I took a video through my front door to show you.

Now, I know it is Tuesday and not Monday despite what the title says.  I had this all set to post yesterday, and I fell asleep.  So here it is today.  The magazine I just finished was a "Country Home" from May 2001.  

Where were all these old magazines hiding?  I just keep finding them laying around and reading them.  Some of the decorating ideas are a little old, but the gardens are still beautiful and the recipes sound good.  This one was still in its plastic wrapper and is in mint condition.  

You know I like to show you the back page and here it is.

This is "Watering Hole" photographed by Brad Simmons.  A trio of chickens gathers at a weathered old water pump outside Terry and Brenda Blackburn's Indiana log home.  "The girls" lay eggs, eat bugs, and keep Terry and Brenda company while they're doing chores.  "They're practically pets." Terry admits, "especially our smallest, Henny Penny."

There were also three very short but very good stories in here.  They were called "Bedtime Stories" and illustrated three ideal country bedrooms and the people who might live in them.  They were illustrated with photos of these three lovely rooms.  I am going to share them with you over the next few weeks while I am reading the next magazine.  The first story is titled 

 

The sun had barely glinted through the windows when Darcy opened her eyes.  She'd had the dream again, the same one she'd had so many times.

She was in an old-fashioned carriage with an older man who had just asked her to marry him.  She could hear the clip-clop of the horses' hooves on the cobblestone streets, see the glow of lanterns along the harbor front, taste the sea air as it came wafting in from shore.

Then the dream shifted... she was married and her husband was out at sea.  In the dream, Darcy wrote him a letter.  A small perfume bottle he'd given her sat on the corner of her writing desk.  She imagined him on the bow of the ship, tossed by the waves, burned by the sun.  She wrote him every day, until...

There the dream ended.  As she did so often, Darcy would wake with a start, put on her sweater, and sit at her desk, writing down any new details she could remember.  What was she supposed to learn from the dream?  Outside, she could see the spring shoots of her grandmother's herb garden bursting out of the ground.  The fire she'd started in the fireplace the night before had died down, and only a few embers glowed.

Ever since she'd bought the house from her grandparents, she'd had the dream over and over.  Sometimes she was standing on the edge of the shore looking out to sea.  Sometimes she was in a colonial house with two small children, writing her husband a letter.  Then she'd wake up and look at her desk and the small pitcher of flowers, and she'd wonder.

She'd never known her great-grandfather, but she'd heard the stories.  He was a sea captain, lost at sea, having set sail just miles from this house.  She'd been given his watch and a few books that had been passed down through the family.  But it seemed she had been gifted with something more:  a glimpse of his life.

And here is the room that inspired this story.

I can't wait to share the other two stories with you.  And I will in the next two weeks.

But now housework calls.  And so does my stomach.  I will be posting soon.  Enjoy your day.

Kathy