Skip to main content

Antique switch plates, home notes

I was amazed by these switch plates. They are everything I want in a switch plate. I want them in the music room and parlor. Their golden tones will offset the warmth of the floor and contrast with the wall color I have chosen "Spanish Bluebell."

Other rooms will have subtle switch plates, but I actually want to replace everything, including the telephone jacks, which we won't use, because the plastic is so old they have yellowed and become dingy.

This weekend I weeded one front bed but didn't dig up the bulbs. I think they are amaryllis because I saw amaryllis blooms earlier this year. They need to be thinned out and replanted elsewhere because they have migrated randomly and are really on top of each other. For the front of the house I best like a color scheme of blue and yellow. The side yard will be white flowers, and an accent of red won't hurt. I also see them looking well near the gates. I still don't know where to plant a rose garden. There's no obvious good place. The front yard is very shady.

I cleaned one of the tables. I'm thinking they may stay in the shed for a while. I have become so familiar with spiders and beetles today. The spiders aren't the same as in east Texas, not at all. The ones south are rangy and move quickly, are often tarantulas. The spiders here have large, decorated abdomens and those bent-needle like legs. They look like black widows, but are brown with white markings. They make me uncomfortable, I need to look them up. It's amazing how it comes back to you.

I find I am not that excited about chickens right now. Maybe I find the stables too intimidating. I more desire a dove cote. Not very useful, I know. I also wish for ducks, but I'm afraid we don't have enough water. I also don't know if something would eat them.

I painted one pole over completely. I didn't strip the old paint that well, and I've applied two new layers. For the next pole I stripped it twice, and next I will repaint it, compare it to the first. If my extra stripping made a big difference I'll strip the other poles likewise, including the one I already painted, which will probably peel quite easily since it is so fresh. Actually painting is pretty tiring! The muscles in my hand hurt for clenching the brush. I'm sure I'll toughen up. If two strippings don't improve the texture of the second pole I'll resort to three. Need more Simple Green and white paint. I turned my rubber gloves inside out because they've gotten so moist. They have red mold growing all over the palms apparently. Maybe I should just throw them away.

Already I feel life changing so much. I am not writing anything right now. I feel this is not the time for that. This is a time of great change for us, a time to live and experience things.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Where does it lie

I look out onto the yellow and brown vegetation beneath my window, at the castle-like buildings far away and wonder where do I lie in all of this? There was a time when I was unfettered. This was a time before I entered the working world, before I was independent. My heart was free as a bird when I was in college. I did not know what happiness I experienced in my creativity because I had never known different. In other aspects of my life I knew pain but my stories, sprung up lately from a gothic mist into an immersing Pre-Raphaelite painting, were a richness and the most beautiful thing I had ever known. That the most beautiful thing I knew to exist happened inside of me made me very happy, even though I didn't know it. Now I know the sun is setting, even though I can't see it, because the bank of brown, twisted trees and shrubs is lit gold, like a reflection from a golden chalice. Slowly, slowly it will fade until everything is a homogenous, uncertain gray. This is the nightma...
more &

Cassandra stood poised at her vanity mirror. Her long hair, which spilled past her waist, was twisted in one hand, and in the other was a pair of jeweled scissors.

As she lifted the scissors to cut, a larger hand wrapped around hers. Cassandra withdrew with a cry. "Kell! I didn't see you come in." He took the scissors away. "I take it you got the job." "I did," she said crisply. "Return my scissors to me." "Not if you intend to cut off your hair. What do you mean by this nonsense?" "I can't have long hair in the laboratory. It might catch fire or something." "Look there." He guided her to the window. Below them lay the scattered remains of a centuries-old city park. The benches were near invisible due to growth, while the pond had extended far beyond its original boundaries. Ducks floated serenely on its surface. "We played as children. Do you remember how you prized your hair?" Cassandra laughed a little drily. "Of course. I insisted all my powers as princess lay in my hair. I was haughty. unworthy of the friendship of you and your sister." ...
more &

Snow White and the Prince

I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket. I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus. I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict. My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those...
more &