Love is.....

...letting your cat have the fan on him because he is too hot during a heatwave while you are melting away yourself. *grins*

"One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night."

- Margaret Mead

Our sweet cat Adagio is still doing well even with the heat of our summer. He sleeps so much and eats less but then we eat less too when it is hot. He is not happy being alone anymore even just for a while so I try and stay with him as much as possible. We just feel so blessed that he is still with us and getting so old that we do not begrudge him this one little demand...all our time for his last years.

These are photos of Dagi back in our old house a few months before we moved. He is an indoor cat and will sit in the door opening without going out as he knows he is not allowed. This amazes most people that see it.

Heidi

Jessie Willcox Smith moments.....

We are in the midst of a heat wave and I am not a fan of summer at the best of times other than moments spent in my beloved garden. I am unable to go outside at all due to my physical limitations when it is extremely hot. This wonderful illustration sums up how I am feeling this week...

I am doing some stitching but forget quilting at the moment. I also have been reading to pass the time while enjoying an artificial breeze....i.e. a fan. *grins* Books can be such a joy at times like these!

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."  

~Sam Keen

Heidi

Note to Vicki: I am unable to email you to "chat" as I do not have an email address for you. I did want to tell you that I do have Anne Lindburgh's Gift From the Sea. It is a great book to pick up and read in from time to time.

Note to Jenny: Good to see you here again!

Buren...from windmills to chocolates...

Take a walk with us through the beautiful, fortressed city of Buren in Holland...

Molenhuis - anno 1649

My Dutchman resting for a moment to take in the view from the windmill...

Windmill - Prince of Orange - anno 1716...

New built houses in old style...

Authentic old houses...

Royal Orphanage - anno 1612...

Walking in the Kerkstraat...

...with a happy surprise of a chocolate shop with handmade bonbons...

...and home to enjoy them with a cup of coffee and remembering an enjoyable walk in a beautiful place...

Heidi

Jessie Willcox Smith moments...

This week has been about books...

...as we have been busy transforming a room in our house into a library. It has always been a dream of mine to have a library and since Jos does not like using his office room upstairs, it seemed the obvious choice. Funny thing is that now I have it half put together, he thinks he really like this room. I was planning on replacing his large table for a small antique one and putting a comfy chair in there with a light to read. Now I might have to rethink it all since he thinks he wants to keep his big desk (table) and use it as his office after all. 

And they say women are fickle...  *wink*

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Have a great weekend!

Heidi

Note: I will post photos of the library once it is finished...

Peony

A peony is almost perfect beauty. What a shame their beauty is fleeting but for that short time, we can admire them in a vase...

I bought some peony stems and mixed them with some Lady's Mantle and white harebells from my own garden. When I looked up the language of these flowers, I found the combination not only pleased the eye but also worked together in meaning...

Language of flowers:
Peony - Bashfulness or happy marriage
White harebells - submission or gratitude
Lady's mantle - comfort of protection

"The bee emerging from deep within the peony departs reluctantly."

- Basho, Matsuo

Heidi

Jessie Willcox Smith moments...

Each week, I am going to do a Jessie Willcox Smith moment. It will be one of her beautiful and tender illustrations that reflect something around me that week. I find her work so sweet and reflections of the innocence of childhood days gone by. It reminds us to be in touch with that child we once were.....

This weekend I will be out watering the garden.....

“The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.” 

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Heidi

Eggheads!

On weekends when we are at Cranberry Cottage, we sometimes like to take drives out in the country. The areas around the cottage are so beautiful. I love driving to look at farms and dream we lived in one of them. I should have been a farmer's wife. *grins*

But last weekend, we took a different road home and came across a field of chickens. Now that always catches my eye since I dream of having chickens one day. Then we saw a little self-help roadside stand. They had brown and white free range eggs. We bought some of both. Why is it that when you buy eggs direct from a farm they taste so much better? And we think eggs bought in the north of Holland taste egg-stra special!

Heidi