Vicki Lane's Blog, page 69

It's Kinda Addictive

                                                                            

It's been gloomy and cold all day--it was actually snowing lightly when I took this picture--but it mattered not because I was in the pantry, continuing to wrestle order out of chaos.

                                                             

These two shelves have been annoying me for some time. Put one thing back and two fall off. Plus, there is some serious redundancy going on.  How many cans of lemon spray furniture wax does one need anyway?                                                     With all these cleaning, polishing, waxing, deodorizing supplies, I don't know why we're not cleaner. Could be the dogs; could be my disinclination to clean every day. As the meme says: I dusted the house. The dust came back. Not falling for that again.

Still, it's a fine feeling to have room on the shelves--a lot of the extras went to the basement. And, having gotten the most challenging bit over with, I continued on to the No Man's Land between the refrigerator and the shelves--a narrow strip that was the repository for items that fell off the shelves and didn't get picked up, due to being out of easy reach. Also, odds and ends that missed the paper recycling bag. Done, thanks to my grabber!

Moving on, I tidied and edited two of the food shelves--discovering some ancient, pitted dates that are still edible, if a tad hard. The internet suggests covering them with boiling water for ten minutes.  Worth a try.

But this kind of cleaning (once every thirty or so years) really is addictive--and lots more fun than dusting.                                                     

Terra Ingognita

                                                                            

Terra incognita aka Under the Kitchen sink.

At last, after some happy piddling around with books and watercolors, I've returned to The Project: Cleaning and cleaning out everything. Two cupboards in the kitchen remained, and by the grace of Someone or Other and with the help of a grabber, I have removed the contents, cleaned the shelves, taken inventory, and garbaged/recycled twenty-leven rather nasty old sponges, seven toothbrushes (great for cleaning small spaces but I don't need but one,) African violet fertilizer (it's been probably thirty years since I had any of these,) a brush for cleaning baby bottles, cheap florists' vases, ceramic orchid pots, pretty bottles, soap dishes, and some unidentifiable grunge. 

                                                  

Also a glass RC Cola bottle. This puzzled me but, after talking with John, we decided it had probably come from one of our barns, and it had probably been used by previous owner of the farm for dosing a calf--shoving medicine down its throat. (We have always used the heavy sparkling wine bottles.)                                                       

So here's the finished product-- much nicer and cleaner and at least I know what's there--for a while.
The second cupboard was a breeze--cookware, bowls, slow cookers (getting rid of the small one,) casseroles, and baking tins. Out they came, back in they went, washed (when needed) and reorganized. Oh, it feels good!
On to the pantry--a shelf at a time . . .maybe tomorrow . . .
                                                         

Silent Saturday

                                                                                     

     

                                                                                      

A Trip to Italy (Armchair Version)

                                                                              

From Venice to Sicily, in the comfort of home...
Two mysteries took me there. Leon's Commissario Brunetti is excellent company in which to navigate the canals and backstreets of Venice as well as the intricacies of Italian bureaucracy. He is thoughtful, humane, and, above all, decent. I can see that I need to investigate more of the Brunetti series--around thirty of them.
Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano's home turf is Sicily. He's a bit more brash, but quite engaging as he deals with the disappearance of a financial scam artist. 
Leon is American by birth, but a long-time resident of Venice, writing in English. Camilleri writes in Italian so this is a translation. 
Both are definitely good reads. And both left me hungry for the kind of real Italian food their protagonists enjoy so much.

Bare Beauty

You were expecting something else?

As always, I am enchanted by the skeleton shapes of trees against the winter sky.

And as I was taking these pictures, I challenged myself to avoid the descriptive words that leaped into my mind. No inky tracery or etched on a steely sky. Overused.

Which leaves me wordless.

 

Two To Do Lists

                                                                          

One is a list I wrote for Josie.The other is one she wrote in response.Perhaps you can guess which is which.


 

Onward!

                                                                                                                                                

      I love this poster--bought in England some years ago. It goes on the wall in January, and I think it has a dream-like quality that fits the season.

Once the tree was down and the ornaments stowed away, I found I couldn't put up with green and red any longer so embarked on my usual seasonal shift to blue and yellow.  

             The dried-out greenery on the mantel was tossed but we left the twinkle lights, as well as the lights on the bookcase, the stairs, and the dining room windows. The days have been quite dreary, for the most part, and the extra light is cheering.      

                                                             

For luck--pork, rice and black-eyed peas, greens with onion. 
Now, suitably fortified, on into 2024 . . . 


                                                

...

                                                                                                                                                

      I love this poster--bought in England some years ago. It goes on the wall in January, and I think it has a dream-like quality that fits the season.

Once the tree was down and the ornaments stowed away, I found I couldn't put up with green and red any longer so embarked on my usual seasonal shift to blue and yellow.  

             The dried-out greenery on the mantel was tossed but we left the twinkle lights, as well as the lights on the bookcase, the stairs, and the dining room windows. The days have been quite dreary, for the most part, and the extra light is cheering.      

                                                             

For luck--pork, rice and black-eyed peas, greens with onion. 
Now, suitably fortified, on into 2024 . . . 


                                                

Rabbitrabbit

                                                                         

                                       Leaping into 2024!

Breaking Up Christmas Again

                                                    

The tree comes down today, per my grandmother's injunction that it must be out of the house before the New Year or bad luck will ensue.  

I find that I'm both sorry to see it go--it's quite pretty-- and eager to move on to the less cluttered look for the New Year.

                                                      

Dismantling the tree and putting away the ornaments will take most of the day--fortunately our New Year's Eve plans are pretty modest--a bottle of bubbly well before midnight and so to bed.

Tomorrow there will be collard greens and black-eyed peas, along with the pork marinated in mojo (garlic, orange juice, lemon juice, salt, and oregano) that is simmering in the slow cooker and perfuming the house right now. 

I'm not sorry to say goodbye to 2023 and its heartbreaking humanitarian crises around the globe. May 2024 see some improvement.