Hi, I'm Eva. Thank you for stopping by. I live in Mendota, Virginia. If you like rural life in a country village, sharing decorating and DIY ideas, gardening, local and seasonal eating, food preservation, thrifting, and anything to do with honey, we have something in common.
How are you dealing with the time change? And the fact it got so cold recently? Me…I’m out of whack.
We’re using the heat now, and my skin is dry. I have very dry skin. When I attended high school, I didn’t have a pimple. Not one. That served me well when I was 16, but not now. Tepid showers, tons of lotion, lots of moisturizer, vitamins, water, and humidifiers throughout the house. That’s me in the winter. I’ve got some good help with my employer, About Face Aesthetics, Skincare & Weight Management.” Lots of lotions and potions and facials and fun stuff that really help.
Still….I was sitting in the kitchen thinking about my dry skin on Tuesday. You were watching the election results…I was thinking about something of major importance…dry skin.
And then…I looked at this.
Honey
I looked at a pint of my honey. It has so many useful properties. I pulled out the iPad and googled something like “homemade honey facials.” Avacado, honey and olive oil kept coming up.
So I peeled an avacado, took about four tablespoons of honey and about one tablespoon of olive oil and put them all in the blender. Here’s what it looked like.
Have you seen the Exorcist?
And guess what I did next? My husband was totally grossed out. He would not look at me…much less take a picture! Chicken. So…I took one of myself.
Here’s another one. I think I look like a gay man in this one. Seriously. And here’s something else….Don’t my teeth look good against that green?
When I started this blog, I hoped visitors would find the answer to the question “why would anyone want to live there?” “There” being Mendota, Virginia — 17 miles from a grocery store and a minimum 35 minute work commute.
Here’s a whole post with a lot of pictures answering that question.
Let’s start with Saturday night at the Carter Family Fold. It’s a barn about 10 miles down the road from where I live. It’s a famous barn where Carter Family music is played on Saturday nights. Jeanette Carter promised her father, A. P. Carter, she’d keep his music alive. She did a good job. We lost Jeanette just a few years ago. Here’s her likeness…
Here’s the inside of the barn…
And where would you go and hear music and dance — all the while with this dog snoring on the stage? Those feet belong to a member of the Wayne Henderson & Friends band performing last Saturday. I’m not sure who the dog belongs to.
This next dog is also a regular at the Carter Family Fold. It’s “Opie”. Opie slow dances with a lady named “Debbie” who is a schoolteacher. (In the country, we know just about everything about everybody.) All that dancing gets a doggy thirsty.
There are lots of “regulars” at the Carter Fold. Here’s Poppy. He’s there with his niece, Pam. Poppy is in a wheelchair and this Saturday outing is one of the highlights of each week.
On Sunday morning, it is time to “make a joyful noise.”
Here’s a few pictures…
And another…
And another…
We closed with “I’ll Fly Away”. Chills.
Moving forward a couple of days. Election Day in Mendota. No lines here. We have under 500 registered voters, but we can count on a large percentage of them voting.
Voting means seeing friends…here’s Janette Dean and Diane Sproles. They check my voter card and photo identification. I know them well, but they take no shortcuts. Everything is on the up and up in Mendota on this special day. Integrity.
Voting is fun, because it’s also a time to eat and socialize. We can always count on food being there. There were homemade biscuits with pork chops this morning. I smelled soup later in the day.
Many hours go into cooking for Election Day. Everything is carried into the kitchen in coolers, etc.
During the morning hours following voting, Mendota resident Helene Holbrook, DNP at ETSU, administered flu vaccines. Free. She’s giving one to my brother-in-law, Gerald, in this picture.
We’re still getting ready for winter here. The barn is now full of wood for the woodboiler. This will last us into next season. The woodboiler heats the guest house and our primary house as well as providing hot water in both houses. It’s a very warm heat.
It makes me feel secure when I look at the barn. Country people like being self sufficient. As I write this, our generator is self-testing–sounds like a train coming but I don’t mind! After seeing the news of what is happening in the northeast following Hurricane Sandy, I’m grateful once again that we have it. Our powerlines run through heavily-treed areas, and even with the aggressive tree trimming that took place this summer, an ice storm or heavy snow would leave us without power for days.
It’s also time to do some winterizing on the beehives preparing for harsh weather. During the honey flow season, we keep the bottom of the hive open so that bees may easily get in and out during their frequent foraging trips. Gotta make sure they can get the pollen and nectar in for yummy honey. As it got cooler last month, we inserted a spacer in the bottom which limited the access to about three inches. This was to keep mice out of the hives yet still allow a fairly easy exit and entrance for this season’s remaining foraging.
I’ll use the same spacer, but I’ll turn it so that the opening is very tiny. Here’s a picture of the spacer.
Can you see the small entrance and the larger entrance? The small one is for cold winter weather and the large one is for fall when the temperatures are just starting to get a bit cooler and, as mentioned above, mice are hunting a warm spot. We don’t want mice in our honey!!! Yuck!
Here’s the same photo with more description. Look what I’m learning to do in Photoscape!
And here is the photo of the beehive winterized.
When I was working with this hive, I found an alarming number of dead bees just inside the entrance. This hive has been strong, and I’d just been working with it three or four weeks ago when I put the spacer in for fall. No cause for alarm at that time. Now, however, I’m worried.
There are still live bees in the hive, but why so many dead ones in the entrance area?
We’ll be looking back in this hive next weekend. I’ll let you know what we find. I hope, pray that my bees will be healthy.
I don’t want to see this.
Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage, and thank you for supporting local beekeepers!
Do you remember a post I called the “Cast of Characters“? In that post, I was gathering things for a wall display above our master bedroom dresser.
It moved a little further along today. I’m not finished, but do you like it so far?
At one point, it looked like this….
The Annie Sloan Chalk Paint product said it will work on plastic, so I painted that green pot “Duck Egg” blue.
I laid these cheap bracelets from Kohl’s out so everyone would think I was very neat in the way I remove my jewelry. One is actually plastic…the smaller one. I looks like real silver and I’ve had it for over two years! The bigger one is something cheap, too. I’ve lost any good jewelry I’ve owned, so I don’t even bother to try. I’m a junk jewelry kind of person!
Hey…I’ll bet I could paint them with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, too! Just kidding.
Here’s a plate I moved from the bathroom. I used to have several of these and I accidentally broke three in one day. I almost cried.
Here’s another angle of how this area currently looks. Notice the little blue frame with nothing in it? It will say “Family” in chalkboard paint when I get this finished.
.I have never really liked the way the master bedroom looks in this house. With the new slipcoverered chair and ottoman coming and the new bedside end table…
Mendota did not get snow. Mendota got rain. Sniff.
All kidding aside, I do not mind. Our friends and family in the northeast have had a very scary two days. They are safe. I am grateful.
However, I had intended to wow you with snow pictures. Would a rainy gray background of my weedy rosemary do instead?
This demonstrates how forgotten my garden became at summer’s end. The walk to the rosemary inspired me to make rosemary potatoes for dinner, so I picked quite a bit before returning to the house.
I also passed by one of the mums I transferred from the pot to the ground just a few days ago. I know…a bit weedy. I’ll get around to taking care of that!
If these mums “take hold”, I’ll have them to enjoy for years. Here’s a few that are several years old. They are looking a little sad at season’s end but they have been putting on quite a show for at least 8 weeks.
And lazy gardeners listen up! I left last year’s pumpkin out so long that it rotted. As a result, I have been treated to a Cindarella pumpkin which I’ll be displaying on my Thanksgiving table. Wow! Have you priced these pumpkins? Thank you rotten pumpkin seeds! This picture makes it looks small, but it’s a good size and perfect–even though it is growing laying on its side.
It’s time to get the rosemary inside. I picked quite a bit of rosemary, so I’ll hang some up to dry…
It will dry in this basket…the kitchen is smelling so good! I’ll pick more in a day or two.
When it dries, it’ll go into the little rosemary spice jar I made last summer. I’m still in love with spray on chalk paint. I painted this lid and talked and talked and talked about it in this post.
Back to the potatoes. My potato picture has a shadow…it’s me…loitering about with the camera wishing these were my homegrown potatoes, but I only grew three potatoes this year. A total potato disaster here at RiverCliff Cottage. Here’s a sprig for the potatoes I bought…
A couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a dash of seasalt. Oven preheated to 425 degrees. This will be ready to eat in about 35 minutes. I am so hungry…
Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage. So much!
Back around 2002/2003, I lived in Massachusetts. I’ve been fortunate to live quite a few places, and for the most part, I’ve enjoyed everywhere I have lived. Massachusetts was more challenging for me. My “southernness” made me feel like…”a whore in church!” Really! Excuse my French!
In spite of this, there was one thing I loved during this time. Snow. We had an extremely snowy winter in Massachusetts. After a sad day of worrying about my mother in Virginia, worrying about how my dogs were barking in our overly-tiny, overly-expensive yard, longing for that yellow house on the hill in Mendota…thinking about this…..
I’d just ache to be in Mendota, Virginia. I’d turn on the back porch light and watch the snow fall. I’d cry until I became distracted by the beauty and magic of snowflakes.
Tonight it is October, and we have a forecast of snow in Virginia. I’m hopeful that some time tonight, one of my “dear girls” (Gracie or Luckie Dog) will wake me..or maybe just the excitement of the possibility of snow will wake me…and I’ll turn on the porch light and see snow falling. If that is the case, I’ll sit in a chair and just watch it.
This time, there will be no tears.
Maybe I’ll wake up to this…
I hope your life is as good as mine.
Present day….I’m continuing working on my house…updating it…and attempting to use what I have. This will save me money, but it will also keep a piece of furniture out of the landfill.
I’ve wanted a chair and ottoman for the master bedroom for a long time. We have an office upstairs that I’ll be reworking in the spring of 2013, and I found the perfect chair and ottoman in that room. However, it is the wrong color. I thought about having it reupholstered, however, my cats and their desire to sit on everything in their path…Yikes! I decided to have it slipcovered.
However, I can’t sew. If you’ve read this blog in the past (for instance…here), you know that I’m hopeless at sewing. If only I could! I have read numerous blogs, tutorials and videos about how to slipcover furniture. I considered it, but my husband accurately told me “you can’t sew….in fact…you stink at sewing.”
I asked around and received the name of Danette Mayfield. Danette is from North Carolina but she makes the trip over to the Tri-Cities every so often for both slipcover and upholstery work.
I called her, sent a picture of my chair and ottoman and got her price. I already had the fabric. She was very reasonable.
She came over two weeks ago. Here she is…
I don’t know what I expected with the slipcovering. She took the creamy white twill fabric that I had and cut it to fit the furniture right on the spot. How smart!
The room is a wreck. We have paid no attention to this room in years. When our doggies became too feeble to go up the stairs, we quit going up the stairs. Annie is already gone, and Luckie and Gracie are 14. It is bittersweet to know that we’ll be using the room again in the near future.
Thank you Lord for the 14 years of sweetness.
Danette was fast. I felt comfortable with her, and, in fact, left for breakfast while she continued working. She’s a doggy person, too, and she had her border collie with her. I took a picture of her dog but it didn’t turn out well enough to include in this post.
Danette said she’d be back in a couple of weeks with my slipcovers for the red ottoman and the red chair. They’ll be moving to the master bedroom all happy with their creamy white twill look.
Hi! I’ve been gone for a few days. Well, not gone, but not online. I’m back!! I’ve missed you!!
When I started blogging in April, one of the earlier posts involved our Mendota and Mt. Vernon cemeteries and the fundraising that supports the upkeep of these cemeteries. Dale Jett and Hello Stranger put on an amazing show right here in Mendota during May. Here’s our talented and kind pals….
That show also was the kickoff of our quilt raffle. Both were very successful. And fun!
Now…present day! It’s time to get ready for 2013! In just a few weeks, we’ll be setting the date for the 2013 benefit; and earlier this week, a few of us met in Kingsport to purchase fabric for the new quilt.
We planned to visit several quilt shops, but we found exactly what we needed at a shop called “Heavenly Stitches Quilt Shoppe” on Ft. Henry Drive in Kingsport. One of the owners, Paul, was there, and we yakked it up with him. Very nice.
The quilt we’re making is a “flying geese” pattern, so this year’s quilt will be called “I’ll Fly Away.” Recognize that? “I’ll Fly Away” is a song made popular by the Carter Family and one that Dale, Oscar and Teresa sing regularly and DO AN AWESOME JOB!! It all ties together. Beautifully.
And Heavenly Stitches has lots of fabric to choose from…a rainbow of color!
Here’s the fabric we selected for the new quilt. The first one in the lineup…the black and blue…was the “inspiration” fabric.
Since I’m a quilter wannabe and not a true quilter, I can only tell you the little bit I know about the fabric selection…you have to have a dark and then a light for this quilt.
We’ll have several work days on the quilt, and I’ll be participating. I’ll take you along and show you the progress of how these fabric selections become a beautiful quilt.
Paul, the owner of Heavenly Fabrics, invited us to look around at some of the quilts on display.
Black Quilt at Heavenly Stitches
Have you heard of the Shiloh Baptist Quilters in Benhams (Bristol, Virginia)? I’m not sure what the relationship is or how this quilt ended up at Heavenly Stitches, but Paul said this is their work.
I took some pictures of my new/old end table that I painted with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in “Duck Egg”. It’s a blue/green and looks very good in our master bedroom.
I hummed this song while working on the table…”Songs sung blue…everybody knows one…”
I think the next line is…”Songs sung blue…every garden grows one…”
The table is distressed and “chippy” looking which I like. I am no furniture finisher, but I am happy with the outcome of the table. I love it that I never had to prime or sand anything. Just slapped that paint on!
I know I have droned on about my old/new end table for days. Ahhh…it’s done (at least for a while…I may stencil the top but that’s for another day)! I’m not keeping the lamp that is shown in this picture. It came from Target, and I like it but I think I can find one I like better. In fact, I’m leaving in just a few minutes to return it and continue my lamp search.
Do you remember? “Old Yeller!” Ugh…
Back to present day…I like books on my end table. Have you ever heard of Miss Read? My sister, Pat, and I collect them. Very good “falling asleep” reading!
On another subject, the 2013 Mendota Cemetery Quilt took its first baby steps this morning as Chris Schazenbach, Linda Stock, Margie Dean and I went and purchased the fabric. I can’t wait to share the name with you!
Whew! It was a work day today! Did I tell you I’m working about three days per week at my friend’s business, About Face Aesthetics, Skincare and Weight Management? We are in the business of making people look and feel better. Who wouldn’t love a job like that?
And…I sent my friend, Sue, out to find the drawer pull for my end table. Here’s what came home. For $2! Love it.
Now the downside of working today is that I did not have good light to take a picture of the end table that I painted with the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.
This post is about two things. We had a really nice weekend and that is the first part. The second part has to do with my shoe.
On Saturday, Mike and I along with our friend, Sue, drove to Asheville to meet Marc (Mike’s son) and his family. I wanted to deliver their two pumpkins.
I forgot the pumpkins. Ouch!
It was a perfect weekend to make this trip. Look at this…
And this..
And how about this? If you believe folklore, we’ll have eight or nine snows this winter.
We met Marc, Mary, Jack and Connor at Neo Cantina. It’s a Mexican restaurant in downtown Asheville near Biltmore. We meet them at this same restaurant about three times per year. It’s a fun tradition.
Here’s a picture of all of us…
And then I looked up in the trees and saw this bit of sweetness…
And this cute 13 year old….
And here are the older kids and the really older kids…
And a good picture of Marc, Sue and Jack…
And now the shoe…
My cousin’s husband, Sammy, pastors a small church near our house called Pine Grove. While we are members at Mt. Vernon in Hiltons, I like attending Pine Grove occasionally because everyone is family. Really family!
This is a Revival Week at Pine Grove. Tonight was the first night of revival and at the close of the service, Pastor Sammy asked everyone to come to the alter and kneel or sit nearby for the closing prayer. Since I’m able to kneel, I joined the “Kneelers.” My sister was right behind me with the “Sitters.”
The prayer was steeped in sweetness, and I was thinking how much I loved the intimacy of worship with family and neighbors in this rural community.
And then it happened. It was like a flash of realization! I realized that this…
$29.99 TJ Maxx Shoe
Was prominently displayed while I knelt! It was all I could think about!
