Last night, I fell asleep about 2:00 am. Sometime shortly thereafter, Luckie barked at me. The poor baby was sick. She had terrible diahhrea. I got up and took her outside to see if there was anything left (there was), and then came back in and began cleaning. I had to rely on my nose more than my eyes because I didn’t have my contacts in. It was bad. She and I are exhausted this morning.

She even declined our early morning walk to check on what grows overnight. This is our special time. The birds are so noisy in the early hours. She misses them since she can no longer hear, but I tell her about them with my hands, my mind, my eyes and my heart. She connects.

I’ve grown a lot of succulents this year as they are going to see some wedding action in about a week. The floral designer, Ms. Heidi, knows she can take them all if she needs them.

There was an old weed
That lived in a shoe
That had so many chicks>
She didn’t know what to do.

Those boots belonged to Randy Powers.  Randy is my friend, my cousin, a retired Navy man, a musician, a restaurant operator, a father, husband and grandfather, and he’s a pastor.  I love him and his boots!   What a sweet gift this old pair of boots have been.  They’ve been around here for years now.  Last year, they got a little fancier.  If Heidi uses the succulents in the boots, then I’ll add some flowers again.

This is my “Hello Stranger” tomato.  It was given to us by a stranger.  We don’t know what it is, but it’s doing well in the five-gallon bucket.

The kindess of a stranger.  I hope you receive some kindness from someone today, and better yet, perhaps give some.  It’s important.

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.

I have a lot of quilts, and I make sure they are all used.   When I considered the color for the bedroom redo (Bedroom posted here), I wanted to make sure I could use all my quilts.     In the summer, a quilt and a sheet is what I like on my bed.

Here’s an old blue and yellow quilt that I put on the bed today.  The duvet cover was just to hot for this time of year.  The quilt will be much cooler.

Although…I do like the look of the duvet better. It has a puffy softness that beckons me to climb in. Unfortunately, once I got in there this past week, I started to sweat.

This will work much better for a while.

This quilt just came in from the clothesline. I like the faded fabric. It’s hard to find quilts large enough to fit this bed as it’s a California King. Quilts from Pottery Barn always work.

And…the underside of the quilt has a print which makes it nice. Oh whoops…can you see that the old duvet is lying in the floor?

When I watch tv shows where a house undergoes a “redo” in a day, I feel like such a loser.    I started painting days ago, and while the room is now painted, I haven’t got it back together.   This picture was taken on May 22.  It’s May 30.  No we’re not done.

We just got it painted yesterday which was May 29.   We haven’t put the stuff back.  Here’s the bed with all the junk on it that I”m using to clean the room.  I’ll be sleeping with that Windex.

Have you ever done something and then doubted yourself? Maybe you became unsure? I do that most of the time, but not this time. I love this bedroom now that it’s blue.  Before I painted,  didn’t want to clean it or enter it. I just ignored it most of the time when it was the horrible cold coffee brown color.

Everything looks so much better with the new paint…these sheers have been there forever, but today, they look fresh to me. I washed them and pulled them out of the dryer and put them on the curtain rod. That curtain rod has an interesting history. It’s really a pipe that Mike got at my True Love’s a few years back for 34 cents per foot.  We stuck fenials on the pipe, but I can’t remember where we got them.

I wanted a few things above the bureau.  It has a mirror but I don’t like it.    The two pictures are from our days with Nortel. Mike worked out of Calgary, Alberta, and Nortel was nice enough to fly me up several times (obviously before we had dogs). We stayed at Banff Springs Lodge and hiked around Lake Louise.  The upper picture is the lodge and the bottom picture is Lake Louise.   I purchased these prints on that trip. The chalkboard that says “light of the moon” is a reminder of one of Mike’s first observations about Mendota. “It’s so dark…the only light is from the moon!” When I have to spend the night away from here, I’m very aware of the traffic, noise and lights. I prefer to sleep where there are only the stars and the moon to illuminate the way.

Here they are on the wall…Love Love Love this blue.

One project begats another project.  See the blue table I did last year pictured below?  It was an Annie Sloan project.   It’s going to be white in a day or two.   I think it will look really pretty against the blue. I also replaced the lamp.

I’ll show you when I get all through.