Category Archives: Rural Life in Mendota

Daily adventures in a rural farming community.

Apron Giveaway

First of all, do you dream in color? I do.

I went to bed last night and had difficulty sleeping so I took a sip of children’s Benedryl. I then had a scary dream about anarchy due to some flea spray that went bad in Washington DC and floated down to Southwest Virginia. In the dream, I was living with an outlaw group near the Nordyke Bridge (up the river on the North Fork from my house)  and was a local hero for planting potatoes so we would not starve. I woke up so scared…in spite of being the potato heroine.  Can you believe this stuff?  Whew!

I think I know how this dream came about. Yesterday evening, I was discussing Sons of Anarchy which is an HBO show about an outlaw motorcycle gang. I was also discussing putting Yukon gold potatoes in the raised bed gardens next year. See how this stuff happens? I don’t know where the fleas come from except that I sleep with a Golden Retriever.

Crazy!

I have a cute girl’s apron as a giveaway. This apron was made by Katie Harris of Mendota, Virginia. I put it in a “heart” because I love aprons.

Here’s what the fabric looks like close up…

All you have to do to enter is to (1) go to the comment section at the end of this blog post and leave a comment or (2) leave a comment on Facebook. If you do both, you’ll be entered twice. I’ll do a random drawing on Sunday morning around 9 am and post the winner.

These aprons are simple but it’s fun for me, and if you are like me, you like winning anything. It’ll arrive at your house by mail early next week.

We have quite a weekend coming up in Mendota. It looks quiet here, but we have so many get togethers. This weekend, we have a Corn Hole tournament and picnic at Dee Dee and Eric Taylor’s house on Saturday. On Sunday we have a big pig pickin’ at the Timmons’ Farm and a big surprise birthday party for one of our most beloved citizens who is turning 96. All three of these events will have over 100 people attending. Here in the country, we come out for food!!

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.

 

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We’re Getting Ready! And Stuff…

Hi everyone!   We are loving this beautiful fall weather here in Mendota.   I’ve really enjoyed these Susie flowers that have come up during the past month.  They self seeded from the Black Eyed Susie baskets that were hanging on my porch last year.   They’ve taken over!

Here’s another one..I accidentally put a border on this picture…


This beautiful fall weather reminds us that winter is not far off.   Since we heat our house, guest house, and hot water with a wood boiler, we have a barn full of wood. We actually have enough wood to go into the following winter.   This is extra wood, and it will be cut, stacked and covered.

Mike recently repaired the bird feeder in the picture below.  It had some rot and needed repainting.   It’s ready to go. Soon I’ll start filling it with bird seed daily. 

We’re are continuing to get our beehives ready for winter.

This is hive # 3 in the picture below.   It is a hive that survived last winter.   Can you see the space underneath the silver roof at the top of the hive? It is a vent which allows heat to escape the hive in the summer.  I’m going to remove the vent this week since we’re having cooler days and nights.   We’ll also be closing off a portion of the entry space on the lower portion of the hives.  When the bees are foraging heavily, they need the extra space to come and go from the hives — else it becomes like a traffic jam!   In winter, they primarily come out to do housecleaning and do not need the space which lets in cold air or possibly mice.

I was a bit lazy today, but I did paint the bathroom baseboard.   It just looked dirty and the Magic Erasers weren’t doing the trick anymore.   It’s all taped up in this picture.    When I look at pictures, I see what is wrong with a room.  For instance, that picture hanging beside those plates looks silly.  I just stuck it up there today because I like the colors.  I saw it on a clearance rack for $7 at Walmart a few weeks ago and tossed it in the cart.   I believe it may return to the clearance rack.  I may do an arrangement of plates.  I actually had an arrangement of plates up there at one time.  There are only two left as I broke THREE!  In one day!! 

The bathroom pictured above has been hot pink, wallpapered in yellow flowers, painted green, painted pink, and now painted this beige color.  It has had three floors and two counter tops.   All of the original tile was pulled up and replaced last year.

Back to plates…I bought the platter below for $3 at the Salvation Army in Kingpsort.  This is one good place to go find bargains that might be trash to treasure” candidates.  This is not fine china, but who cares???    I will find a good home for this platter.

The dogs kept bothering me while I was in the bathroom so I gave them some doggy treats to occupy them.  Then..instead of working on my paint project, I started taking pictures.    Have you ever wondered who buys the Dogsters in the ice cream section at Food City? It’s me!

Luckie really enjoys them.

She usually tears the cup up and makes a mess after she’s finished. She’s just resting before this starts.

This dog was thrown away like trash. She was so scared when she got here that she would not sleep inside the garage or house.  She had to be where she could get away. I hope whoever threw her away suffers like she did. She has been a wonderful pet and so much company for Mike. They are together every minute. She is the only dog that ever gets to ride in his Porsche. She is 12 and she’s on Remadyl for her arthritis. She’s had both ACL’s replaced in her rear legs by the great orthopedic vets at the University of Tennessee. Luckie even has her own health insurance.    She’s just special.

So…after watching Luckie eat her Dogster, my sister Nancy came up. She’d made this beautiful apron for her granddaughter, Lacy.  I would have included Nancy in the picture but she’s all splotchy from poison oak.

Isn’t this pretty?

 

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Mendota Daily September 17

Happy Monday evening!   I started back on my weight loss which basically I’ve learned means walking every day. If I walk every day, I lose weight. It’s been less about what I’m eating — although I have been watchful — and more about these feet hitting the road every morning.

Anyway, this morning  I walked two miles, came home and showered and headed out. When you live 17 miles from a retail store, trips count! I had the following “mental list” as I headed out….Hancock Fabrics (40% coupon in hand); TJ Maxx (cute black jeans in mind); Hobby Lobby (40% coupon in hand); Whitney’s Closet (15 consignment items to drop off); Salvation Army (stuff to donate); Target (exchanged a shower curtain); nail salon for manicure; dry cleaners; and finally, My Pal Walmart! I started in Kingsport…looped around to Bristol and then home. Whew! It was 3:00 pm when I pulled into the garage.

I bought a few items to work on fall decor projects. Other than the gazillion gourds that are everywhere, I haven’t done as much as I thought I’d have done by now.   While I’ve already shown you the foddershocks I cut from the corn patch,  I didn’t show you what they look like with a few mums tucked in here and there. I just can’t keep from glancing over at it. So simple and so pretty.

I also made a wreath.

 I started not to show it to you because I’m not 100% happy with it. It’s in puberty. It has two little orange boobies that keep staring at me everytime I look at the door. 

I  tried to make a wreath that was more organic than what I’ve been seeing.   I used ribbon, burlap, Spanish moss and Indian corn.  However, I needed the little pumpkins (which are absolutely nonorganic).   I really needed three, but I only had two so that’s what I used. 

Should I add another pumpkin or just put a bra on the door?

Here’s another thing that reminds me of fall.  Soup.   I made soup last week to take to a family member who has been ill and is now recovering.  Bread, soup and a bit of our honey.    I think that bringing food to someone who is ill, lonely or sad is one of the best ways to say you care.  

I’m having a perfect evening watching “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with my  Gracie Dog beside me.   My sister lost her beloved Bailey Dog and it’s reminded me that my time with this dear girl is short.    She is on the couch and I can reach out and touch her every few minutes. 

Mike is in the kitchen messing around. 

I love the sweetness of normal.

 

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CITR and Back In Mendota

Hi everyone!

I’ve been gone for a few days. My friend Helene and I went to the Chickens In The Road Retreat (CITR)  in West Virginia! We’re back! We’re glad to be back! We had a nice time and met wonderful people who share some common interests. However, we also realized that we didn’t have to go to West Virginia to learn home canning, make soap, quilting,  apron making, pie making, yogurt making and so forth.     If you live in rural Southwest Virginia, do any of these activities sound familiar to you? Me too! I What were we thinking? 

Once we got there, we realized that we could have stayed home and done these things and slept in our own beds instead of sleeping on a very small, very tiny, very stained mattress!!

Plus, because I wasn’t watching my dates, we missed the Saturday performances at Rhythm and Roots.

Before I left, Mike hung the new kitchen light. My old light is pictured below…it was a light that traveled with us from Massachusetts for sentimental reasons. I do not want to get rid of it…I think we’ll find a new home for it in the guest house…but it just looked a little brassy. That light is a tart!

Sorry about this giant picture…it was from my media library on Word Press and I was using a different photo editor when this photo was taken.

And here comes the new light…which I got at a great price and yakked about that in a previous post (here if you wish to read).

Mike, not an electrician (at all), hung the light. I stood about patiently while he grimaced, glared and made faces and said unmentionable words.   However, eventually, he got the light hung! Doesn’t it look great? Sorry about the darkness of the picture…there are just so few times my table is clean and I can take a picture.

And then..within 48 hours, it started.   If the phone rang and the dishwasher was on, the lamp, phone and dishwasher went off.   We tried to figure out what it was and somehow ended up without the well pump working. Next the refrigerator was not working…we had to get an extension cord and plug it into a different outlet.

Chrissy the Cat laid low during the whole ruckus.  She stayed under the table.

Me:  Hey Chrissy…can I get under there with you?

Chrissy:  No Silly Human…you may not!   Now get me some food before I pee on this chair leg. 

 

So all that happened on Thursday morning, and I left for CITR.  I was happy to be pulling out. Things were a bit tense around here.   A few hours after I left,  an electrician arrived and I think the problem is resolved. No more DIY light installations.

I’m back home (we left early).  West Virginia is beautiful, but Clinch Mountain is my mountain.

I am so happy to be home.

 

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My Laundry Room Is Happy!

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a close friend who describes my decorating style as cheerful. She’s right. I like color and a certain brightness to the rooms I live in. They make me happy. Did I show you my very unhappy laundry room? It’s very, very sad.

I’ve finished updating the laundry room today.  Here’s one of my “after” pictures and then details of what I did during this process of changing the look and feel of this little room that I enter daily.

I knew that red and black would change the way the celery colored paint would look, and I went looking for an inexpensive piece of fabric for a window treatment. I found a black, white and red fabric at Hobby Lobby for $9 per yard. I had a 40% off coupon so that brought it down to $5.60 per yard. I bought 1 and 1/2 yards.

Here’s the fabric..

We had created a  storage problem because we stored tons of lightbulbs in the cabinets above the washer and dryer. It was Little Debbie to the rescue again as Mike picked up empty Little Debbie boxes at Sam’s Club and I painted them, hot glued ribbon on them and used wide-mouth canning lids and scrapbook paper for labels. With the ribbon, I have about $2 in each box.  What a deal! I have attractive storage for the bulbs and easy-to-access storage for laundry and cleaning supplies.  I couldn’t be happier.

I used four boxes.

I decided to keep trash bags out in the open where they are easy to find. When we have company, which is fairly often, sometimes they’ll ask “where do you keep the trash bags?” Now, I can just point them to the laundry room!

Living 17 miles from a grocery store,  I’ve learned that white vinegar can handle just about any cleaning job and it’s a good thing to have for laundry, too.   I’m keeping it on hand in one of my canning jars.  Same with the clothespins.

My husband made this small distressed red shelf.  Love it.  I also keep clothespins in it. I like a plant in every room–that inclues the laundry room.

I had these red plates which I’d bought many years ago.  I’ve never used them.   When I was thinking about the laundry room and the need to have some brightness in there, they came to mind.

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I had to wait for several days to put the plates up. I use an adhesive backed plate hanger for hanging plates, and I haven’t found any place in Bristol that carries them. I ordered these from Amazon on Thursday and they arrived today (Wednesday). I was so excited when the mail arrived with them…you’d think someone mailed me gold!

The ribbon, fabric, spray paint and spraypaint were all that I purchased. I like using what I have on hand, as it inspires me to think “outside the box” (or in this case…in the box). My sweet mother, Vivan Barker, always said that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Mother was right!

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage. If you care to comment, I’d love to read your thoughts!

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The Baptism and the Bees

I have two things to write about, and they are both different. I’ll do them in the order they appeared today.

Mike and I arrived home from church this morning and saw a car parked near our entry gate. It was my cousin,Terri, and she told me her brother-in-law, Pastor Sammy, was going to baptize someone in the river in front of the house and asked if I wanted to come. I did. I always do. It is very common to baptize in the slow moving North Fork here in Mendota.

My sister Pat and I used to play in the very spot where this morning’s baptism took place. We took turns playing John the Baptist and baptizing each other. No sprinkling for Pat and me–we believed in full, repeated immersion!

In case you’ve never attended a  river baptism, here’s how it works…

There is a sense of waiting. It’s a reverent occasion. We stand there listening to the sound of the leaves. The river is flowing quietly. This is followed by singing. Sammy leads the small group in singing Amazing Grace. The voices are naked and beautiful.  I love it.

There is a prayer. Since I attend church elsewhere, I do not know the young man being baptized, but I learn that his name is Caleb  and he made his commitment to Christ during Vacation Bible School.

They are in the water now, and I can tell it’s cold. Someone whispers…”I hope Gordon and Sammy remembered to remove their wallets.” This is followed by a nervous giggle and then quiet.


And…

And…

It was over soon. It was time to get this young man home into dry clothes.

I walked up the hill following the baptism.  I’m glad I live where we still baptize in a river.   I started thinking about my week ahead.

One of the things I started thinking about was our honeybees as today is the day I will start feeding two of the beehives.

Beekeepers have so many different instructions. One beekeeper says do it this way, and another says do it a different way. Some feed the bees and some do not. We have two hives that appear to be weak and to help ensure that they have an adequate supply of honey for the winter, I’ll be feeding them for the next 45 days.

Here I am…getting suited up to go put the feeding apparatus on the hives and to start them on their beloved sugar water.  They love this stuff. I have to take my shoes off to get them through the bee suit.   Check out those nasty shoes.

When the hive is new, we add a vitamin supplement called “Honey Bee Healthy,” but today I’m giving them only sugar water. Five pounds of sugar will make up four quarts of sugar water. It’s not cheap.

Each day I’ll zip up to the apiary on the golf cart and feed these little guys and girls. I don’t mind this feeding system because the swap of the empty jar of sugar water for the full jar is easy and I don’t kill any bees.

They will get used to me after about a week and won’t take much notice when I’m around.   Our previous system held more sugar water but was very harsh on the bees. I dreaded feeding them, and they chased me out.  I had to be fully suited up to feed them.   I’m glad we’re returning to the old feeding system.

Once I’m comfortable, I will not wear the entire bee suit.  I might wear the veil and gloves, but unless they appear aggressive, I won’t feel the need to suit up.

Last year, I think I got overly comfortable because I was feeding them in my shorty pajamas…not veil, no gloves, no covering on my arms and legs.  I think that might have been a little risky.  I won’t do it again.

It comforts me to know that the bees have plenty to eat…they forage in a two-mile radius. This yellow flower is everywhere in Mendota right now. It’s around the apiary, and I could hear it buzzing as I walked by. The bees were foraging. Is this goldenrod? I don’t know!

I imagine them flying up Clinch Mountain, over the North Fork for a sip of water and into my neighbors flowers, trees and vegetable gardens. There is a cultural move to stay away from pesticides here in the valley. I’m glad.

This past winter we had a bit of a crisis. It was a mild winter, there was too much room in the hives, and they did not cluster properly, and we lost a lot of bees. I was in Georgia and I got an email from Mike saying that Gerald had looked in the hives and while there was honey, many of the bees had died. I was sick. Gerald was sick. We were all depressed.

Learning from this, we removed the top supers last week. This leaves the hive more crowded..they must keep the queen at about 85 degrees year round, and the closeness will facilitate proper clustering.

I’m glad we have the bees.

 

 

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Little Debbie Boxes Laundry Room Organization

It’s Saturday evening and I am parked on the couch…too exhausted to go to bed.

Today was the Mendota Heritage Festival, and while I planned to make a Barbie doll cake, I did not get it done. While I planned to be present at 10 am to help with the Health Fair, I did not get there until 11 am. While I planned to help with hotdogs from noon until 2 pm, I was told I wasn’t needed and I gratefully went home.

I worked very hard yesterday on multiple things. I cleaned house,spent time  reorganizing and refreshing my laundry room, doing laundry and worked on organizing our master bath. I also sat down and glanced at an article on the internet  entitled “Ten Tips for an ADD/ADHD Person To Keep A Clean House.” How did they know?

I do get the house clean, but I admit to doing it differently. I drag everything out and then I put everything away. I move along 3 or 4 things…and once in a while, they all get done!!

I took a good look at my laundry room this week. It’s very dull and boring. I haven’t paid any attention to this room. Ever.

After a good hard look, I made a list in my head of what would help this room. Here’s the result: (1) The paint is called “Celery”. With the white window treatment, white cabinets, and white washer and dryer, it looks institutional, yet I do not want to repaint the room. (2) I think red and black accents might help the room. (3) I have not been using the cabinet space well. The cabinet was full of lightbulbs instead of laundry supplies which were sitting on the dryer, etc.  I know..it’s crazy but it just happened…we did not intend to buy a gazillion different bulbs.  But we did. 

The first thing I went to is my Little Debbie Box inspiration.   While we do need to keep lightbulbs within easy reach, we don’t have to keep them all within easy reach. All but the minimum amount of lightbulbs will go in boxes above the cabinets.   By painting and embellishing the boxes, it will also  introduce black and red into the room.

Here’s the Little Debbie box in the before picture…

As I mentioned in prior posts, Mike picked up the Little Debbie boxes at Sam’s Club. I send him in to buy one thing but also to get a box or two to accompany the purchase! Feelin’ sooo smart!  The boxes are the perfect size….here they are..

The black and white polka dot ribbon on the boxes is an interesting story. I purchased my first ribbon in a three-yard spool at Hobby Lobby for $3.99. I didn’t have a set plan so I only bought one spool. I love ribbon and keep it on hand. Never know when a ribbon emergency might come up. Once I got moving on this idea, I needed more ribbon, and I found a comparable ribbon at Walmart for $2.99–same size and quality. The difference was price and, more importantly–the ribbon from Walmart was made in Pennsylvania while the ribbon from Hobby Lobby was made in China. Gasp! Walmart became my New Best Friend. It took two spools to do all four boxes. Because I don’t have a lot of money right now, I returned to what I had on hand to label the boxes which was wide-mouth canning jar lids and scrapbook paper.

Here’s another photo…there are actually four boxes but to capture all four in a photograph, I would have to climb out the window!

 

I got totally inspired while doing this project…so much so that I willingly washed the windows yesterday while doing everything else!! Mike did the outside but I did the inside at the same time. Normally, I would have found an excuse NOT to wash windows but my laundry room redo was making me so happy that I didn’t mind doing the windows. Color in a room is so important to the way you feel when you’re in the room. At least for me.  

I’ve made a curtain for the window and added a few other touches.

Another picture…

Finally, we had the Mendota Heritage Festival today. If cakewalks, quilts, baskets, original artwork, hotdogs, soup beans, baked bread and learning about the Mendota hawk count is more important than Fashion Week, the price of gasoline, or who had the best political speech, then this might be the place for you. It sure is the place for me.

 

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