White Linen

Linen, the smell of fresh crisp clean white linen,                                   You can't capture the smell of linen in a bottle though they try.                                                                                                         When I think of linen, it's with a bitter sweet sigh,                                           I think of my childhood memories of good times gone by.

Napkins,  candles and table cloths, white with white design,                                                                                                  Ready for Sunday dinner with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents so fine,                                                                                   Pot roast, chicken, mashed potatoes and strawberry rhubarb pie.                                                                                            Linen,  fresh clean memories, happy times gone by.

Life was livable and children were sweet and quiet and shy,             Streets filled with bicycles and roller skates, marbles and  jacks and kites in the sky.                                                                                                Air filled with sounds of horns and whistles, a baseball cracking off the tip of a bat,                                                                                               The shouts of children with laughter and glee, wonderment of all that.

Running after the ice cream truck with a ringing bell,                          Cones and Eskimo pies, and Popsicles as well.                                       Little girls secrets from boys they'll never tell,                                                                       Linen, crisp linen, good memories, and oh such a fresh smell.

The front yards had white picket fences and trellises with climbing Tea Roses,                                                                                              Bachelor Buttons, Daisies and Hollyhocks, sweet aromas filled our noses.                                                                                                                  Pansies and Tulips, hear the soft sounds of humming bees.                The back yards had bird houses posted to Willow, Oak, and Maple trees.

Robins and Bluebirds on branches hidden amongst the leaves,                                                                                                                                 And always clothes lines and clothes pins gripping white linen sheets waving in the breeze.                                                                                  Crisp white clean linens spreading out against the blue sky,                                          So many memories of wonderful times in my life gone by.

Author  Eileen Clark

Images:creeklinehouse.com

vintagehomeandgarden.blogspot.com

Saving Fall Leaves

Did any of you do this ? Every fall my mom would have my brothers and I get a paper bag and go for a walk in the woods and collect colored leaves. When we got them home we would pick out the very best leaves, perfect shape and colors counted. We would then place them on a sheet of wax paper placing another sheet on the top and then go over it with a slightly warm iron. Mom would tape them to the glass on our windows.

It reminded me of stained glass windows when the sun shown directly on the glass, awesome. The nice thing was that they lasted for a long time right through the winter if you like. It’s such a little thing but I loved the time we spent doing this and I did the same with my children on down to my grandchildren and we all  loved it and every fall looked forward doing it.

I was thinking about it yesterday and wondered, do they even make wax paper anymore ? So I would try to find some pictures of pressing leaves by doing a google search and wow! I was quite surprised and delighted to see how many people still do this. Interesting thing is folks have found new ways to preserve their beautiful leaves and display them in very interesting ways and yes, they still do make wax paper! We kids called it pressing leaves, today some call them Suncatchers. It’s the little things that kids remember.

How To Preserve Leaves (6 Methods)

https://www.the-modern-dad.com/fall-learning-mrs-dunnigan/

http://www.thecraftycrow.net/2014/09/fall-crafts-for-toddlers.html

http://riverblissed.blogspot.com/2012/11/in-quest-of-light-lf-lantern-tutorials.html

~ Enjoy The Fall ~

To Autumn

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

*

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

*

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats, 1795 – 1821

Born in 1795, John Keats was an English Romantic poet and author of three poems considered to be among the finest in the English language.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/autumn

Image:https://www.pexels.com/search/nature%20wallpaper/

An Autumn Evening

Dark hills against a hollow crocus sky
Scarfed with its crimson pennons, and below
The dome of sunset long, hushed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow
And wake among the harps of leafless trees
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies.

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar,
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star
Above the darkening druid glens of fir
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir.

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen with a rapt delight,
Pausing again and yet again at will
To drink the elusive beauty of the night,
Until my soul is filled, as some deep cup,
That with divine enchantment is brimmed up.

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Fall Imagehttp://www.squidoo.com/fall-festivals-indiana?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campai  n=framebuster