The Last One

           This is the last one!

          The last letter blog of 2024. When we visit again it will be 2025. My ten-year-old self just couldn’t’ve guessed the twists and turns, the ups and downs, her life would take.

          “How old will I be in the year 2000?” was a game my siblings and I played in the 1960s. Forty-one sounded so, so very old! I couldn’t even imagine what that would look like. Now we’re so far beyond 2000 and I’m so far beyond forty-one!

          But one thing is for sure!

          I don’t take one single day for granted.

          There’s a line in Momma’s autobiography that haunts me and it comes to mind now.

I have been wonderfully happy and incredibly sad. I have been angry and upset. I have laughed and cried. I have loved and lost.

I expect that this can be true for many of us.

>>>*<<<

Christmas is behind us. I gave Miss Rosie her blue bird suncatcher. She likes it. I worried she might guess I was making her one since I was making one for California Susan, but she didn’t.

Lamar and Rosie were married over the Christmas break since she was a school teacher, and for their 54^th anniversary, Lamar gave her a bouquet of flowers.

“I don’t know what this one thing is?” Miss Rosie said on a morning love call. “It’s got round bulbs on the end and just a couple of little green petals on a long green stem,” she described.

“I don’t know what it is either. Maybe the girls can Google it when they come home for Christmas,” I suggested.

I’ve since been to their house and took a picture.

“It looks like what’s left over after the flower petals have fallen off,” I guessed.

Google says this is hypericum berries, often used in flower arrangements. And it is what’s left after the petals fall off. I was surprised when I clicked on the Wikipedia page and saw a picture of a flower and thought, That looks like St. John’s Wort. It was. There are over 400 species of hypericum, and St. John’s Wort is one of them.

“Did California Susan like her sun catcher?” you wanna know.

          She did! And as awful as the mail has been with its backlog of Christmas packages, she actually got it three days earlier than the post office said she would.

>>>*<<<

It was cold here this week!

          “How cold was it‽” you ask.

          We had a minus two here at our mountain home. The cold water froze at my kitchen sink. It didn’t take too long with a hair dryer to thaw it out. It probably wouldn’t’ve frozen if we’d’ve thought to plug in the heat tape. Since the kitchen is the only place where the water supply is on an outside wall, it’s the only place where the water was frozen.

           I'm sure the grape jelly was frozen, too. But I figure if they can make holes in trees with their face knives, frozen jelly shouldn't be much of a problem. 

          We had ice flowers on the inside of the windows on the front patio.

          The red background is the red of the lower barn.

          We went out one day this week.

          Our pretty little creek.

          Ice cakes floating on the Susquehanna. 

          I saw — would you believe? — I saw seven hawks on this trip! Seven!

          I didn’t get pictures of them all and one that I missed was of two hawks sitting close to each other on a branch.

          Sigh!

         

          Christmas Eve, when we went down to give Miss Rosie her Christmas gifts—

          “Wait! Wait! Wait!” you interrupt. “You said ‘gifts’ and the blue bird suncatcher is only one gift. Singular.”

          Good catch there guys! Yes, gifts. It wasn’t a typo. I did give her something else but didn’t think it all that interesting to mention at the time. I made her a batch of homemade bread, too. The bread I make is the easy no-knead bread that my daughter Kat taught me to make. It’s a hearty bread and has lots of nooks and crannies to hold all the melted butter and whatever else you want to put on it. I know Rosie and Lamar like to eat a piece while it’s still warm, so I run it down quick as it’s out of the oven. Then Miss Rosie likes to toast it for her breakfast. It makes the best toast! Since the girls would be home over Christmas and I know that Jenn likes my bread, too, I made three loaves for them.

          But anyway...

          When we got to the Kipps’ I spotted a hawk sitting in a tree just across the bridge. Mike stopped and by the time I put the long lens on my camera I only got one blurry shot before he was launching himself from the branch.

         I followed with my camera. Clickclickclick, all in a row like that, and got a second, fairly decent, shot.

          I don’t often have the luxury of sitting still when I’m taking hawk photos.

          “What did Miss Rosie give you?” I know you wanna know.

          Miss Rosie gave me the most beautiful necklace. It’s a real flower, like a Johny Jump Up, cast in resin. I love it.

          And she gave me a Chiweenie ornament in a cute tin Santa box.

          I was surprised, shocked, and pleased when my friend and editor Jenn gave me a gift as well.

          We weren’t able to get together until Sunday morning in church. She handed me a package that looked suspiciously like a book.

          “Should I open it now?” I asked Jenn.

          “If you want to.”

          I pulled the wrapping paper back to reveal an artist set. I probably only looked at it for five seconds before I knew what it was.

          I threw my arms around her. “Thank you! I love it! You didn’t have to though.”

          Jenn smiled. “We have to keep you in art supplies.”

          Jenn is a fan of my work and has commissioned a few pieces from me over the years.

          I got it home, finished unwrapping it, pulled out the watercolor pad, opened it, and lovingly ran my hands across the surface. Beautiful texture. Not as thick as I’d use for a commissioned piece but functional nonetheless.

          “Did Mike get you anything?” you ask.

          Mike and I get whatever we want, whenever we want — within reason. We don’t need to wait for Christmas. However, he did ask me what I wanted and one of things I wanted was a new pillow speaker. I listen to podcasts to help me fall asleep and if I wake up in the middle of the night, which I do often, I’ll listen some more. The speaker has a tendency to move around under my pillow. I have the volume low so it doesn’t bother Mike and if it’s not right under my ear, I can’t hear it. I fish around under the pillow until I find it and pull it back into position. The wires can’t take a lot of that. I’d gone through several pillow speakers before I realized I could pry it open and reconnect the wires using a drop of solder and electrical tape. After a while my connection starts to break down, then there I am, in the middle of the night, fiddling with the speaker trying to get it to where the sound would come out again. Hence, my request for a new pillow speaker.

          Something else I asked for was watercolor wax. It’ll seal a watercolor painting if you don’t intend to frame it. In my sketchbooks, my colors transfer to the opposite page. I don’t know if that’s common of all watercolors or if it’s the kind of watercolors I use. It’s my sketchbook, wax is an extravagance I could live without, so it seemed like a good time to ask for that.

          And I asked for a hot air gun for drying my art. I’ve been using a hair dryer but it decided to quit. I didn’t want a new one because hair dryers blow with such force that it blows my watercolors around if I’m not careful.   

          All in all, it was a good Christmas.

 

          Sometimes I need a little something fun to paint. This is what I’m working on now. I’m going to set it aside and start my next commission. When I just need to take a break from serious painting, I’ll paint another house.

          Let’s call this one done!