Small town

Random rainbow on our street

Turns out we moved to Bedford Falls.

The more we walk around this town, the more I'm sure of it.  There was a town-wide yard sale last Saturday, and this week is the Free Fair, which is where everyone brings all the leftovers from their yard sales down to the "landing", which is more or less the town square, lays it out and everyone can pick through it and take it home.  For free.  Whatever's left gets boxed up and dropped off at either a shelter or the local thrift store, depending.

In June, there's an ice cream social in honor of the town's 125th anniversary.

Nearby park

There's a Fourth of July parade, and fireworks at the high school field.

There's a thriving farmer's market and arts scene.

There's a big sycamore tree, with its own park, that serves as the town's logo.

Santa arrives on a fire engine on the weekend after Thanksgiving, depending on fire calls.  Last year his arrival got interrupted by a call and he had to continue on later in the day..

Presbyterian church - with bells

There are also, weirdly, blue laws.  There are no liquor stores in town.  No bars.  No restaurants that serve alcohol.

It's odd, but considering one of the reasons I was tired of West Philly was because of my two competing corner bars, I can live with it.  We do most of our drinking at home these days, anyway.

Memorial at the church

Technically, Lansdowne is a suburb of Philadelphia.  It's about 5 miles from our old house, with a stop on the regional rail train, but it feels more like a small town than a suburb.  Mario grew up in the suburbs in New Jersey, and he agrees.

I never wanted to live in the burbs; I loved the idea of a small town, but as a non-driver, that didn't seem possible.  Now, here we are, in a small town in the burbs, where I can walk almost everywhere.

We did good.

My favorite house that I don't live in

Another park

Corner maple and bench

 Looking down our street

Sleep tight

When I was 18, I got my first apartment.  My great-aunt had died several months before, and her sister started breaking up her household at the same time. 

For some reason, she didn't want her sister's bedroom set, so I bought it from her for $100 (the same amount the "junk man", i.e., antiques dealer) offered her.

It has served me well since 1982.  Until . . .

Several years ago, the bed frame failed.  It was one of those traditional four piece (headboard, foot board, side rails with hooks) and the wood had split in a few places.  I glued and braced it, but it cracked somewhere else, and started making alarming noises every time we got into the bed.  Eventually, one of the posts on the headboard separated completely, and I gave up, let it go and bought a metal bed frame from Amazon for the time being.

I cannot even articulate how much I hated that metal bed frame.  It squeaked, it shifted, it rolled even with the wheels locked.  And without a headboard, I always felt like the bed was just floating in space.

But with a move coming up, I didn't want to spend money on something new, plus I didn't actually see anything I liked.

A few weeks after we moved in, we stopped into an antique/auction place near the house, and lo and behold, there was a bed frame leaning against the wall.  Mahogany.  Carved.  Heavy.  Old.  All good things.

We bought it for less than we would have paid for a new one, picked up pine boards for slats at Home Depot, and the other day, we finally got it assembled.  Not only that, but a young neighbor getting her first apartment is taking the metal frame off our hands, so it was a zero-waste replacement.

It feels like a bedroom now.  The art is the right height, and if I want to read in bed (once I find shades for the bedside lamps that aren't out yet), I have something to lean against.

Also, you'll note, I finally got curtains up in the bedroom.  These were in my workroom at the old house, but fit and look perfect here.  I love how little new stuff I've had to buy to make this place a home.

Starting over

One of the very few things I knew I would miss from our West Philly house was the blueberry bushes in the back yard.  We'd purchased them about 7 years ago as 3 year old plants, and they had fruited year after year, last year giving us more than we could manage to eat.  (Don't worry, I froze the excess).

But when I tried to dig them up, I realized just how deeply embedded they were.  Some of the roots I uncovered were the thickness of my fingers, and I knew that if I managed to excavate them, there was a very good chance they wouldn't make it.

I reached out to the woman who bought my house, through her realtor, and asked if she liked blueberries.  She did, and her kids even more so. 

So that was okay, at least they would be appreciated and I wouldn't walk past the house and see them sitting at the curb on trash day.  If she'd said no, I'd have risked taking them out.

On Sunday, we combined a visit to Mario's family with a visit to a related blueberry farm in Hammonton, NJ, where we used our combined birthday money to buy three fully-mature bushes.  These will bear heavily this year, but since they were grown for transplanting, they didn't have the ginormous root issues of our old bushes.

I had removed a nice stretch of grass from the back yard along the fence with our neighbor, and they went in there, flanked on either end by Chinese ceramic statues that my mom painted before I was born.  I've had them for years, and I'm somewhat attached to them, but not enough to have them indoors.  As garden guardians, they work just fine.

On the other side of the garden, along our garage, I peeled off another strip of sod and put in four tomato plants and two peppers, and a row of string bean seeds that can climb up the garage trellis.

I still want to rip up some more grass and put in my cold frame to late-plant some more peppers.  I have a pack of Padron pepper seeds that need to get in the ground - they were my favorite tapas when we went to Barcelona a few years ago and I try to plant some every year.

BONUS PIC: my new tchotchke garden, so-christened by my neighbor Grace.  I pulled out a bit of the ivy that had been there, discovered a buried outdoor faucet, and then just kept pulling.  The large space by the pole is intended for a Gertrude Jekyll rose, whenever David Austin gets it together to deliver it, and though they are barely visible in the photo, there are 4 lavender plants, a rosemary, and the dried-out tulips and hyacinths transplanted from the back yard.

The tchotchke portion: a large pale blue Chinese fish (sitting on the stump of a long-gone azalea), 2 ceramic cats and a silver metal horse, all flea market finds that didn't make the cut to get in the house.  It'll look better once the plants fill out.

Mother's Day

A week ago, I received an order for a baby blanket bear.  I responded with the usual email, thanking them for their order and providing my mailing address so the blanket could be shipped.

The customer responded, and asked if I could possibly have the bear ready by Mothers Day.  It's for his wife - they lost their little boy at birth in February, and he wanted to give her a bear made from the blanket wrapped around little Archer during his brief time with them.

If Mother's Day had been the next day, I would have said yes.

One of the thing I love about custom work is hearing the stories of the people who wore the clothes, or about the loved baby (now toddler or grade-schooler) who used the blanket.  But a baby who only lived for a day?  I shed more than a few tears while making this little guy, and I hope that he brings some healing to the parents. 

I can't even imagine a situation like that, and I give major props to the dad for knowing that this would have meaning for his wife.