June 1, 2018
And so it goes. Today is the last day of my annual spring vacation and I'm feeling ambivalent. I've crossed a lot of home and garden items off my list - pro. I didn't take much time for myself - con. Today, Saturday and Sunday remain but I'm not hopeful I'll actually take time to be lazy.
This particular vacation I've been working on refinishing my maternal grandmother's set of Eastlake platform rockers. I know I'm talking about the project quite a bit but the memories of hours spent sitting in one of those rockers talking with my grandmother (my Mam) are alive and vibrant within me. Some of those memories define who I am at my core.
My grandfather built the house he and my grandmother lived in. He and his cadre of brother-in-laws did all the work. The stone foundation, the framing, the brick exterior, the kitchen cabinets. That's the way it was done back then. The kitchen had two almost ceiling to floor west-facing windows. Pop built extra-wide window sills for flower pots. Apparently, after Mam brought home the rockers, the sills were only used for setting one's coffee cup on. I remember those sills as having a lot of coffee rings on them.
The rockers arrived long before I did as the picture of my mother holding a newborn me attests. Mam found them at a sale or auction and brought them home in the trunk of her car. She made new cushions for them - once. Now, over sixty years on, they need a lot of tender loving care. So that's my current project. I'm refinishing the chairs and they will have a place of honor in my sunroom office. It seems fitting they sit in the same room as my grandmother's favorite lamp and my great-grandfather's desk.
I'm excited to have the project underway, but I'm almost equally annoyed at the condition of the chairs. Oh, I get it. To my grandparents, they were simply chairs. The spot in Mam's sunny kitchen where all the problems of the world were solved with a cup of coffee and quiet conversation. Little did my grandparents realize the legacy those old chairs would help create.
It's difficult to predict where the chairs will one day end up. I look at those in the next generation and think that because the chairs are not in pristine condition those girls won't want them. Nor do they have the memories of lazy Sunday afternoons shared. My grandmother - their great-grandmother. There is the disconnect of generations in that.
But perhaps by the time I leave this world one of them will have cause to need a rocking chair in a sunny spot to ponder their memories. I can only hope their's will be as rich as mine.
KC
www.kckendricks.com
www.twitter.com/kckendricks
March 31, 2018
I'm hesitant to actually suggest this for fear of the repercussions, but I think spring may have arrived in my neighborhood. From my desk, I can look across the backyard and into the woods. I've spent years planting daffodils in my woods. Many of those clumps are blooming. Most of them need to be dug up and thinned, an easier job now that we have the John Deere.
What pleases me most this year are the little blue snow glories along my lower driveway. I first planted them on the bank in 1981, or maybe it was 1982. Regardless, they've had decades to multiply and finally, this year, put on a grand show. That's the thing about country living. Everything moves at its own pace and we rarely have a say in it. I think it's worth the wait.
Even more telling that spring may finally be here are the little peeper frogs. This past Wednesday night brought a drizzly rain and a deep fog. I stepped outside with Deuce and heard one or two tiny voices in the distance. When I arrived home from bowling last night there were many loud voices. I loved hearing them, being grateful they're still around to sing. I think they have some sort of magic that tells them it's safe to emerge from their winter sleep.
Spring brings a lot of work. We have a lot of yard clean-up to do this season. There are branches down all around the perimeter of the lawn, a lawn which is getting a bit of over-seeding this year. It's time to take the snowblower off the John Deere and get the loader back on it. Yesterday, I put the bistro patio set on the porch outside my office and I can't decide if I like it there. I'll have my mind made up on that by next weekend and can swap things around if I chose.
While we wait for the ground to dry out, we have a few inside projects to complete. There's new flooring for in the bathroom and a fresh coat of paint. That may well lead to new kitchen flooring. Laminate is cheap and easy to change out.
I rescued my late grandmother's set of East Lake platform rockers from my mother's basement and they're getting a fresh coat of paint and new fabric on the seats and backs. Those rockers set in my grandmother's kitchen, one at each window, for decades. When I visited my grandparents, I often found them in the kitchen watching the birds from their respective spots. My grandmother's rocker is replacing the chair in my office and my grandfather's is replacing the rocking chair the spousal unit hangs his "wear again" clothes on. (We need to discuss that habit.)
Yes, there is much to do. It's spring, you know.
KC Kendricks
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June 1, 2018
My grandfather built the house he and my grandmother lived in. He and his cadre of brother-in-laws did all the work. The stone foundation, the framing, the brick exterior, the kitchen cabinets. That's the way it was done back then. The kitchen had two almost ceiling to floor west-facing windows. Pop built extra-wide window sills for flower pots. Apparently, after Mam brought home the rockers, the sills were only used for setting one's coffee cup on. I remember those sills as having a lot of coffee rings on them. 
