300 Words: Thoughts of a pretired French Teacher

I realized the other day that I have painted the rooms of all four of our grandchildren. Today, I put the first coat on our eldest granddaughter’s bedroom walls, while she is out of town with a friend. It is a very special trip as she is visiting with her friend and her friend’s grandparents in another state.

For the longest time, it was a given that I was going to be painting her room. For some reason, it has lasted a long time on the docket. A few years ago, I had painted her sister’s bedroom, a beautiful robin’s egg blue. She wanted me to do the same, but in a different color. Today, I put a coat of her preferred color on the walls. Tomorrow, I will put a second coat on to and do touch ups where needed.  Our son had done the ceiling the day before and also painted the woodwork and doors. She will be home in a few days to enjoy our work.

I had painted our other grandkids’ bedrooms more than a few years ago. I doubt that they are even aware of it. Seeing our grandkids is a joy unequaled.

My painting habit is an old one, originally brought about by need and the inability to hire a professional painter. In my family, we all painted. I started out with Sears paint, back in the day, using latex paints. That quickly morphed into using oil base paint when we first got married. I loved painting with oil base and even found that in some ways it is less messy than the latex. I have a terrible disdain for the use of tape when I paint. My disdain is only for myself as I make more mess with tape than I do by my slow, still steady, hand. I can pretty much paint a very straight line and do so even in an almost 100 year old house, as I did today. My father-in-law always marveled at how slowly I painted, but my paint jobs have caused me to dislike anyone painting for me, unless it is a family member. My mother-in-law loved my painting.

Today, clean up from flying paint was at a bare minimum, partially because of the Benjamin Moore paint (which I myself don’t choose to use because I was annoyed at a bad batch of Benjamin Moore paint), partially due to the fact that my son and I are not messy painters.

I am on our patio, sipping an Aperol Spritz and thinking of those grandkids.

It has been a pretty much delightful summer. Not delightful in the amount of times I have been swimming or gone kayaking, but delightful in terms of the beauty of nature and especially in my own yard. We have spent an inordinately large amount of time on the patio and the visual is always striking. The sad area of the fence between us and the neighbors, formerly controlled by malbor and his crazy cameras, has come into bloom. At one time, the horrible, maybe 12 inches in depth (depending on where it was) small plot of land was originally filled with white marble stones. I removed what I could and settled for topsoil and the flowers were either planted by me or volunteers (phlox, yarrow, coral bells, poppies, violets, and various forms of sedum). The flowers died when malbor was alive a few years ago. I believe that poison in the form of Monsanto chemicals, may have killed them. We ended up putting pots over there, filled with lantana and portulaca and now have a raised herb garden. It is beautiful and a delight to see from the patio.

Frankly, photos do not even do them justice.

The lighting that we now have in the evening is stellar. Solar power is the source of the lighting. I started out with very long strands of tiny warm yellow LEDs on the fence. the entire fence in the back yard is down and it works even in the winter. We have little jelly mason jars with fairy lights inside in various places. There is solar lighting in the way back area of the yard which lights up the pond and waterfall and a piece of Japanese art and a driftwood piece. The overall effect with the flowers and the lighting makes for a really inviting, calming place, a counterattack on that Pandemic and all of its side effects.

Nasty world leaders, crazy populism, wars in unseemly places and for no real apparent reason and their trickle down effect on the people we were once even close to have made havens like this a necessity.

Meanwhile, I am on the patio and about to tackle some of the mess from the trees and the season and keep track of our dog and that of our son (whose dogs we have for two weeks) and enjoy the space.