Well, it looks like me getting away isn't going to happen right now. I could go and leave my family to handle all the things that we have going on right now, but I don't think that would be fair. We have been working hard to restore order to the gardens and to make repairs and improvements to our house, after our year in Costa Rica and there is still much to be done. Too much for me to feel peaceful about time away. Sigh.
 The weather is warming up and soon I will be able to spend lots of time outside in the sunshine with my hands in the soil. Gardening has alway been very healing to me so I hope that before long I am feeling like myself again.
  So, for now at least I am not taking time away. I'll do my traveling in my thoughts and dreams and take the opportunity to make some progress where I am. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, I have felt them.

A Sabbatical

Dear friends,
  I can't tell you how much I enjoy writing my blogs, it is a priviledge to know that there are poeple out there who read what I write and that we are participating in each other's lives through letters, mailart and blog entries. I hope that what I am going to say next doesn't cause you to stop checking in on me, you all mean alot to me and getting to know you has been a great joy.
  The last two years have been really hard for my family, my husbands brain issues, a major move from the USA to Costa Rica and then back a year later due to health needs, reverse culture shock (trying to acclimate back to US living hasn't been easy), the death of my dad, and recently another life changing event... I can't seem to get on my feet real well before the next wave comes and knocks me down... I need to find my balance. I am thinking that I may just take some time away, go for a nice long visit to Costa Rica or to visit my long time friend Ketzy in Israel. My dear husband and son have given me their blessing and have assured me that they can hold down the fort while I am gone. Things are still up in the air, I don't really know what I will do, but I am going to put my focus on healing and regaining my sanity. I may be able to write in my blogs and I may not, it really depends on where I am and whether or not I have connectivity. But for now I am going to say that for the next little while I will be incommunicado via the internet. I can take pen and paper where ever I go so I will continue to write to my pen friends, the letters may come in plain envelopes instead of mailart, but I will continue to write.
  I hope that my sabbatical won't interupt my blogging for long, but if it does, please know that I am thinking about you all and that you are in my prayers. And if by chance you are the praying sort... put in a good word or two for me if you think about it!  Hugs to you all and I'll be seeing you in the mail!
P.S. I will leave an update when I know exactly what I'm going to do.

A festive postcard from Pamela In San Francisco

The back was as festive as the front!

From Garci in Arizona

Mim sent me this from Virginia


There is more coming...I just need to get them loaded onto the computer. Thanks to all!

Letters Back Home

  The weather here has been overcast and and it is too chilly to spend time outside. Sigh... It is days like today that make me miss our mountain top in Costa Rica. Since I was feeling a little homesick, I went back through the "letters" that I mailed home to friends and family. Actually, they weren't letters, they were e-mails that I sent out periodically so that everyone at home would have a chance to share our adventure with us. The mail system in Costa Rica proved to be less than dependable so I wrote letters and sent them by e-mail.

  Here is an exerpt from one of those letters back home:

November 23, 2009

  The neighbor's rooster has a death wish...he stands at the window to our bedroom starting at 5 a.m. and crows at 5 minute intervals until he successfully aggravates me enough that I jump out of bed, fling the back door open, and shout threats at his tail feathers as he makes his retreat through the fence to the safety of his own back yard. He must start running when he hears my feet hit the floor, so that by the time I get the backdoor open he is safely out of reach. With my sleep sufficiently disturbed, I have little hope of going back to sleep, but I don't need to be on my feet until 6 or so. I spend the minutes between the last rooster crow and the time I need to get up laying in the early morning light, listening to the chorus of birds strike up their morning repertoire. This is one of the joys of my day. During this time of year though, the birds have competition for my attention; the winds are changing direction from Atlantic to Pacific and the resulting turbulence makes for some impressive wind gusts. These gusts are particularly ferocious in the early morning, drowning out bird song and with the bedroom window open, practically blowing the covers off the bed. So after relishing the serenade of the birds and the sensation of the sheets flapping in my face like clothes on a clothesline, I haul myself upright and begin my day in earnest.

  My first official act is to determine the "uniform of the day". It is rainy season here in the tropics, that means wear clothes that dry fast. I have a wide selection of clothing choices (not), I can wear my "wet" weather gear, which consists of a polyester tank top, lightweight jeans, tube socks and high top rubber muck boots, or I can wear my "very wet" weather gear, which is the "wet" weather ensemble with the addition of a rain jacket. Either outfit is going to be soaking wet in a matter of minutes, so for the most part, I just stick to my "wet" weather gear. 

Bella

Bull

  Once dressed, we are all out the door to tend to our first tasks of the day. For Daniel or Erin, (whoever is taking on the grass) it is to the bodega for safety gear and a honking Husqavarna weed-whacker. For me and whoever didn't claim the weed-whacker, it is to the animal pens, to feed and locate the animals on the grass for the day. Due to a resident jaguar, the calves and goats must be put in a pen at night and then pastured during the day. The goats go out on tethers that are staked to the ground with long pieces of bent rebar. They will spend the day eating a perfect circle in the grass, as they walk to the extent of their reach and eat the grass to a nub, leaving the rest of the grass untouched. sigh.... The calves remain in the pen until after they have their grain and their bottles. I usually get the job of feeding the babies while my partner puts the goats out for the day. It is a job tailor made for a mom. The process of feeding calves is much like feeding children, first put the food in front of them and then referee while they squabble over who is going to eat out of who's bowl, then break up the fight that ensues when one decides to "win" the bucket they want to eat from by sucking their siblings ear, thus depositing copious quantities of grain (and slobber) into said ear. Somewhere in the process both buckets get turned over and the grain is spilled and trampled. So it must be time for the bottles... this process is a contact sport...never,never,never, get in the pen with the baby bottles, that is unless you like being mobbed, butted, jostled and slimed with cow poo and saliva. It is advisable to stand on the outside of the rebar-clad pen and feed the little darlings through the fence, thus postponing the mobbing, butting, jostling and sliming until it is time to put them on the pasture...

   I am glad that I wrote these letters back home. It would have been easy to be too busy to write, with all that there was to see and do, but I felt like it was important to share the story with those we left in the states. Now that we are back and life lacks the unique aspects of living 50 feet from the rainforest, with the tenth most active volcano on earth being visible from our front yard, it is nice to be able to pull them out and read them again. I can almost feel the Tilawa wind on may face...

  If you would like to read more about our Costa Rican adventure, go to http://www.aviewfromthecottage.blogspot.com/ , look at the tabs below the title banner and click where it says " Our Costa Rican Adventure". It will take you to a static page where I have posted the letters back home. I hope you enjoy our adventure! Until next time! 

Blog hops this post is linked to:
Clever Chicks Blog Hop #24

January's Last Outgoing Mail

I am on my way to the Post Office with my last batch of outgoing mail for January. I am mailing some letters and a lot of home made post cards. There is more yet to come but it won't go out today! I hope everyone is having a good mail day!

Long Overdue Letters

Handmade Post Cards

The Last Sheet

  I have always loved paper, smooth silky 100% rag, earthy recycled paper, wide lined children's writing paper made of newsprint, unlined stationery, kraft paper.... they have all got their own charms. Over the years I have collected (hoarded..?) stationery. It used to give me distress to use it all since I knew I probably wouldn't be able to get that particular type again, so I started saving the last piece of stationery and envelope.
  The other day I was unpacking one of the remaining boxes that I packed up when we were moving to Costa Rica. Inside I found a stationery box with part of my "last sheet" collection in it. I thought I'd share them since I had them out.





 

 

Snow Day at Heart's Ease Cottage

 We live a fair distance from the Mason Dixon line, at the bottom edge of North Carolina, near the South Carolina border. Since we live in the South, our weather in the winter isn't very interesting... dreary, cloudy, damp days in the 30's and 40's for the most part. If we get snow we almost always get it in mid January. I looked at my photos of past snow days where the accumulation was more than 4 inches and 3 out of 4 were on Jan. 11. The other snow day was January 10. Strange but true...Maybe there is some atmospheric condition that occurs then, who knows, but in future years I will be prepared with hot cocoa and extra socks on January 10, just in case!

  This year my husband and I were taking a drive when we noticed that the brine trucks were out spraying the roads. It seemed odd since the sun was out and the day warm, but we figured there must be a call for sleet or something in the next day or so. We checked weather.com when we got home and saw that there was a storm coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. Oh goody!! No wonder the trucks were out, if we are going to get snow it always comes from a storm heading up to us from the deep South. Usually those storms dump a fair amount of snow so I was hopeful that it would do more than spit a few flakes, promise snow and then blow over.

  I was like a kid hoping for a day off from school due to snow. I could hardly sleep. When I woke up in the morning I detected that special glow the morning light takes on when there is snow outside. My husband was already up sitting at the glass doors watching it snow...I must not be the only kid in the house.... It was lovely, the ground was blanketed with a thick layer that covered the grass and it was building by the minute as the heavy fat flakes hit the ground. I wolfed down a bagel and drank half a cup of coffee while I fitted myself out to "play" in the snow. I trunched through the pristine carpet of snow, stood in the yard listening to the barely audible hiss of falling flakes and reveled in the gift of a snow day.

  Recently, my heart has been so heavy at the loss of my dad, and the fear for my husbands health often wears at my resolve not to worry. But not today! The utter brilliance of my snow clad garden out shown even the darkest of my sadness and fears. It was a balm to my aching heart and a chance for me to forget that I am a grown woman and play like a child.
  After some time of just standing there absorbing the essence of the snow fall, I noticed that the birds were sitting on my clothesline forlornly looking at the snow covered ground. So I went to fill the various bird feeder in the yard and cast a fruit and nut mix out under the hollys for the Cardinals and Jays. It didn't take my feathered friends long to flock to the food I put out for them. I decided to go inside and get my camera for a photo op with the birds. It proved more difficult than I expected to get the birds to cooperate. I guess they were a little more cautious since they couldn't hear the cat with the muffling affect of the snow, so if they saw any movement they all took flight. After missing a really good shot of a Carolina Wren perched on a watering can heaped with snow, I decided I needed a new method... so I drug my wicker chair from the front porch out into the yard, got a white tablecloth and made a makeshift bird blind. I sat all afternoon shooting away hidden under the tablecloth with just the camea lens sticking out, as the snow mounded up on my head and lens shield of my camera. My feet were frozen and my eye kept fogging up my viewfinder, but I got some nice shots of the birds and snow covered yard and forgot my troubles for an afternoon.
  As I went through the photos I decided that the best way to represent the day was to make a set of postcards. If you would like me to send you one leave your address in the comment block or e-mail me at elle.mental@yahoo.com




Postcard #2 from my Snowday postcard set