quicken

10.15.2020



We returned to Silver Falls this past weekend.  The joy of being just a short drive from this favorite of places again has not abated, and I doubt it ever will.  My love of damp, mossy, fern-filled Oregon forests cannot be overstated, places of undeniable magic.  A couple of hours in, a drenching rain saw us zipping Pip and cameras into our coats as we made our way back to the trailhead.  I felt my heart quicken with the rainfall and nearly fly out of my chest with the wind, euphoric.

Closer to home, I've been taking walks around our new neighborhood.  I love where our house is, but I would say we are just on the outside edge of a really cute area with some storybook houses.  (Our house is not storybook on the outside but its quirky staircases and odd levels inside - my husband calls it "Escher-esque" - feel quite storybook to my smitten heart.)  It's been fun roaming on foot and admiring lovely flower gardens and twinkle-lit porches, and great to be close enough to walk to the park near downtown we always loved when we lived here before.  

We've finished some projects around the house, most notably carpet removal and sanding and sealing the wood floor downstairs.  It took a long time to do ourselves, but it turned out better than I ever hoped.  The next project is turning the red shed out back into a dining "hall."  A small hall, just big enough for a table and some shelves (and I'm dreaming of strings of lights and branches brought in and magical meals and memories made).  Crazy, perhaps, but we have no dining room in the house, just a very small round cafe table wedged into the very small kitchen space.  When my husband decided to move his office out of the shed and into another room it seemed the perfect place to set up a table, just steps from the back door off the kitchen.  

I'm at a point I reach every now and then where I feel overwhelmed with what's going on in the world, with social media and the news (I've reached maximum mindless scrolling as of late), so I'm pulling back a little bit to try and focus on getting my basement sewing room set up, taking pictures and posting more here, gathering and learning more about plants, reading (currently:  Conjure Women by Afia Atakora; The Witch's Herbal Apothecary by Marysia Miernowska; and The Songs of Trees by David George Haskell), and possibly taking a deep dive into vegan cooking (though I'm not currently completely vegan).    

What are you up to this season?  I hope it's something that makes your heart quicken.

by mlekoshi