Varied Room Uses 1999
The linens have been laundered and returned to the bed to await the next sleep-over company and now this room is to be used for something I doubt it’s ever been used for before. It’s July and time to harvest spent hydrangea blossoms for drying and that’s just what’s happening today. With clippers and large basket in hand, Spot and I enjoyed the morning in the shade garden gathering blossoms from the Snowflake and Harmony hydrangeas for drying. John rigged up an old-fashioned wooden clothes dryer for my use — you know, the kind that might have been set in front of an open fire or coal-burning heater for drying clothes in bad weather. One at a time I tie the large blooms to the various racks — I’ve always thought that the drying of blossoms was best done in a hot environment; however, now I’m told the hydrangea blooms dry best in air conditioning and with good air circulation. I sure hope we don’t have more company for a while — if we do they will just have to sleep in the drying room. They could sleep in the upstairs bedroom — bet they wouldn’t stay long — it’s super hot — no air conditioning.
Mother’s bed
As I attached each lovely to its position, I couldn’t help but reminisce about how many different uses this room has had. It’s seen births (I was born here and even on the bed in here now) and yet it’s seen death, too. This room has housed fun times of various kinds as well. How well I remember when Mother would have a quilt in the frame here (propped up on the back of cane-bottom chairs) and with friends and neighbors working away as they enjoyed conversations of the day. I remember the hot, roaring fires my daddy would build in this fireplace to welcome me into the reality of another winter day many years ago. This was my destination on crawling out of a warm bed in another room, then running here to get warm and wake up. I never understood why Daddy go up before daylight, built the fire and then waited for dawn so he could feed the animals and milk the cow. Perhaps it was because he had retired so early the night before — my folks thought when it got dark it was bedtime and so we went to bed.
My half-brother and half-sister were teenagers when I was born and were gone from home by the time I could remember much, and when they came back it was here we enjoyed the visits and family time. This room tried to keep Mother’s “pot flowers” from freezing in the cold winter months of long ago and many times failed as the fire in the fireplace would go out. Even though the plants were covered with blankets, newspaper, etc. they froze anyway. This always brought on the tears. Now that I’m a gardener I can better relate to her dismay.
Our Fireplace
Much cooking has been done here — on/in the fireplace. That old black pot could turn out a fine batch of dried beans on the open fire and the black oven held many a baked sweet potato, to say nothing about the syrup cakes it’s baked. We’ve popped corn over the open fire, as well as parching peanuts in the black oven. A library table built by a good friend and placed in the middle of the room, but near the fire, held an Aladdin Lamp and it was here that I did my homework. Then following the family marriages, this room briefly housed yet another generation, another and another.
The Little Oven
In the summer time the fireplace always was covered with a newly-made fireplace screen to brighten up the room and with windows raised high we seldom saw a day without a breeze coming through this bedroom with its high ceilings. In my teenaged years my folks had the front door moved over to this front window and this room was then used as a living room (beds were moved to what had been the large hall).
As I completed the chore of hanging the blossoms, a ringing telephone snapped me back into the reality. Anyway this is how it is when one lives at the home place experiencing country living.