Cleaning Closet - Before and After

I've been working on my cleaning closet - the place I keep cleaning supplies etc. I've painted it, put in new shelves, which I covered in vinyl, and completely cleaned, reorganized and most of all, labelled it. It took much longer than I thought, of course. But it's lovely now.

BEFORE:


















AFTER:

This one's for Vivi.

You asked about the Whipple House. It's in no danger because it sits on a little knoll. However, Sally's pond - the pond behind it - is currently part of the river, or vice versa. I took this picture behind the Whipple House yesterday. The houses you see reflected at the back of the photo are on the other side of the river. YOu may have to click twice to blow the picture up to see this.


Actually the floods are receding today, although many roads are still closed.

William Wordsworth and Spring Peepers

It was Spring today. I kept thinking of William Wordsworth - " It is the first mild day of March, / Each minute sweeter than before."

Dog of COG and I took a long walk to look at all the flooding and tonight we heard the Spring Peepers for the first time.
Absolutely my favorite heart-lifting event of the Spring - the first peepers. They're only an inch long, so I've never seen one, but the sound of them fills the night. This is what they sound like - taken from YouTube because I can't find the one I made last year.

"A Flood of Waters Upon the Earth", Part 2

The Ipswich River is waay over its banks today. It's hard to get from here to anyplace along the river because of road closures from flooding. All along the walk from our house to the Choate Bridge in the center of Ipswich, where the video taken, there are houses being pumped out. The other pictures were taken along the way.

The parking lot behind the downtown stores is completely under water, as shown in the first photo.



And the footbridge over the river is closed because the path is completely flooded on the other side (second photo).
The tall grey house in the third picture picture dates to 1723 and its ground floor is completely flooded. It has been next to the river for a long time and I wonder if it has happened before. We've never seen it quite so bad before, even after the major floods of 2 years ago when all the bridges were damaged.
The video at the end shows how fast the river was moving today and how far over the banks it is - the trees are normally above the bank. This was taken just after it crested but at high tide (it's a tidal river) so the water was still high. By tomorrow it should have started to recede. I hope.

"A Flood of Waters Upon the Earth"

It has been pouring rain here for 4 days. Our yard has merged with the swamp beyond. Our basement, too, seems to have yearnings in that direction. Not complaining, though. I love the sound of rain. I love waking up and falling asleep to the sound of rain. And I kind of like the way our yard changes with the weather and the seasons.

Scenes of Toulouse

Miscellaneous scenes of Toulouse. A fountain just off the Capitole.









A wonderful gargoyle/rainspout.


















Little children fencing on a weekend devoted to kid's sports in a local park.









The view from our table at lunch on the first real day of warm summer weather.

Rain, Soot, and Daffodils

It's raining hard today, but there are signs of Spring. Yesterday, I bought these daffodils for only 1.50 a bunch. I love the time in Spring when the grocery stores are filled with cheap daffs. Every year I signify my faith that Spring will actually come in the small private celebration of buying lots of daffodils.

I arrived home with them to discover we'd had a minor catastrophe with the pellet stove and had soot all over everything. Yes, 'everything' includes the newly painted walls and woodwork. It was odd because you couldn't see it, but if you ran your fingers over anything they came up black. And if you tried to just brush it away, there were terrible streaks. So, after consulting the internet about cleaning products, we washed walls, woodwork, floors using a lot of windex and swiffer sheets. We put everything we could in the dishwasher or washing machine and vacuumed what we couldn't. It's mostly gone today and the house is sparkling. Looking at the bright side, this way, the COG helped me wash down woodwork etc. So that was good.

I'm reading, the COG is on his computer doing I don't know what. The only excitement has been a lovely big hawk in a tree just across the street only 8 feet or so from the ground. Our different reactions to the hawk illustrated the differences between us. I ran for the Sibley Bird Book and binoculars, to try to identify it. The COG ran for his camera to try to capture it on film.