The re-model keeps moving on. It never seems to end. The results are almost too much to believe. The cottage was sweet before, well, we made it sweet. When we first saw it, we told the landlady that we weren't sure that she could ever get the smell out. It was homely, but it was the perfect location and had a porch big enough for our bent willow furniture, the rent was fair and all the rest we though we could overcome. Pat, our landlady and now friend, scrubbed, painted and carpeted so that when we moved in you couldn't smell the two really large dogs that had been cooped up inside for days on end. It soon became our sweet little Gopher Hill Cottage, and it has gotten cozier by the day.
Now when friends come through the new front door the first sound they make is one of sheer amazement. An audible gasp. The hardwood floor stretches from the front door through the spacious dining room and the kitchen. No room remains untouched. Most of the floor plan has changed. The new back door in our bedroom opens onto what will be our new patio. (I've still got it! I watched the color drain from Bob's face when I showed him the plans.) The breeze will be so welcome on early mornings and those hot afternoons.
The laundry room is any woman's dream. The cabinets we have gained make life so much easier. There is even room for gift wrapping supplies with a tile counter to boot! All of the towel and apron making supplies and apparatus have their own space so there won't be any trips out to the outbuildings and no mouse leavings to deal with, (another country living experience.) If you don't move it frequently, it has mouse droppings in every wrinkle, how they manage that escapes me. Having Maggie means no more poisons. We have already done the rat poison vet trip. Once is enough for that!
Our plants in the planters around the outside of the house have been given a test of endurance because replacing all the windows and siding have had to take precedence and Mike has rather large feet. That's OK because only the strong survive under my tutelage any way. A welcome surprise in the garden was the once sad looking orphan cactus that we rescued from the road side on one of our walks. It had broken off the parent plant and beckoned to us. We planted it feeling confident that we could offer more than the side of the rode.We were delighted to find that it was indeed happy in our yard, but this is the first cactus that we have planted that produced such a beautiful bloom. The beaver tail always give lots of prickly pears but no flowers. This homely thing started producing 3 brown cowlick looking whorls. Each day when we inspected our surroundings we became more and more fascinated with the cactus and it's developments. One morning to our surprise the 3 inch long rather unseemly growth from one of the whorls started to open. By that afternoon a most amazing white flower opened completely and was dazzling. It only lasted two days, another reason to pay attention.
Think of all the homely things we have passed by that could have brought a special beauty to our lives. I guess we will never know. I'm old enough though to know that it doesn't cost a penny to pay attention to our surroundings, because more often than not, from something homely, beauty comes.
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