A day or two ago in the mail I received a delightful package from my blogging friend Betsy. In it were lemons from a tree in her very own backyard—how cool is that?—a vintage Santa, and a card with a Nordic design, which, being a northern woman, I absolutely love.

Many, many thanks Betsy!

Last week Clif and I painted and decluttered in preparation for the arrival our eldest daughter Dee, who will be staying with us until her office reopens, probably sometime in September.

Dee can work remotely from Winthrop as well as from Brooklyn. After a year and a half of not seeing her, we are delighted to have Dee stay with us for as long as she can. With the Covid variant spreading across the country, we figured it was better to have her come to Maine sooner rather than later—August was the original plan. Right now, trains and buses to and from New York City are still running, but for how long? Things might shut down again if Covid gets really bad. So yesterday, we collected Dee in Portland and brought her home.

Staying here for a couple of months is much different than staying for a week, the way Dee usually does. For such a short time, living out of a suitcase is no hardship, but for a couple of months it is another matter.

There is a closet in the guest room. However, it was stuffed with clothes I no longer wanted but couldn’t bring myself to give away. Also, the brown doors didn’t open well.

First order of business for Clif: Remove the doors and shave a bit from the bottom so that they can open easily. While the doors were off, he said, “Maybe I should paint them white and give them a fresh look.”

Good idea. While Clif did that, I sorted clothes and cleaned the closet. When I was done, the closet was empty, and there were many bags of clothes to go to Goodwill.

Clif and I regarded the scuffed walls of the empty closet.

“Paint that, too?” I asked.

“Yup,” Clif replied, and the inside of the closet got a  coat of paint.

From there, it was on to a small white night stand with drawers tucked in the basement. Perfect to go next to the bed. However, the top looked especially bad.

“Paint the top?” I asked.

Clif painted the top, but then the sides and the drawers with ugly yellow flowers looked horrible.

“Paint the whole thing?” I suggested.

After I sanded off the flowers, Clif painted the whole stand.

And what about the old clunky drawer pulls? Those had to go, and off we went to Lowe’s to buy some sleek black drawer pulls to go with the newly painted stand.

The room looked pretty darned good as Clif noted. Except for the corner with the open metal files containing documents from twenty years ago. Away went most of the documents—I did keep a few folders—and out went the stand to the side of the road. The yellow free sign did the trick, and the stand was gone by nightfall.

Readers might recall that this spring when we bought new chairs for our patio table, the twenty-year-old umbrella looked so shabby that it needed to be replaced. This was a prime example of the “Diderot Effect,” named for the famous French philosopher and what happened when he got a new dressing gown. You can read about it here.

As with the patio, so with the guest bedroom.

Phew, what a lot of work. But it was all done with heart, and how satisfying to get rid of the clutter.

Now, onward to August and to time on the patio.

Finally, here are a few photos of flowers I took last week in between cleaning and sorting.

As Stephen Foster once put it, this is the merry, merry month of May. The grass is greening, the dandelions are blooming, and the birds are singing.

For Mainers who garden, it is also the busy, busy month of May. In northern New England, spring is a rushed affair. By the time mid-June rolls around, the gardens are so well established that you had better have all the composting, fertilizing, and moving of plants done or you are out of luck and out of time.

To add to the merriment, I am also in the thickets of At Sea, Book Four in my Great Library Series. My current podcast story is winding down, but I’m still working on it. Then there is blogging, and while the writing is more casual, I spend a fair amount of time on each post, even fluff ones such as my Friday Favorites.

In my younger days, I could have managed it all and still have energy leftover for night-time projects. I kid you not. Once the children were in bed, I used to do fun little things like, say, paint cupboards or clean out a closet. As I look back at my younger self, I marvel at how much energy I had. Now that I am a senior, evenings are spent watching an hour or two of television before going to bed far earlier than I ever would have imagined when I was in my twenties or thirties.

This is a roundabout way of explaining that I will no longer be blogging three days a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Instead, I am cutting back to Monday and Wednesday for the foreseeable future. Having an extra day to work on my book will be a big help. And who knows? Some rainy day, I might even be able to clean out a closet. We’ll see. Books, podcasts, and gardening always seem take precedence.

I will still be reading and commenting on other blogs. Such a wonderful community and a real source of comfort during the past year, which has been scary and lonely and just plain stressful.

Also, on Mondays, I will continue featuring posts from other blogging friends. I enjoy looking outward as well as inward, and it is my pleasure to share posts from folks near and far. Formerly, I did this on my Friday posts, and I decided it was a feature I want to keep even though I am cutting back.

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So here are some  posts from blogging friends near and far:

On the green banks next to green water, Clover and Ivy found a lone goose to add more atmosphere to this already moody picture.

On Thistles and Kiwis, along with the usual photos of mouth-watering food, is a photo of a tree with foliage so glorious it made my heart leap.

Ju-Lyn, of Touring my Backyard, takes a detour that brings her to some wonderful, funky public art.

On Saturday, there was great excitement at our home in the woods. Six new chairs were delivered for our patio—our living room as soon as the weather is good.

Because we are Mainers, Clif and I are not ones to get rid of things willy-nilly. Mindful of both the drain on our budget and the drain on the environment, we like to keep things as long as possible.

And so it was with our previous chairs, which we had had for twenty years. The seats were, ahem, tired. Very tired. (One had even ripped.) Twice we had scraped and repainted the arms and legs, but the rust was making such inroads that a third time seemed like a fool’s errand.  In short, it was time for new chairs.

And here they are!

Naturally, we needed to have drinks to celebrate the arrival of chairs that not only look good but are also comfortable.

May the new chairs last as long as their predecessors did!

As for the old chairs…Did we toss them out? We did not. Instead, we tucked them down cellar to be used—primarily by Clif and me— when we need more than six chairs.

After all, we don’t want to get too drastic about throwing things out.

Today’s Friday Favorites has been preempted by a Friday unfavorite— WordPress.com—and a solution to a problem they created that is even worse than Block Editor.

As some of you might know, for the past few days I have not been receiving email updates from WordPress blogs I follow. This has  been a very bad thing for me as I follow a lot of blogs, and email updates are a huge help. For the past two days, I have been blundering around in an attempt to keep up.

Readers, this was not a happy time.

Clif, who is my site’s chief administrator and all around computer guy, checked the settings on his WordPress profile. A day ago, he found that unbeknownst to us, a box had been ticked in a section called “Block Emails.”  (Thank you, WordPress poltergeist.) He promptly unchecked it.

Problem solved? Not quite.

I, too, am an administrator, and that dastardly “Block Emails” box was also ticked on my WordPress profile. The box was duly unticked. (On the other hand, I am still ticked off that WordPress would torment me this way.)  But hallelujah and glory be, I am now getting blog post notices in my email.

I mention all this because a blogging friend noted that she hadn’t been receiving many email updates, either.

So I figured—yes, friend, this can happen to you.

Should this indeed happen, here is a screen grab that Clif put together to help you escape from the WordPress poltergeist that wants to block bloggers from receiving email updates.

Here are Clif’s instructions:

“Go to the upper right corner of WordPress and click on your profile picture. This will take you to a page called “My Profile.”  On the left side, choose Notification settings. Then go to the Reader Subscriptions tab at the top. Click on this. At the bottom, you will find a section Block emails.”

Uncheck this puppy if you want to receive email updates from blogs you follow on WordPress.com.

Good luck. I hope you never have to use these instructions.

Here is my conclusion: WordPress is a giddy thing. Fortunately for them, the WordPress community is so wonderful—supportive, entertaining, illuminating. Otherwise, we’d never put up with their shenanigans.