INTENTIONS

Good morning my darling people! Thank you for all your good wishes! Happy Spring, Happy Easter, Happy Almost April, Rabbit-Rabbit, and of course HAPPY MUSICA . . . Let’s talk about Intentions! I jumping ahead to April, heck with the end of March that will not end! We’re so close! And we’re home! After two months being spoiled to pieces in California, and another wonderful train ride from coast to coast, we’re home! And my word for the day is INTENTION. Probably my word for the rest of my life. Things to do, pictures to paint, designs to create, books to write, calendars to conjure up, places to go, people to see, dinners to cook, gardens to plant, TGIF’s to have, and naps to take . . . and (within reason) I’m on it!

Number one, I have to show you this precious thing I JUST found this morning.🙀 Sherrie, the friend who took care of Jack while we were away, painted this picture of him and put it where she knew I would find it!💖 Isn’t it wonderful? What a good surprise! See his devil eyes, and the claws that clutch that fish? Don’t even try to take it! Sherrie got to know Jack very well! She captured his essence!💖

And despite everything, he still loves me!😻 The feeling is forever mutual!😍 

Nothing changed, we’re back and immediately attached at the lap!

And, speaking of welcome home’s, LOOK what Mother Seraphima and the Sisters sent me for Easter!!! The mooshiest, softest, bunny bear ever!

He came in this Easter basket, made of boiled wool and filled with treats! Maybe I will use it as a purse! Or fill it with daffodils for the TGIF I’m having for my Girlfriends this Thursday. For sure, the minute it’s empty, Jack will be in it! If you don’t know who Mother Seraphima and the Sisters are, read my story of our first meeting, our friendship, and all about their House of Creativity HERE. Happy Easter to my own Mother Seraphima and the Sisters!💖

With all that I feel I’ve been quite royally welcomed home. This huge wonderful hydrangea covered in blooms was delivered the day after we got here! An early Birthday present from my girlfriend Evie!💖 What a GIFT! 😘😘😘 SO if I was at all sad about leaving California, I have gotten over it!💖 (Mostly)

Before I left California I designed some new Spring Cards  . . .and they have arrived!

Kellee ordered lots of these ~ diamond Birthday headbands (and more are coming ~ she sent me one and I love it!) I will be quite the picture in my headband, with my bunny purse, and perhaps a hydrangea in my buttonhole!💖💖💖 I do love birthdays!Judy, Kellee, and I had so many inspiring meetings while I was there (Sheri is working hard on her farmstand, but we’re keeping her whether she’s at our meetings or not!) We have all kinds of new things in our store, and have plotted lots of good surprises for the future. Everything is already in action. Might have to change the name of the store to “Boutique” … Not going to stop the fun meetings either, we’ll be continuing through face-time or zoom or whatever works. That’s why my middle name is INTENTION: because I was reminded, you can’t do it unless you DO it! Judy is going to be helping me on Instagram and other social media … I’ll still post there like I always do, but she has so many ideas for connecting with people ~ it sounds wonderful to us! She’s already updating my Pinterest page at dearsusanbranch!👏 Every Monday, Judy will be adding my long requested MUSICA playlists to Instagram! (If you belong to Spotify, here’s 30 minutes of my favorite MUSICA right now!)💃🏼 How about that?! Did you ever imagine? She has plans for other days of the week too … like What’s Cooking Wednesday, Throwback Thursday, & Best Books Friday! Yup! Branching Out! She has access to my art and photos, so it will be fun to see what she does on Tuesdays! (Might already be Willard Tuesday!) I’m loving Instagram, everyone is so nice … so many inspiring things to see there, funny too, I seriously laugh till I cry! Joe too! You can
follow me there at susanbranchauthor … and Judy at remnants_of_the_past , and Sheri at HoneycuttFamilyFarm. And you know where to find Kellee!👏
Plus, Kellee has a new thing you’ll see for the first time here today called Susan’s Picks which she’ll put at the end of each of my Willards. It’ll show what’s new without me getting into too much of a conversation about it!💖Some of you probably remember Judy from her Remnants of the Past and the huge vintage shows and Pop-ups she did in California! Here we are at one of her shows at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo where I was doing a book signing. She also helped Kellee and me with my store when I had it in the village of Arroyo Grande … We have been friends for a long time! Her energy is an inspiration, and between her and Kellee, I came home raring to go! Intentions galore, and getting a lot done!🎨💃🏼

I’ve noticed over on Instagram that lots of people are starting to know who Gladys Taber is and talk about her books!!👏 So I thought I’d remind everyone again where they can get the very special “Friends of Gladys Taber” Quarterly Journal (FOGT). I just got mine in the mail yesterday ~ another welcome home! It’s like a little book ~ it always has Gladys Taber writings and quotes, but so much more, stories about Stillmeadow, and where to get her luv-lee books. You can read about Gladys HERE! Scroll down and you’ll find a link where you can sign up to receive the Journal.💖

So I said goodbye to this. . . (at least I tried … it’s all ready to go, but I STILL haven’t signed the papers to put it on the market … my California Studio, creek, and eight glorious green acres, it is not my INTENTION to do that, yet.🤣 It made me too sad, so I am sleeping on it some more!😴) One of our girlfriends, Patti, called this kind of decision “heavy goodness” in her comment… and that is perfect!💖

And after all that California green, we are home with the reality of, dare I say it, winter. Despite the date, it’s brown and cold and there are no stinkin’ leaves on the trees. Look at the poor wisteria! Naked as a jaybird. So these daffodils were a thrill and another lovely welcome home!

Winter might be long, but it is not completely dead. A blush of robins gathered at our bird bath. I love how social they are, always yakking while hanging out together! (See that pile of brown dead leaves there at the bottom of the fence? In it are two inches of all kinds of spring bulbs popping up … after I finish here, I intend to put on my gloves and go clean out those stinking leaves, carefully, not to disturb the new growth!)🌸

Rob-Rob-Robins are Bob-bob-bobbing along . . .

I cleaned out our hair brushes and threw all our tousles into the garden. It’s nest making time, and it’s my intention to help!

I took this picture on the way home to the ferry through Cape Cod. It was my intention to use it at the end of my first Willard home. But now I see it should really say “The Beginning,” because that’s what each new day is, each new Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is … which can happen at any time, being more a state of the intentional mind! Like a breath of fresh air! Like Spring!🌸 

With that, it’s out to the garden I go! I hope you all have a wonderful day filled with happy intention!💖 Happy Easter!

 

 

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First World Problems

Feeling pretty miserable! (Bet you never thought you’d hear me say that!!) Guilty too, because I KNOW, and commiserate with every terrifying thing going on in the world 😥, and YET, I’m commiserating with me too, for my own infinitely less important problems 😧 … moving, getting rid of things, going through stuff and saying Ohhhhh, I have to keep THAT. How do people DO this????? It’s like killing history! Okay, I’m sorry. I’m going to keep it short. The next time you hear from me, it’ll be from Martha’s Vineyard! Twighlight zone! The realtors come at 10am, I need to get going, we leave on Saturday. Oy. Don’t worry, you know there’s always a bright side ~ you’ll find it lurking somewhere down there ⬇️ … MUSICA

Yeah, you try it sometime.😜 So much different when it’s YOU that’s doing it!🤯

Bleak. Not neat, not organized. Doesn’t particularly smell good, definitely wouldn’t taste good, doesn’t feel good either. It is the antithesis of all the things we love. And yet, it’s human. And it’s the job at hand. We have to DO something with this stuff.

We have trash bags filled with no-longer-needed files. It’s hard at first, but after doing this for a couple of hours, you get so cavalier. Barely even open some files. Just tossing things around like they aren’t the bank you once put your dreams into! Well, most of them aren’t, they are junk, why did I ever keep them so long? These are the questions.

Then I find something like this, written years ago, and think, No. And it goes in the save pile. And I start wondering how many of these went out with the cavalier stuff?😲 Too late now!

It’s Boxland. If you were a box lover, we would be your Disneyland. They are everywhere, and yet, I need more!

Look at this, acid-free boxes filled with original art, from the beginning of time . . . calendars, fabric art, dishes art, old hand-written Willards from the 90s, miscellaneous scanned art . .

And every book I’ve ever written, all the original pages of Heart of the Home in one box, all of The Summer Book in another, and so on, and so on. Twenty-seven boxes of book, calendar and misc. art. Guess how much they weigh? A million pounds. Despite the fact that we leave on Saturday, we STILL haven’t decided how to get these things back to the island. Aren’t decisions fun? I especially like the ones where no matter what you do, it could turn out terrible, and still cost an arm and a leg. If you ask me, it’s anti-fairytale-girl. There are RULES around here! 

Oh yes, all kinds of (really nice, hardworking) guys coming to the house, to check out the septic system (dig up yard, kill half the alstroemeria living there ~ oh yeah, we’re leaving, stop crying over alstroemeria) . . . Reports on the septic system, reports from the guys checking wells, report from the termite guy, and from the one with the clipboard, looking under the house, into electrical panels, doing a complete home inspection. The good news is we found out it would only cost a mere $100,000 to make this house perfect if we decided to stay. We still have time, the realtors don’t come until 10. Haven’t signed anything yet. Arguhhhh. Train leaves on Saturday.

So I’m in the house, wistfully waiting for the tea water to boil while looking out the kitchen window at the green pastures and tall hedges ~ feeling a bit sad as I take my tea back to work, going through files, weeding out, deciding, organizing, throwing huge barrels of stuff away … days of this. My sister Shelly comes and helps me, so that happens with lots of stories and laughter. I’m doing GOOD, I think. Productive. Getting stuff done. And then, last night, for the first time in two weeks, I go out to the goat barn to check on what Joe’s been doing …

And what do I find?

He’s been decorating. He’s been out there, all cozy, day after day, making a little antique store. Yes. I know, how darling. But we leave on Saturday.🙄 The realtors are coming today… Everything we are taking home, all the boxes of art etc, have to be packed up because we leave (on Saturday), and the moving van has to come get them. None of the stuff in the goat barn is going back to the Island BECAUSE we have a guy JOE HIRED who is coming after we’re gone to take all this stuff ⬆️ out of the house, barn, and garage, and wherever and DISPOSE OF IT. All Joe and I need to pay attention to is the stuff we want to take with us. For instance his file cabinets, which he has not touched yet. See the situation? He is literally playing!!! I’m venting here, ignore me.😳

Been trying to include beauty-appreciation between the tossing and packing … and it’s definitely not hard this time of year in California. I mean, it’s gorgeous. So much light! Wildflowers on the hills and along roadsides…The air is clean and clear. And that’s part of the problem. It’s too nice. This ⬆️ is called ceanothus (California Lilac!), a plant so popular here you almost take it for granted. It’s so beautiful, so blue, and its fragrance is so pleasing, like very light grape candy. It’s often used as a ground cover, or like this one, a nice tall, shiny-leafed hedge. What a gift.

And an afternoon tea at Sheri’s produced my favorite photo ever taken of me (Thank you Carrie Weidert who was sitting behind me) … We were on Sheri’s front porch. There is a swing hanging from the roof, very low, just over the brick stairs that drop into the grass below which goes downhill quickly. I sat down … and LOOK, like I did 👀, at the BEAUTY, … I walked back, and kicked off, and up I went, a moment frozen in time for me. I really couldn’t believe it. Sheri lives up on the hill behind us, so that’s our green valley, and how gorgeous it is. This is why my problems mean nothing, despite how they are keeping me awake at night.

Fragrant, pale-pink jasmine vines climb all over this house . . .

It’s just coming into bloom now. I think if we went away and let this house just sit here, it wouldn’t be long before it was covered in jasmine like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

Ceanothus and pink roses look very good together! I always seem to have time to go out and pick flowers … 

And I’ve been able to paint new art . . . So that’s like dreaming while wide-awake. More like the fairytale-girl business I’ve been spoiled by.💖

And I found art I did in the 1980s which has barely seen the light of day. You know I love linens … I bought that flowered pillow, and the blue and white striped linen pillow under it, on my first trip to New York back in the 70s! They finally wore out and had to go. But here they are again!!! I’m kinda like the Norman Rockwell of everything I’ve ever owned. From bowls to shoes to quilts and everything in-between.

And of course, we’ve taken some beach time, smell-of-the-sea, coastal breezes, umbrellas, and cappuccino martinis, with my bestie Diane …our troubles completely disappear in the sound of the ocean.

And when I can’t do it, I look at the wall, and there I am . . . in my dreams.

And my Bo-Bo Joe. (What? Me worry?)Took a sunset-selfie of my reflection in the restaurant window.

Joe and I went on a long walk along the shore after dinner . . . went home and completely forgot to set the clocks back, and didn’t find out until 2 pm, I mean 3 pm, the next day. What a loss! It was almost past my nap time!

And I took this photo of the sky (with my iPhone) in our driveway when we got home. Look at the stars!  Guess what I heard this morning? VERY cheerful news! First off, have you read A Gentleman in Moscow? It’s the closest thing to a perfect book I’ve ever read. It’s so good, go read it if you haven’t, I know you’ll love it too.💖 It’s by Amor Towles, and guess what? They made a mini-series of it! Debuting on March 29th on “Paramount”, which is probably the ONLY streamer we still don’t have.🙄 It’s starring Ewan McGregor (he’s been in lots of things, but also Miss Potter ~ 👍) … I can’t wait!👏👏👏

It’s been helpful for me to be reading my Gratitude book. Have you ever seen this? I always forget to talk about it! But it’s a wonderful reminder, to be grateful, even for the loss. It’s been an honor to be the caretaker of this beautiful land for 23 years . . . I have tons of pictures of it, and I’ll never forget.💖 So, off we go! Time’s up! And don’t forget, despite the difficult moments, we are really so LUCKY . . .💖Bye for now dearest ones . . . see you on the other side. Until then don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers!❌⭕️❌⭕️ 

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