Welcome Home

Well, for the first time, I finally sort of have everyone where I want them! Home! MUSICA

There’s my hero off to rob the grocery store! We are doing fine here, so far so good. On our third week of staying home, doing our part to protect ourselves and the brave health workers at our little hospital. Joe doesn’t LOVE going out dressed like this, but he does it for me.💞

Still dark and quiet this morning . . . I finished the new calendars yesterday! DONE💃! Yay! Now I get to write my Christmas Story! So excited! I put everything away and cleaned the studio to get ready ~ and now the house is smooth and quiet. Behind a chair on the floor of this room is a little machine I got many years ago … a recording of birdsong on a constant loop. Because it’s still too cold, we can’t open our windows yet, but it’s April and I, personally, am ready, READY, READY for spring. Recorded birdsong works for me till the real thing comes along. Makes me happy!

It’s getting a little lighter, a little warmer every day . . . Which is perfect because for some reason our supermarket decided the one thing they could live without during this pandemic was, wait for it, yes . . . F L O W E R S. Totally nutty. So good for the soul. They’ve been #1 on my shopping list the two times Joe has gone. But, no.

So here we are, in the NICK of time! Spring, the season of hope and rebirth.

And it’s purr-fect here! Just ask Jack!So out comes the yellow . . . Easter is on my birthday this year! I love it when Easter’s on my birthday! And by the 12th, we’ll already be almost halfway through April. This time with pandemic feels like forever, but it will pass much faster than we think. I’ve been thinking about what I’ll have to show for it. (Besides, of course, a hundred thousand prayers.🙏)

I’m such a homebody, as you all know, that if I “HAD” to be “quarantined” ~ “stuck” on a desert island so to speak, I could not think of a better place than Home! Where all my best things are. Tea, candles, dishes in soap suds, clean dishtowels on the stove, jars with red lids, peanut butter cookies in the oven, Beatrix Potter people on the window sill, Jack in my drawer, Joe at my side. All the good stuff happens here anyway. It’s trouble out there. Home is the only place we are in charge! Was “Zooming” with my English Girlfriend Rachel the other day (*see Zooming below) . . . we were comparing what we’re going through to what the Brits went through during WWII, when their “pandemic” fell out of the sky and blew up houses while people were sleeping ~ which they lived through every day for SIX years. How DID they sleep? No sugar, butter, eggs, coffee. No gas. Everyone like sitting ducks. Sons and husbands in danger, far from home, not heard from in months. Ray gave me a book called Nella’s War, an actual diary of an everyday English woman during the war and what I learned: we are so lucky, even now. Staying home? Lucky us. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out. If they could, so can we.What if, the way this went, we were all quarantined in a dentist’s chair? Right? Way worse! Or a highly air-conditioned department-store bathroom, locked in with a bunch of strangers and only two plastic chairs? There is no nicer place than home especially when bombs aren’t falling. We LOVE our own beds, we LOVE the musica that plays here! No strange dentist-chair music in THIS house. I’m stealing daffodils from the garden, and forced a tiny stem of cherry tree. If I didn’t have a garden, I might dress like Joe and take a walk on our deserted street with my scissors.

We are like this. We go out to stare at the garden before we go for our walk and holler to each other. “Joe, over here!”

SO exciting! (Norman Rockwell was clearly one of us!)

SEE? Happening all over. New life. Isn’t it thrilling?I’m so proud of everyone. The whole world is on a mission. We’re in it together. “If you can’t do what you do,” said Bon Jovi, “do what you can.” And so we do.

If we want to have breakfast for dinner, we can and we do! There is something so cozy and comforting about pancakes for dinner. Then we watch two series on Acorn, Brokenwood Mysteries, and 800 Words. We are loving the creative art of cooking more than ever. Dinner is like an event, what are we making? Let’s have PANCAKES, let’s put bacon in them … yaaaay!I wasn’t always a good cook ~ no one is BORN that way, not even Julia Child, who said, “Before I was 32 all I did was eat.” And as you know if you’ve read my books Fairy Tale Girl and Martha’s Vineyard Isle of Dreams, I didn’t just burn up one stove, I burnt up two.😱 But cooking was right smack in the middle of the road I took searching to find my passions and the things that would make me happy in life. Cooking was like a secret way of giving. I could make people happy when I did it.❤️

It was my own little pandemic that brought me to this cottage in the woods on Martha’s Vineyard. When my life was suddenly thrown into reverse, I went inside, in more ways than one. And it was in that quiet where I learned most everything else that’s brought me to now. Sometimes we need a little pandemic in our lives to help us see the road. It’s awful when it’s happening, you fight it in the beginning, but later, if you survive, if you aren’t allowed out too soon, you think, Oh, thank God.💖

What helps the fear? Little things. Naps with kitties, tomato soup, scrambled eggs, a good book, bubble baths, MEDITATION, finding new recipes, cleaning out a closet, maybe writing that book you’ve promised yourself you would do. Are you homeschooling? You could teach history the fun way. Watch with them: Darkest Hour, Schindler’s List, Amistad, Lincoln, Amadeus, or Chaplin. Show them where on the map these heroes were born, or where the story took place. Make it all real for them. Google “Best Silent Movies” and show them the world of their great grandparents. Check out my Movie List ~ maybe you have a budding vintage-movie buff in the family. Have a Family Book Club: read out loud every night: The Diary of Anne Frank or To Kill a Mockingbird. Take questions. I have a Book List too, tried and true, guaranteed to bring a laugh 
or a tear. Get online and fill out the Census. Teach good citizenship and explain how doing this makes your community strong. Teach them how the stock market works (😳I’m still trying to figure it out!). Paint a bedroom. Check out TED TALKS, so much genius free for the taking (watch Isabel Allende speak passionately, brilliantly, about Passion). Create a photo wall in your bathroom. Make a homemade pie crust. Teach kids how to iron, knit, watercolor, embroider. There are lots of embroidery kits and fill-in family cookbooks in our web store (make Christmas presents). Get out that hammer and nails and Google How To Make a Bird House. Every lesson for everything you’ve ever wanted to learn is on Youtube. Things you never thought of, things you hardly ever have time for, you do now. Who knows? You might stir up some passions!
My own personal divorce-pandemic took me here. From California to a small island and this little house . . .

Where I cried myself to sleep and healed with kittens and Potato Pancakes.

A recipe I then put in a cookbook I wrote at my dining room table . . . 

. . . that changed my life and gave me a future and made my pandemic worthwhile, all six years of it.

I never imagined this book would turn 30! But it did. And it got a makeover, not just the cover, but there are lots of new recipes. I’m thinking you or a friend or a relative may be needing a little extra TLC right now, a little bit of vintage charm in a topsy-turvy world ~ so I’m putting this watercolored, hand-written book full of homey recipes, 176 pages of how-to’s, and family stories, on sale ~ each with a signed bookplate inside.❤️ For the whole month. And don’t worry, I am living proof . . .None of us know what the future will bring, we have lots of these books in stock right now, it would be better not to have them lounging in a warehouse somewhere, they should be out there, spreading their homey goodness, doing what they do best, inspiring family togetherness with potato pancake, carrot cupcakes, linguine in clam sauce, Gazpacho, my dad’s garlic bread, stuffed pork chops, enchiladas, rainbow jell-O, onion pudding, German pancake ⬇️ . . .

. . . the way to fry an egg so the yolk is

still soft, bubbled up with crispy edges . . . bean soup, cranberry tea cake, caesar salad, twice-baked potatoes, lemon chicken, bread and butter pudding, chocolate eclairs . . . and so much more…

As my parents did and taught us, if you want something bad enough, you just make it. I just checked my cupboard, I have three Heart of the Home’s here on the Island, which I’m going to give away to YOU. All you have to do to win one of these books is scroll to the bottom of this post where you’ll see a bunch of tiny little words, including the word “comments” … click there, leave a comment (anything, so the blog registers you there), and you’ll be automatically entered in the drawing which we’ll do next week. ❤️ I’ll email the winners and personalize each book before it goes out. Little something to look forward to.Here’s another small treat you can make yourself ~ extra simple made with boxed mix, but outstanding for kids ~ and you’ll feel pretty proud too.

Easter cake

One of our Girlfriends sent us her version!

What else . . . Oh yes . .  No doubt you have figured this out, but just in cases, our Mother’s Day Tea Parties in Duxbury have both been canceled, until, we think (and hope), September. I’ve been saving my old paintbrushes and pencil stubs and making bookmarks to hand out at the signing . . . which means there will be more by the time this happens! See? It’s all good. I’ll announce the new dates when I get them.Another 2021 Calendar preview, it’s April! Just a reminder, we will be placing our calendar order with the manufacturer on Monday. Hopefully you have yours on order . . . but if not, if you are going to want either the 2021 Photo Wall-Calendar or the regular Heart of the Home wall-calendar, now is the time to get them. Nobody knows WHAT is going to happen to the stores that usually sell them, our manufacturer may make HALF as many this year as last, we just want to make sure our Girlfriends get one if they want one.💞I’m sure you’ve heard of ZOOM, but if you haven’t let me tell you . . . it’s like an on-line conference call . . . I have used it twice now . . . once with seven girlfriends here on the island, (we had our TGIF, with cocktails, via Zoom) … and the other with Rachel and Paul with us here and them in England (and more cocktails). It’s free! It’s easy! If I can do it, anyone can. And it’s highly satisfying. A safe way to reach out and say I’m still here and I love you, you can see the love-light in their eyes. You can even kiss the screen. You’ll see. Excellent invention.💞  Another especially fun family project is Ancestry.com … get your DNA done and start working on your family tree . . . my sister and I do it over the phone together . . . it’s wonderful to feel your family connected to the world, puts a new sort of foundation under you, deeper roots in a world of curiosity and investigation! Shelly finds a name from 1736, and I’m practically screaming the WOW-ness of it into the phone! We get totally tangled sometimes saying such lunatic things as this, “No that’s Irene’s DAD’S father’s brother’s OTHER son!”

Well, look! It’s light out. Blustery and cold, leafless ~ once again, have to say, right now real world is isn’t quite as wonderful as it is in this cozy house . . . look,  my agapanthus are blooming in my studio window! Birds and squirrels are feeding outside the kitchen window ~

It’s as good as it can get. One last thing before I go . . . one thing you must do. Turn off the news. Do not listen to daily numbers. Don’t hear strident voices all day. If you’re at home, following the rules, and staying inside, you’re already doing EXACTLY what you’re supposed to do to protect your medical centers and your amazing healthcare workers (under so much stress it’s unfathomable), from YOU. Blessings and prayers for them, and also, for our first responders, grocery-store people, volunteers and delivery people, who put themselves on the line for us every day. Social distancing is working! Too much negativity will make us as sick as the virus does. Just keep praying, and go World-War-Twoing through to the other side. Think of magical words like delphinium (say them out loud, pure poetry), hollyhock and foxglove. Lily. Pansy. Because it won’t be long.

💞Don’t forget to leave a comment for the book! Would love to hear how you’re doing!💞 Oh yes, I have a new bookmark for you! You can see it below. Just click HERE and print it out either on card stock, or do it double thickness. From me to you . . .

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FIRESIDE CHAT

Hello darlings, wow, how the world has changed since we last met! Go make a cup of tea, something that soothes, come back, cuddle up in front of the fire ~ tomorrow is the luv-lee first day of Spring 🌸 . . . Let’s celebrate! Take a deep breath, turn on the MUSICA and let’s talk!In honor of Spring, I was going to give you YELLOW today, the color of sunshine and hope . . . but then I Googled: What is the color of calm, and found out it’s BLUE. So we’ll save Yellow for next time and go for Calm. Which goes so well with a crackling fire, and slippers stuffing across the carpet.💙 Are you ready? Let’s Go!

Look at our sky! Lambs tails!No leaves on the trees yet, but coming soon: sun on our faces, leaves and blossoms and flowers and warm dirt to play in.We haven’t been out of the house for a week, except for our walk, thank God, so lucky, we have a walk to go on. But we’re doing our part to flatten the curve! 

Even putting these blue photos up makes me insta-happy, I can feel the relaxation setting in. You know, we’re going to come out of this better than ever!💙 We’ve been going so fast. Hardly any time for the little things. Guardian angels having trouble keeping up.

This old blue quilt was handmade, tiny little stitches. by someone who stayed home for a very long time. Most things worth having are done that way.💙

Blue and white hand towels, so pretty in the bathroom, but they require ironing! Which is an easy and rather calming thing to do if you’re home, and there’s a good movie on TV.

This is a photo I found a long time ago, but have never had a reason to put up until now . . . see what being calm brings us? A doll house! Look at that little bed! And the rug!

A drive around New England (back in the good old days) brought us this beautiful blue house!🚙

A blue book! And a good project while waiting for the daffodils to bloom! We just got a new shipment of them!

A sweet blue dishtowel, for cleaning out the glass cupboard . . . such a perfect time for all the at-home projects we’ve been promising ourselves to do but never take the time.💙

Unexpected, unwanted, unplanned for change, very much like what happened to me all those years ago, can be painful (as I know you know) ~ you think you might not survive, but after a while, a new sort of creativity takes over. When we get small and our hearts turn to home.💙 We’re scared, like everyone else, that we won’t be able to stay in business. Most of what we do is on-line, but people are saving their money right now and we forgot to sell Susan Branch Hand Sanitizer! For us, like for everyone, it’s going to be one day at a time. One thing good about Martha’s Vineyard being seasonal is that every year when the tourist season ends and everyone goes home, the island has a chance to heal from the summer onslaught. The beaches are quiet, no footprints, no more beer cans in the woods, the roads are empty. It’s a breath of fresh air. But our earth never gets a rest in this fast and crazy world. She’s been rode hard and put away wet. Money matters more than our girl, our God-given gift. She’s resting now, cars and planes and many factories, the world over, have stopped emitting. We have a time-out. Maybe we can rethink what matters to us.💞We pass one house every day on the dirt road where we walk. Very industrious young people live there, from what we can see, they have a home business selling firewood, and sometimes, it seems, they sell trees. There’s a baby that lives there, and a dog. (They are part of our Morning Science, as we divine from what we see, what they do.) We know their dog is going to run toward us and bark his face off, but he won’t bite. He’s part chicken.🐶

And they always holler a hello, and we always do too. Well, yesterday the man was driving out in his truck, stopped, rolled down his window and said, “How are you two doing? Do you need anything? Because I have seven deer in my freezer and 23 tuna fish!!!” (Exclamation points are mine.) “And you are welcome to anything you’d like. I have a huge garden in the summer, and all the seeds you might want and I’d love to give you some if you like!” It was the longest conversation we’d ever had with him. So kind.💞The kindness of strangers is everywhere these days. People are serenading each other from high rise buildings! It’s going to be hard for every one, and much harder for some than for others, but we’re linking arms with each other and the rest of the world and we’re going to come out of this better than we went in, more connected for our shared hardships, and shared prayers, our shared GRATITUDE. Works of art and beauty will come from this.💙And we can start small, because as far as I’m concerned this delicious-smelling cake is a work of art and a thing of beauty. It also says love. In the old days when our society was totally home-centric, you wanted peanut butter cookies, you made them. It’s a good way to be. You want a Milk Cake? You can make it (Click there or go to p. 90 of A Fine Romance). And you deserve it! In these times of trouble we must all watch our diet.💙

And it’s time to decorate for spring! Perfect! #StayHome, nurk, and flatten the curve.💙So, a few “normal” things going on here . . . We did a new printing of A Fine Romance . . . the 7th! It shipped last week, the little engine that could . . .

. . . working its way around the world via word of mouth, sister to sister, friend to friend, wife to husband . . . little joy-book of the English Countryside makes me so proud.💙 I have to say thank YOU for liking it! All my life I’d done cookbooks, this was such a departure my publisher would not take a chance on it. So we had to do it ourselves. I was so scared!💘  And because we were asked, and because we do listen, we have two new friendship notecards in our web store.❤️

What else? Well, I’m ALMOST done with the 2021 calendars! Only the blotter left to go. I’ve had so much fun designing them this year. It was the hardest thing choosing the photos for the new photo calendar. I want to surprise you so I won’t show you what I chose, but I’ll show you a few that got away!

This one didn’t make it!!! I know, shocking. But, a secret, I put a little photo of Jack on every single month.👏 He insisted. Me-me-me! BTW he, for one, is thrilled with the coronavirus, loves that we are staying home at his total beck and call, says things like, “THIS is more like it!”😻

This one didn’t make it either . . . I was afraid the shadows were too strong and it wouldn’t print well. But I do love my billowing man-shirts!Normally I don’t actually care (as you’ve probably noticed) if a photo is a little out of focus if it’s pretty ~ but I sort of do when it comes to a wall-calendar.

And this . . . I love it, tried to squish it in, but no.

And this one didn’t make it. If this one didn’t make it, imagine the ones that did!🌸

Nope.😲

And believe it or not, not this one either!

Or, this one . . .

And this is my very favorite out-of-focus, but . . . no. I promise I chose some good ones ~ here’s a preview of the cover!

And because my calendar publisher is worried what kind of year he is going to have, I thought I should put up the two wall calendars for presale right now. He’s placing his order soon, and I want to make sure we have at least enough for our Blog Girlfriends. We should have them in by July! I hate to suggest you think Christmas right now . . . but it’s a strange world we’re in.And here’s ⬆️ a sneak peak of the April page! See Jack? I snuck him in everywhere!And now, the cover of the 2021 Wall Calendar:
And a sneak peek . . .of the November page~which reminds me of this photo:

which hangs on our fridge right now . . .

Days are getting longer now . . . shadows are coming earlier! The world is hunkering down. Sharing their favorite series to watch, favorite books, favorite movies . . .There’s a wonderful website with virtual tours of the most amazing museums in the world. We might as well come out of this thing a little smarter. Remember when Martha Stewart went to prison and came out wearing a cute poncho she knit herself? Making lemonade out of lemons! Let’s do it!🍋Back to work I go darling Girlfriends. Happy Spring! Remember the secret of having it all is believing that you do.🌸 Best of luck, take care, God bless you.💞

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