Here are some pretty glimpses of Rebecca's farmhouse. Photos taken while the ladies relaxed inside on the fishing trip (see below).
This was happy. I read Molly Wizenberg's fascinating book, Delancey, and immediately decided to make the Vietnamese salad. I put the components on a platter - so pretty! I even made fried purple onions, which are surprisingly easy and stupendously delicious. The whole salad is excellent and quite easy.
This was funny. Ben had begged to go fishing, but we don't fish. Finally, my husband had the bright idea to ask Rebecca's son to help Ben fish. Ben loved it, but he was repelled by the cleaning part that readied the fish for the frying pan.
But he couldn't look away. Maybe the basic human response to gore?
Here is the real (which is also pretty). My cousins showed us their cabin in a holler in Virginia. It is a charming spot full of memories, but the cabin needs extensive, expensive work to keep it functional. The cousins are taking it on, but the old melting away before the new makes me melancholic. My uncle and aunt are facing similar decisions about the cabin, I know.
I don't know what I would do if I owned one of these beautiful, dilapidated old memory houses that relatives considered sacred without being responsible for the upkeep. Sacred usually gives way to pragmatism and safety.
Well, I snapped some photos for the memory bank.
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| 1940s linoleum the cousins are hoping to match |
Our DIL's family has had a house in the NC mountains for nearly 100 years. It was bought to escape the heat of low-country SC in the summer and back then they would have gone by train. They all work to keep it going and maintained and it is a fabulous place but it has it's quirks that they must live with or put out huge sums of money to fix them. The plumbing is so old that one must go outside and around the house and into the basement cause if it's brown it won't flush down, if you get my drift. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is much the same for the lake house that we own in partnership with several other families. Some have lobbied to sell in the last year but we do not want to part with our getaway place no matter how old and run down it gets. Our kids grew up going there and now we two go and love it even more. It is a tough, tough decision.
My heart often yearns for those old places that end up abandoned. We saw one in the SC mountains just last week and I wondered about it's history and why it is sitting there with the weeds as tall as the eves. It is so sad.
LOVE the linoleum! Hey, it's considered a "green" flooring.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the inside of that cabinet with the back being a soft blue!!! I have a similar cabinet and I never thought of painting the back :) Another project to do!
ReplyDeleteMust. Make. That Salad!
ReplyDeleteAnd the cabin's screened in porch is beautiful (and don't get me started on the linoleum!)
What a beautiful spot.
ReplyDeleteSeparation of authority and responsibility is often a recipe for trouble, even if it's just moral authority :)
How idyllic!!
ReplyDeleteOur family has been watching with interest the transformation of this cabin back to the grandeur of its past. My parents own a cabin just up the road, which used to be my grandparents' cabin. I have many memories of family reunions there. My mother spent her childhood summers there at her grandparents' cabin, too. A lot of history!
ReplyDelete