"O Spirit Sweet of Summertime"

I put the snow shovels away yesterday. The last time I did that we were hit with 5 inches overnight so this time I waited until the grass turned green.  Even now I can see patches of snow on the far side of the hayfield under the trees. My world has been black and white for so long now that at one point I wouldn't have been surprised to see Bette Davis smoking on the deck.    But I've dared to put some pansies out this morning and spring-loving guests who enjoy the double dose of daffs are enjoying seeing it all happen again here after their own early spring is over. Sap buckets are hanging on trees all over town and one guest this weekend is here on a beekeeping course (that sounds springish, doesn't it?).  So, I guess we made it.  The Thursday singing club resumed in the dining room  and to our joint delight we learned that one of us took up belly dancing to stave off cabin fever.  What with demonstrations of her art (which involved hoiking up many layers of flannel, not a problem encountered in many harems, I reckon); marveling over the felted toys based on a Japanese anime film made by another; admiring sweaters, coats, blankets and rugs knitted, hooked and spun through blizzard after blizzard; discussing the dozens of books read (I kept quiet about watching 6 years' of MadMen re-runs in 2 weeks.  That was after the last storm and I was traumatized); we didn't have much time left for singing but did end with "O Spirit Sweet of Summertime' which put us all in a cheerful mood and sent them out my front door and across the lawn under a starry sky, serenaded by the peepers out on the marsh who, no doubt, had their own  tales to tell about winter under the snow.

 https://youtu.be/a6qqpHjZnfA

The Summer So Far

The weatherman said yesterday, "hot and sticky today followed by thunderstorms tonight and then summer's over."  What?  I don't know about you but I think that's taking weather reporting a step too far.  Summer's over?  Who is this guy?  My summer's not over and I'll thank him to stick to
THE WEATHER, nevermind the godly pronouncements.  Admittedly, it feels more like Maine and a little less like Guatemala today but that is a good thing. 

The guests come, the guests go.  Some of them write nice things in my guest book.  Some of them carve their name in the child's bunk.  Yes.  I KNOW WHO YOU ARE because you wrote your name, your parents' names, your brother's name and for good measure, the name of your imaginary friend.  A couple who had faced down a terrible illness last year sat in our Adirondack chairs and drank in the view they never thought they'd see together again while another complained about the raucous geese waking them in the morning. They wake me too and I feel  sorry for people so used to an alarm clock that the world waking them up is a nuisance.  I'm not a terribly hands on innkeeper.  I try to be available to my guests as needed,  but for the most part I work behind the scenes at providing a memorable visit for them.  I wonder sometimes if they know how much I learn and am touched by their brief appearance in my world.    

August at the B&B

Wacky season is upon us.  An Englishwoman lectures me at length on the finer points of email etiquette and then delivers a "terrible" rating on a travel site, the fact that she has never been here notwithstanding.  A former guest sends several messages asking me to search for a left-behind phone charger, clearly believing that I run a sideline selling phone chargers, abandoned Y-fronts and single socks on Ebay.   A woman has called twice now to ask the name of my inn and then to further inquire as to whether or not she has a reservation here.  As luck would have it, she does. 
And for some reason, (no doubt a travel program on tv) my guests have started confirming their already confirmed reservations, requiring me to re-confirm confirmations.  They also telephone me from the road giving me updates on their arrival times, despite a clear statement in their confirmations and re-confirmations that check in is any time after 3.  To me, this means that check in is any time after 3.  I've looked carefully at all the words in that sentence and I approve each and every one.  I think this is less to do with their reservation than the fact that they sit with a machine in their hands informing the universe of their every move interspersed with pictures of their cat.   Well, there is a full house checking in any time after 3 which inevitably means to someone that 1:30 is a good time to show up so I musn't dawdle. 

My dog ate my sofa

My dog has eaten 2 sofas in one week.  I think this might be a record for a furry person weighing in at 18 pounds.  (Those of you reading this before you visit Blue Skye, please rest assured that my animals are not allowed in the inn.  The sofas Jack ate were in our cottage. )

Last summer, Jack created a door for himself and his cohort, Rosebud the Cat, by knocking a hole in the sliding screen door to our deck, leaving a bit of flapping screen to act as a cat door, if you follow my drift.  By the time we discovered it, Jack and Rosie were prancing back and forth through it as if to say, "why didn't YOU think of this?"  So we, being who we are,  thought it was clever and left them to it.  This system worked well all summer.  It worked well until last week when I heard ripping, tearing and panting and grunting coming from our living room.  I went in to find Jack eating the sofa.  The mountains of it he couldn't eat were piled up all round the place.  Large piles of fuzzy stuff and bits of upholstery.  Now, it has to be said, he is a very good little boy for a Jack Russell, and tearing up the house isn't really his thing.  He looked at me somewhat sheepishly but also with a look that said, I'll explain everything later.  I got his message and lifted up the sofa to find a rather sad looking chipmunk.  City dwelling soft hearted readers avert your eyes.  Two loud crunches and chippy was sad no more.  He wasn't anything any more. 
What could I do but praise Jack for saving us from a chipmunk?  He was brave, we were safe and the sofa was, well, sort of beside the point.

It was at this point that I should have purchased a man-made catflap.  But I didn't. Okay.  So a week later the same thing:  the ripping, the tearing and grunting and growling.  Different sofa.  Different chipper.  Same result:  crunch crunch dead.  Only this time, Jack won't leave his kill.  He's turned into JACK THE WILD ANIMAL HUNTER.  He stood over his dead chippy and would NOT leave it, for like an hour.   After demanding he obey me (yeah, right) offering treats and threats, I put on my sunglasses, got my car keys and said, rather conversationally, "so, you want to go for a ride?
He did.  He ran to the door.  Now here is where sensible people line up on one side and nutters on the other.  I took him for a ride.  A little dog who had destroyed 2 sofas in 2 weeks.  I drove him into the village, turned around and came back.  I collected the dead, stuffed the stuffing into what remained of the sofa and settled down to relax.  Until I heard the noise. 
The scratching noise coming from the living room.  I went in and sat in a chair and stared at what remained of my second sofa.  Jack joined me and we both stared at the sofa.  After a long while we heard "meow".  Rosie,  in our absence, had come to see what the hoohah was about and got herself stuck in the springs of the destroyed sofa.  I managed to finesse her through the wreckage into daylight. 

This weekend we are fitting a catflap.  Wish us luck. 

Spring Greetings!

When this winter started, eight or nine years ago, I determined that we wouldn't complain about the cold, ice, snow or whatever, but would rather allow ourselves to be dazzled by the beauty while enjoying cozy evenings by the woodfire and improving our chess game. Let others complain, we said, we will find something wondrous to behold each day: the cardinal flashing through the white landscape; otters popping up from holes in the ice making their fishy snuffly sound; homemade soup and bread and the world of netflix to explore. What a load of old bollocks.

Thus started my last attempt at blogging, written and abandoned sometime in February.  The winter was brutal and made worse by THE COUGH.  Everyone seemed to have it and like the winter itself it would not go away.
But friends, here we are.  Spring!  Oh Bliss.  I'm aware that most of you have long ago waved goodbye to your daffodils and forsythia but we are just in the midst of it now.  But hummingbirds are buzzing around, an oriole came looking for oranges (and finding none moved on) and woodcocks are spiraling out of the sky at dusk.  So I guess we made it.  No doubt some of you have reservations already for this summer and to the rest of you, what are you waiting for?  I look forward to making your acquaintance. 
   

O Guest, where art thou?

Here's a way to feel really stupid. Haul yourself out of your cozy bed in the dark, face the subzero day to have a full breakfast on the table at 7 to accommodate returning guests with an early appointment. You wouldn't think that one hour would make such a difference but after putting several thousand breakfasts on the table, many times for 8 or 10 people at 8am , for some reason doing the same thing for a 7am deadline for 2 people seems difficult. Nevertheless, as I write, fruit has been prepared, bread has been baked, muesli has been made, eggs have been provided by the freezing chickens down the road, a fire blazes in the dining room and the aroma of freshly ground coffee fills the house. What doesn't fill the house are my guests. They aren't here. When they didn't arive at the table by 7:15 I went to see if perhaps they had overslept. Perhaps they did, but not in my house. There was their room with the welcoming light, just as I'd left it last night. Perhaps something ghastly has happened to them. I hope not. I'll keep you posted. Update: no one dead, apologies all round, life goes on, but if you want an early breakfast at Blue Skye in future, you can, as they say, whistle Dixie.

End of Summer

The summer season is now officially over and we have about a week before the autumn seekers show up. We went out in style this morning with 14 guests and even Jack got a curtain call by guests who had read the blog prior to their visit and asked to meet him. When I went to get him my husband said, "but we're watching Arsenal". For those of you not in the know, that is an English football side. Jack ignored me completely and sat unmoving on the back of the sofa behind Peter's head. "It's alright Jack," said my husband, "I'll record it for you." Reluctantly he trotted over to me but was mollified when he realised we were headed to 'the big house' as the inn is called in our family. No pets allowed. We all live in cozy chaos in the cottage next to the inn and so it was with a great deal of excitement that he bounded into the sunroom to be cooed over by three ladies who admired his polka dotted belly and newly grown mullet hairdo and whiskers. He's not an entirely normal looking Jack Russell, it has to be said, but he has his charms. The ladies in the drugstore drive through window like him and keep biscuits for him. He's used to the drive through window at the bank where they give all the dogs biscuits and so when we went to the drugstore he expected his treat and was quite put out when all we got were pills. Since then he gets a biscuit there too. He won't eat them of course - well, look - there isn't time to play bad bikkie in the car and we won't eat one without the game which, it appears, has changed since I saw it last. Peter gets up first and that's when they play bad bikkie in the kitchen. Recently when Jack has asked me for a treat I make an attempt to please him by crawling on the floor and poking him with the biscuit but clearly it has become more complicated and he just looks at me with a "come on, play it properly" look. There's a lot for me to catch up on now that summer is over.