Mrs. Teabody Greets the Day

Mr. and Mrs. Teabody Take to the High Seas How is winter 2014 progressing for you, Gentle Reader? Is your heart longing for longer, sunnier days? Is your sitting room strewn with the various brightly-colored catalogues from Mister Burpee and from Wild Flower Farm? Have you, in fact, already purchased potting soil and begun the process of growing your own fledgling tomato plants, rutabagas and broccoli rabe? My, how wonderfully sensible you are! It is always a good plan to look springward whilst one sits hopefully gazing at the bleak, wintry landscape just outside one’s window. On an especially fortunate day one may even catch two or three errant sunbeams incising the leaden January skies. Mrs. Teabody adores how the large windows of Chez Teabody look out into nature on even the winteriest days. The Teabodys love home. And they especially love the luxury of planting their feet firmly on the ground. However, a few months back when Mrs. Teabody suffered one of her rare...

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Mr. Teabody at the fireplace he created. Not a single glimmer of daylight pierces the horizon on this third day of winter, but Chez Teabody is  lamplit and humming along inside where Mrs. Teabody sits happily pecking away -- once again bundled up in winter flannel as the short-lived summer that waltzed through with its fifty degree temperatures has just as willfully waltzed off. In no way is this a complaint, mind you, as everyone will agree that it is easier to be filled with the Christmas Spirit when one is not dragging about a nearly frozen posterior. It is Christmas Eve, 2013. Are you ready for Christmas? How many times have you heard and/ or uttered this phrase in the past few weeks?  What happens inside your brain when someone asks? Do you envision a checklist of things done and to do? Perhaps a list of names pops into your frontal lobe and you are at once pleased with the perfectly-imagined gif...

Lovely Erika allows visions of Sugar Plums to dance through her head. Good Morning, Gentle Reader! If you are unfortunate enough to live anywhere else but here, perhaps you are unaware of the positively balmy weather being enjoyed this first week of December 2013. At present the thermostat is registering an outside temperature of 47 degrees. Mrs.  Teabody ran errands yesterday afternoon not even wearing a jacket, and she was quick to note folks outdoors hanging greens and lights as they prepare their homes for  this most generous of seasons. Of course, if you ARE fortunate enough to live here, you are also aware that whatever the current weather is, it will change, and all too soon your teeth will be clattering together like castanets from the cold. But this is not a day to borrow trouble, Gentle Reader. This is a day to cut loose that stubborn little part of you that may keep you from enjoying this festive season. Mrs. Teabody suggests giving and before you dash to ...

Howdy,  stranger? So long, friend! ~ "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home" Good  moonlit morning from Meadow Grounds Mountain where at first waking glance - - first daylight, all outdoors had the quality of being covered in snow. Moonlight will do that to the senses: keep one confused about day and night, confused about bare green-less ground and snowcover, confused about a body part aching when, in truth, a heart is breaking . . . Mrs. Teabody is very sad today because in less than twenty-four hours, Mrs. Teabody's esteemed and generous friend, Lady Glass, will abandon her beautiful home here on the mountain and move far, far away--eighteen MILES!-- Alas!  Lady Glass resides in a unique home as it straddles the very top of the mountain and the judicious planning and workings of the past nearly quarter of a century  have given the Glasses the rarest of home locations. One can stand in the kitchen of Lady Glass's home and see the valley and mountains to...

Image by Beatrix Potter from The Tale of Johnny Town-mouse   Shiver, shiver, Gentle Reader. Little skiffs of snow are wedged along the cracks and crevices just outside the windows at Chez Teabody, but that is no bother to the well pajama-d and sock-footed Teabodys sipping on their hot tea and chatting this morning about the brilliant writer and illustrator, Beatrix Potter, and her take on Aesop's fable about the perils of life for the city mouse. Potter takes the original fable a step further having Johnny Town-mouse visit his country counterpart, Timmy Willie, and drawing the conclusion that "one place suits one person, another place . . . another . . ." which Mrs. Teabody - -who likes to drift around in a slighter wider sphere than some - - agrees with as she is always happy to find her way home. As is the affable Mr. T. The Teabodys ventured from their  sunny-banked nest Friday last taking on the perils of the motorways in their brandy-new car which has as...

  So keep repeating it's the berries,  The strongest oak must fall,  The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned  So how can you lose what you've never owned?  Life is just a bowl of cherries,  So live and laugh at it all. ~ George Gershwin Good Morning from Meadow Grounds Mountain where each  successive 5:00 A.M. is fractionally darker than the day before, and  all too soon that December day will arrive when there is considerably more pajama time than fancy dress time in the allotted twenty-four. Sigh. Unlike Mr. Teabody who lapses into his frowniest visage of the year during these darkening days, Mrs. Teabody feels a renewal of energy, a rejuvenation of spirits, a desire to make and  execute  PLANS. A few weeks back as Mrs. Teabody made plans for FFFF -- the festival that puts more feet on the beloved  soil of Fulton County over two days than all other days of the year combined -- she decided to ...

Good Evening, Gentle Reader from the gloriously autumnal mountain where Mrs. Teabody can finally announce with some degree of hopefulness, October is here . Not everyone is in love with these whirling winds, leaden skies, cooler temperatures and the accompanying shivers, but there are many marvelous things about autumn, not the least of which is that beautiful garbage of Nature—autumn leaves. Poets rhapsodize about this colorful death. The French invented the song “Les feu Mesmortes” which became “Autumn Leaves” first made popular in the United States by Andy Williams who at the height of his popularity could have sung the Affordable Care Act and had everyone happily humming along. At the end of this little message you will find links to five very different covers and Mrs. Teabody hopes you will find one of them to your liking. Turns out this October standard has been covered by literally almost everyone who is anyone—everyone from Dolly Parton to Ferrante and Teicher ...