Easing into our New Space

We have spent several days working very hard and long hours to put our wee bungalow back together again and ready it for Gene and Carol's visit. Now we are having a few days to enjoy our guests in our new spaces and to catch up a bit on our rest.

Only 2 minor things have to be done for the utility room to be completely finished. The kitchen worktop, which was to have been delivered along with the new lower cupboard for the utility room last Thursday is now due to be delivered on June 8th. At least the cupboard came in and has been installed. The pantry is finished too. I'm not sure I'll know how to act now that I have one. I've been wanting one ever since we had our kitchen in Bethesda remodeled back in 1992! There really wasn't room for one there but that didn't stop me whining about it for the next 14 years! The other thing I wanted back then and didn't get was desk space for myself in the kitchen. I am now writing to you from that space, which does duty as our computer desk when guests are in the study/guest room.

I sit here now at 6 a.m., the sun having risen at 4:40 am! This is one problem for me in this northern setting: I don't seem to be able to sleep...or at least not soundly...once the sun has risen in the summer months. I guess I'm just that sensitive to the light. This isn't a major complaint, mind, because I enjoy having the house to myself on these summer mornings when the world is quiet (except for the birds which can be amazingly loud when the rest of the world isn't). Another early moring source of sound is cows. We're having coolish and somewhat damp weather just now but when it's warm and the windows are more open, I can sometimes hear the mooing of cows being let into their daytime pasture, which must be at least a mile away.

My utility room desk space faces a window that looks eastward. On bright mornings the sun is in my eyes. In fact, I'll need to do something about that when I get around to thinking seriously about window treatments. I look out onto our patio and the two rowan trees (for which the house is named) that are leafing out nicely, and the road and houses beyond. Directly in front of where I sit are tall fir and ornamental shrubs which give us a privacy screen for the patio. They have grown so tall, however, that they prevent us from seeing the hills on the outskirts of Comrie where the golf course is located.

To my left is another window which affords lovely views of the Glen Lednock hills just behind Comrie. We get only a small glimpse of these hills because mature fir trees planted alongside our drive somewhat block the view. Don is planning to have the tree that is next to the window taken out and I'd like to have the remaining fir trees topped so that my view of these same hills from my studio can be improved. While we're at it, we will have the ones on the patio topped as well. We'll still have our privacy but restore some of our view.

My cousin, Gene, and his wife Carol, arrived in Scotland on Wednesday and had 2 days of sightseeing in Edinburgh before coming to Comrie. Because it was so drizzly yesterday and because we had lots of visiting to catch up on, we stayed in for a while after lunch and then just took a walk around Comrie in the late afternoon. Today will be the first day for showing them around. We're thinking perhaps we'll take in Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument which is doable even in drizzly weather.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunnier so that will be the day for a tour of Glen Lyon. Monday is the day we have tickets for the steam train between Ft William and Mallaig in the Highlands. (Mallaig is one of the places where you can get a ferry to the Isle of Skye.) This is reputed to be one of the world's most scenic train journeys as you can see sights from the train that you can't see from the road. We know from our own experience driving this route that the scenery is pretty spectacular from the road, so we can well believe the "most scenic" claim. Perhaps you've seen footage of this trip if you've watched Michael Pallin's "Great Train Journeys" television series on PBS. A portion of this route and the train we will be on also feature in the second or third Harry Potter film, the train doubling as the Hogwarts Express.

Gene is my only first cousin. He happens to have 2 first cousins because his mother's sister had a little girl. My father was an only child so our side of the family was small indeed. I was an only child and my mother's only sibling, her brother Herbert, whom I called (in typical southern fashion) Bubba, had only one child because his wife, my Aunt Dot, contracted polio just a few weeks after Gene was born and remained an invalid for the next 38 years of her life.

Because of this situation, my mother's mother (whom Gene and I called Mama) ended up having to raise Gene and be the woman of the house for my uncle's little family. They lived in Columbus, Georgia, so we saw them for summer vacations and at Christmastime. I am almost 5 years older than Gene but we have great memories of Christmasses and vacations spent together.

When we grew up, however, we led separate lives and have been together as adults only twice, neither time for very long. So all of this rambling introduction is to let you know how much catching up we have to do. I'm afraid Gene's wife, Carol, and Don are sitting through a lot of "remember when" family stories and discussions such as "Just how was Aunt Bessie related to us anyway?" Here is a picture of Gene and Bubba taken in the mid-50s.

All our parents are now dead and so Gene and I are it. For me, he is my only family. As a surprise Gene brought me a CD on which he had put scores of old family photographs which he found when cleaning out his father's house. It was a real treat to go through them yesterday (we all four watched them on the TV). There were photographs of my grandparents and my mother that I had never seen and, of course, seeing the photographs triggered lots of memories, in turn, which set off a series of "remember the time?" stories.