Mary (http://devondesigns-mary.blogspot.com/) had been featuring some pages from her "Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" lately and I mentioned my video. She asked me more details about it so I thought it would be fun to show her and all of you the collection I have. Everyone is familiar with the original book "Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" but a second volume was later released. "The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady" is also a very good book but I found it such a shame that they did not use her handwriting for the text as had been done in the previous book. 
Over the years, I found others books on Edith Holden who I find very fascinating. "The Edwardian Lady: The Story of Edith Holden" by Ina Taylor is a biography is a wonderful book containing many actual family photographs and various drawings by Edith. Then I found "The Country Diary Companion" once in a bargain book shop. I had this book for a good number of years and decided when we finally had internet to search for the TV series on video if possible. I did find an online shop in England that sold the condensed version of the series which is also called "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady". It is great to watch over and over with Pippa Guard playing Edith.
Two other books I have that are in the same tradition are "A Victorian Flower Album" by Henry Terry and "The Seasons" by Louis Lawrence which are both shown above.
"A Victorian Flower Album" has beautiful drawings throughout. It was not intended as a diary but more of a botanical record of the English Oxfordshire countryside.
"The Seasons" is a much more austere book altogether. Louis Lawrence illustrated the four seasons by writing out peoms and prose in script to which he then added his beautiful pen drawings and watercolors. 
Sometimes words can really set a scene. I love looking for a good poem to use on the blog that ties in with what I am writing about or the season or holiday. I found this poem in the summertime and was bursting to put it on my blog. I had to wait until the right month and am so pleased that it is finally time. 
Welcome to a new month! As I contemplated how quickly the month of September passed, I resolved to make the most of the month of October. I am treating today as if it was New Year's Day and making a few resolutions for this month. Some are concrete things which I want to accomplish before the end of the month in my home and garden. 
Can you believe that it is the last day of September? Time really passes too quickly for me and I have never the time I need to do all the projects around the house I want to accomplish. How has this month been for you? Have you accomplished those things you set out to do? Have you been able to bring yourself into an autumn state of mind?
Those of you who know me well, know this is my favorite season. I love autumn and it is reflected in my home and my needlework. Many of my quilts are in autumn colors and my living room also. I am inspired all over again each year as this season approaches. Things like finding these toadstools in the wood bed beside our cottage never fail to amaze me of the beauty in all things. We just have to take a moment to look for it. 
Welcome to my front door and welcome to autumn! We have spent time trying to turn our tiny garden into something like a secret garden to give us the feeling up privacy in a very populated neighborhood. This is the path leading to the built~in shed (yellow door) and front door (teal door). We love seeing the crimson appear in the leaves of our Virginia Creeper as autumn starts. It is also full of pretty blue berries. 
As part of a challenge we have going on my Yahoo homekeeping list, I decided to make a wreath for my front door this year. I still need to buy more gourds for my rack which is looking rather empty at the moment. 
The wreath is made with branches of leaves, red berries, acorns and a burlap bow. I enjoyed looking at what I had and making this wreath. I luckily found a sale this year on wreaths at our garden center. These kind of wreaths have not been popular in Holland lately and are now trendy here again. I will change it and reuse it for the different seasons. This will become a permanent fixture on our front door I think. 
Christmas tea tables should be a fun and festive affair without causing too much stress. Keep it simple so you can enjoy your company instead of having to slave away in the kitchen and dining room. A pretty damast tablecloth always gives a festive look and allows other objects to spring out on the table without competing with them. 
Cranberry Fizz
Dutch farmer's cheese and mustard soup 
My mother asked me in the comments on my last few photos in the bedroom about the bear my sister had made for me. I have it sitting together with a Precious Moments she gave me when my father passed away ("This too shall pass") and a stitched piece I made after I received the bear as a gift. I saw this chart in a magazine and thought it was perfect with the bear. I don't even remember when I stitched this but it is from when we lived out in the east of Holland so over 15 years ago. I added a doily my grandmother made after talking with my mother about it since I called it my 'missing you' shelf. 
This time of year is special to me as it brings my sister to my mind and heart. Halloween was her favorite holiday. She loved to go all out to decorate and pull pranks on Halloween. Each year, as this time approaches, I decorate a little for Halloween in rememberance of her. I think she must have been smiling when I came up with the idea to run out and buy these lit branches to use this year for my tree. Normally, I take my autumn tree apart and use it for my Halloween tree. This year I decided not to as I love seeing the autumn tree through Thanksgiving. Don't forget you can click on all the photos to enlarge them. My Halloween tree is in my laundry room which is also where my coat rack is so the first place that guest go into in my home.
Most of the ornaments in my tree were made by my mother. This cute little scarecrow was also a gift from her. The witch tree top is something she bought me when she visited Salem, MA. 
Here is the pretty effect of the lighted branches! I put two of my three Halloween quilts out in this room too. There is a basket hanging beside the coat rack and I simply filled it with some orange maple leaves.
I have been borrowing again from other rooms in my home. More about that in a moment but first, I had finished a reproduction sampler I was stitching and framed it. Last night, Jos helped me to hang it and move the other samplers over to this corner. This is the before photo.....
.....and now after. I placed the newest sampler on the wall which is by itself although I hope it will not be alone for long. I have added the sampler that had been on its own and the three from the other corner of our bedroom to make a larger sampler wall. I love how this reading corner is coming along. I can't wait to make more samplers. It is also high time I found a fun new standing lamp for here. I have to start looking around for one.
This was the other corner which I had not really done anything to as of yet. I suddenly thought about the rack I had bought at a Christmas Fair last year which was to eventually hang in my quilt studio. I tried it out and decided it was perfect for here instead so here is the before photo.....
.....and after. This is a 'Puss in the Corner' wall quilt I sewed to hang above the bed. It is only a patchwork top as of now as I have not started hand quilting it yet. I grabbed it from my projects rack and was too impatient to iron it so it is a bit wrinkled as there are a good number of tops on that rack waiting to be quilted. I love it here! It fills this corner just right and also adds more fabric elements into the bedroom. It will be so fun to decorate this rack at the holidays with a Christmas quilt and some pine branches and berries. I feel like Arrietty in The Borrowers with taking things to use within my own home and it is fun. 
Autumn is a time when I seem to become more cheerful with the day. Can you tell? I feel positively giddy from the cool and grey sky today. There is a wind blowing and everything is looking a bit golden in anticipation of the colorful parade which will begin very soon. I keep working on autumn decorations throughout my house. I put together my toadstool arrangement last week. I have been doing this for about 14 years and still never tire of how pretty this is on a table. I bought this plate many years ago which is a piece of Portuguese Majolica to which I added some very real looking toadstool, small Indian corn, some dried seed pods and flower heads and accented with silk grape vine leaves. It is a timeless decoration which is why I love seeing it each season.I would like to leave you today with this quote which would be my wish for all my blogger friends:
"Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn."
~~ Elizabeth Lawrence ~~
Today was forecasted as being really bad. It did start out with heavy and hard rainfall enhanced by the odd thunder clap. I was ready to have a craft day inside. I love rainy days for being busy in the house or crafting. I am busy with my lace and sewing a new Christmas gift but now the sun has emerged and it has turned out to be a beautiful day after all. I decided to pop out the front door and share some photos I had promised of the three~tiered rack by our front door which is filled with gourds. As you can see, it is a funny time of year with my roses still blooming although meeker than in the depths of summer alongside the brilliant colors of the gourds. 
This is the other side of the front door as you come up to it. We bought this old pitch fork for only 2 euro in a thrift shop with the intention of it going up to the cottage. Jos 'planted' it here for the time being as we had a few days before we were to go up north again. A couple of months later and the fork is still here holding a sweet wooden sign I found for it. I loved it so much that I will have to hunt for another one to use up at the cottage. I would like to create an outdoor collage there of old tools but this old tool looks perfectly at home here.
Finally, again to show you how summer is still hanging around, our pots are blooming well. I have been wanting to start clearing them up or cutting them back to be ready to overwinter but with these pretty blooms, who has the heart. I will enjoy the flowers while they last. The large pot contains a few herbs which we use in the kitchen ~ rosemary, thyme and basil. It had contained some parsley but that is all used up now. 
For those of you who remember last autumn, I love toadstools. We arrived at the cottage to find the magic of the season has begun! These were stacked up against our patio like a busy city of homes for gnomes. I was so glad I decided to run out to take a photo that evening as the next morning, this delightful 'city' of toadstools had all but disappeared. 
change the position of the hook and our rounded ceiling is solid concrete so I decided to not do that afterall. We would have to drill a hole near the end of the rounding and I am afraid of the damage it may cause. Our ceiling in the bedroom raises up to 4 meters height in the middle and we have a sky scene painted on it with clouds and swallows. 
I am decorating inside and out for autumn now. I bought some gourds up north and brought them home to fill a rack by our front door (will show you that later on) and create a 'still life' at the patio area on our table. I grabbed that Hydrangea bouquet I cut at the cottage since it would be the finishing touch to this tray. Oh how I love the autumn!
And yet, look what September still has in store. Surprise! Our wisteria is giving us a few sparse last blooms. This is the one thing I miss most when the gardening season is over. I just love my wisteria!
Our pots are still blooming. I took this in a very grey and rainy moment and yet it is still colorful. Just to name a few, an oleander is in bloom and the petunias are so long and tired but won't stop showing off. I bought chocolate cosmos this year and it is full of buds again so it will have one last round of flowers. I love this plant and ,yes, it really does smell like chocolate when the sun shines on it. Right now the pot is so overgrown with leaf but it still wants to give one last show in another week or so.
We had a very busy weekend at the cottage. Before I show you our progress, I will show you how the garden looks now. This is at the back end of our garden. There is a row of conifers which are planted more than a meter from the boundry. 
This row is followed by two very large holly bushes and a pine tree. They had never been pruned and are overgrown. I cannot do much to save the pine tree unfortunately but I am hoping to be able to severely prune the holly to encounrage it to grow more densely. Right now, all the growth is at the ends of very long drooping and thin branches. You cannot see that from the photos but it looks bad in real life. I am afraid it will die off if we don't do something about it. 
Here is the work in progress. The fencing is going to be 18 meters long. It will start by the dirt road with a 5 meter piece of living fence which is a metal grid used normally to strengthen concrete. This grid is attached to the wooden posts and then climbing plants are grown over it to eventually totally cover the grid. This is followed by three sections of wooden fencing. Two are up as you can see here. The last 5 meters will be the living fence again. The wooden sections will give us privacy from the start as the next cottage and its driveway are right behind the fence. You can see from this photo how much of our garden was wasted space behind the conifers. 
The beech trees are full of nuts this year and we are finding them all over the grass. I had to cut some of my hydrangea since they are so heavily in blossom that we are unable to walk on the path through the side borders. Don't they look pretty sitting on the garden table?
It was not hard to picture how beautiful Hennie's garden is at the peak of the gardening season. She had a magazine article laying out written about her B&B with photos which you can see above. Even at the end of the season, the garden is very pretty. 
She has created many areas to sit and the garden is full of surprising and hidden corners which are full of 'brocante'.
This area actually looks like yet another room in the house as it has a simple, little roof that was built over it.
Enamelware becomes art when grouped together on an old and weathered cupboard!
We enjoyed sitting out in the garden enjoying the sun of summer's end. Even as the flowers are fading, there can still be beauty in a garden if it is balanced with interesting bits and pieces. The wonderful thing about seeing other people's home and garden is that you can take pieces away with you to create your own ideas for your dream home and garden. I hope these photos might inspire you. 
