November is upon us and I always race this time of year to finish projects at our farmhouse. I have all of the porch floors painted and our staircase….maybe a little wood work will get painted before the house gets put to sleep for the winter.
I am happy with the outcome of pulling all of the yews and other bushes out of the front of the house. You will see that most houses of this period did not have heavy foundation planting. Foundation planting with yews became popular in the 50's….this is when foundations were made of poured concrete and people wanted to hide them. Older houses have lovely brick or stone foundations….why hide them!
I really do not entertain much at our farmhouse. It is just so much work to clean the house and get it in tip top shape for guests….city people do not understand a few spider webs and lady bugs all over the house. Though after it is all done….it is worth it. The best thing it does is to force me to finish projects. Earlier this Spring I had the house on tour for St. Louis' Landmark's Association Pike County Ramble Tour. This motivated me to redo a bedroom that was in pretty bad shape…complete with a wallpaper border coming down and a heavily cracked ceiling. Now is is so pretty! Over the weekend I had ten people stay at the house overnight. The house has 5 legitimate beds….so couches and air mattresses made nice sleeping arrangements for the overflow. What a lovely night…we had the fireplace ablaze and also the fire-pit going outside! Games, good food and wine made the evening memorable. Sunday morning we started with a nice country breakfast followed by a long walk on our farm. The afternoon was spent shopping in Clarksville and lunch at Overlook Farm's restaurant.
For breakfast Bobby made the most delicious item…. he cooked up sausage and added it to scrambled eggs….then split biscuits and put a spoonful of the mixture on-top of the uncooked biscuit….I think they were cooked at 350 until brown….try it ….they were easy and crowd-pleasers!
A walk helped burn off the hearty breakfast.