mama_goose, your house and yard are gorgeous!! I can't pick a favourite shot, they are all so pretty, homey, restful, and comfortable looking. You are doing a wonderful job!

~Missy

Thanks, Missy, that's one of my favorite spots. LOL--let me tell you the story of the curtains. I found them at a clearance outlet for $1.00 each. Great deal--the only problem was that there were no two the same color. So I bought a bunch and and just mixed 'em up!

Your property is so beautiful...I would be so happy if we could have even 1/4 acre! I've gardened up so much of the yard that there are not many spots my 5 year old can do the boy things he wants to do, but he's a creative little guy :-)

Lovely house and yard mama_goose. I too love the curtains on the porch. This is sort of what I am working on creating too. LOVE the mixed up version and got me to thinking of doing this in our living room. I wonder if it could work??

I hope some day our yard will be pretty like yours. Starting with a brand new yard is so hard. Hoping this year to get some interesting little spots to look at. Last summer was spent in just trying to make anything of the yard.

Thanks for the pictures. The wind was blowing so hard here. I mowed the court yard area and came in not wanting to go back out. Tomorrow is supposed to be a better day.

Chris

mama_goose, thank you for the beautiful pictures of your home and property. I feel drawn to the open spaces and sunlight---I would love to see inside the barn!

It must make your heart swell to sit on your swing and take in the view. Lovely!

melle, thank you! I'd love to see pictures of your flowers.

pinkpaula, thank you, I love sitting on the porch during the 'gloaming'. I was trying to capture that light. The only pictures I have of inside the barn don't show much.

Here is a link that might be useful: barn occupants

Chris, thank you, I think mixed-color curtains would look great. If you like them outside, why not try them inside, too? I've been working on this yard since 1994, but I've let things slide in the last couple of years. I try not to get close-ups of all the weeds! I'm posting a link to my 'Rate My Space' profile. It's pictures of the porch, but if you scroll down and look on the right side of the page you'll see my other spaces. Just click on the one you want to view.

Anita

Here is a link that might be useful: 236mama_goose on RMS

Your photos are so gorgeous! Your garden is such a dream! Every picture was so inviting.

omg how cute are those barn swallows! the little darlings.

you have such a beautiful garden mamagoose thanks for posting the pics. I love country style gardens, I especially love your wagon wheel and red barn and the way things seem so organic they way they are planted

MamaGoose, you have the quintessential American dream property. Everybody wants to have that as part of their family history. I think you are giving your children a heritage that few today are fortunate enough to have. I wish that I could have passed my childhood days in the country surrounded by my aunts and uncles and cousins on to my son, and now to my husband's granddaughters, but the old days are long gone. I remember the days before electricity and before indoor plumbing and well water not running water, and a bath in a galvanized tub and the dirtiest person had to bathe LAST.

Mercy, your home is of a gentler era, and I totally appreciate what you call "the gloaming", which is when the fireflies come out to twinkle at you. With all this as a part of your mystique, we will definitely want to have a real tour through the inside of your home. Did you not mention an extended family somewhere close to TWENTY? Lovely. What size stove do you use? How many help you in the kitchen? I have so many questions.

Oh my, what a lovely charming property you have! I wish we had a fraction of your yardspace, what a beautiful home!!!

I agree, your house and yard is idyllic. How do you ever keep up that much yard and flower beds?

Wow. Just lovely. I love your porch photo with the backlit swing. You've done a great job defining your garden areas and the backdrop is fabulous. Do you live in Kentucky? I think I see a tobacco basket on the porch? :)

Pam
a native Kentuckian

Beautiful property! I went into the barn and look what I found
{{!gwi}}

Thank you all so much! And thank you for making me feel welcome! We live in southern Ohio--I can see Kentucky from my front porch. The tobacco basket once belonged to my sister-in-law's family, but many of our relatives have raised tobacco. Although I am a militant non-smoker, it's part of our heritage, and I love the artistry of such a utilitarian object.

I am the eldest of five children, my husband the eldest of three, and all but one sibling and his family live within 20 minutes of us. Our families have known each other for several generations, and have shared many holiday meals since my husband and I married over 30 years ago. My children have been very lucky to have grown up with both sets of granparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins so close. Our yard is perfect for a gathering place, and when we complete our remodeling, the house will be just right, too!

Then maybe I can get back to gardening, because right now my yard is sorely neglected. We had a really wet summer last year, so the weeds got a good 'toe-hold', and they aren't giving up without a fight!

idie2live, LOL, the Easter Bunny must have left that! Raccoons have caught all our hens, and we haven't decided if we want to provide another smorgasbord for them this year! I know everyone thinks those raccoons are cute, but they are wild varmints that are evidently smarter than our dogs.

Oh, moccasinlanding, we don't have 20 people every day, thank goodness! We have a big family dinner once a month, and on holidays. My stove is a bisque (imagine that!) electric smooth top, just the regular size, with a warming element. That's another reason that I want to move the stove, because we use the counters adjacent to the stove for a buffet, and if I've heated something just before serving, that cook-top stays hot for a looooooong time! My hubby is always in charge of the coffee station, and my sisters help, too. If we ask for extra help, everyone steps up. 'If you don't work, you don't eat!' --Animal Farm

Hi, everyone, here is the latest installment on my spring flowers. Click on the photos for captions.

Here is a link that might be useful: flowers II

WOW Mama_goose, you are so much further ahead of us for spring flowers. I glanced at the courtyard flower beds and there are a few things starting to bloom. Will see about pictures soon. So busy with work right now. Get me past Tuesday and I will be able to breath again.

Lovely flowers. Love the columbine. I think it is one of my favorite flowers.So much I still would like to do to this yard. Yesterday a friend brought me a big box of raspberry plants . Why I am up so early this morning. I need to get them into pots for now as no time to do the ground thing and I just sprayed off the whole yard :^(

Saturday is a plant exchange . Hoping I get some good things. Last year I was able to take home all the left overs. Was wonderful!!

Off to get dirty.

Chris

Gorgeous flower shots, mama_goose! I am so jealous! I posted a couple of shots of my poor flowers in the 'spring' thread.

NICE! I like the looks of your dwarf alberta spruce too.
Do the deer eat it at all? How tall and big around does it get, how fast does it grow? What shape, a cone?

shades, thank you, I'm in a zone 6 frost-pocket, so all my flowers are usually a little late. The irises are just starting to bloom. Hope you get some good stuff on Saturday!

thanks, prairie, I popped over to see your flower pics. Oh, my, I remember my kids having a snowball fight in June, when we lived in Colorado. How late in the season do you get snow?

ML, the dwarf elberta spruce are my favorite shrub. They grow to about 6' tall by 3-4' wide. We have terrible clay soil, so they'd probably do better in more fertile conditions. The new growth is very soft, and bright green--so pretty, and the chipping sparrows love to nest in them. I buy little shrubs in quart-size pots, and it takes about ten years for them to reach maturity. They always keep their tidy cone shape, but spider-mites will cause the tops to die out. We have two dogs in the yard, so no deer damage.

That looks like a good place to live.

Well silly me forgot about the plant sale.I was working on city stuff after the hearing until after 2AM. Got up late then we went to town. BUT I did luck out at a senior center yard sale and bought a forsythia, two nice tomatoes, a small clump of cat mint, a batch of canna bulbs, three sage plants, and a six pack of celery plants. I am very pleased to get all of this for 9 dollars.

Then we came home and I went right to sleep. It looks like rain so I an going to dash out and mow the court yard and plant the cat mint and celery in. The tomatoes will have to be babied for a bit yet. We had 28 degrees here this morning. We are zone 4/5 here. A solid 4 and 5 iffy because we do drop to 25 below once in awhile and that does in a zone 5 plant. :^(

Hoping some day to have a pretty yard. Yours inspires me. I do think when we live in small houses we tend to use our yards as added living space.

Chris

Thanks, larry112, we've enjoyed raising our kids here--now we're starting with grandchildren.

shades, great deals! I love a bargain. And your yard IS pretty--I looked at your spring flower pics. I want that sink planter to go with my bathtub fountain!

Mama Goose: "'If you don't work, you don't eat!' --Animal Farm

I like that.
I'm going to mention a movie here (not with much of a house in it) and it is called COLD COMFORT FARM. A very strange movie, and you probably would like it. Very dour folks live there, and a young woman who is an orphan comes to live with them, since they are her only family. I will say no more, don't want to give it away.

There is another quote "As you think, so shall you be."
Or something of the sort. Thinking is a creative act, after all. So watch how you think about things, guys, you are creating it as reality.

Hi, ML, I actually got your message posted in my email--I added my email adrs to my profile page. I finally figured out why I wasn't getting follow-up notices.

I'll have to look for that one!

Forgive me for gushing, but my Zephyr rose is blooming. I transplanted it last year from the back of the house, to our new front porch area, and this is the first spring bloom season. It's raining right now, but I can't wait to sit on the porch and 'smell the roses!'

There are pictures included in the new spring flower album.

Here is a link that might be useful: Flowers III

Beautiful! Roses are such special flowers. :o)

I love, love, love your place. It is lovely, and oh so peaceful looking.

FlowerLady

OH I am gushing again too on your flowers. Mine are just starting to come on now. Will have to keep the camera handy.

Chris

Thanks, ladies, I've enjoyed your flower pics, too, and I'm looking forward to new ones.

flowerlady, I checked your blog, and I love that your yard is jam-packed with flowers. Also enjoyed reading your thoughts and musings. I treasure a book that my sister gave me, called 'All The Plants of The Bible'. Your embroidery is beautiful--I used to do simple embroidery on my daughters' little dresses. I remember my grandmother teaching me to embroider on pillowcases. Oh, what good memories! So happy to meet you.

mama - what brand stove do you have? do you like the smooth top on it?

Hi, desertsteph, our stove is a Frigidaire, which we bought because we already had a fridge made by that company. It's a popular style that I see a lot on GW, and RMS, especially in white kitchens. The price was ap. $800, low-end for some, but a major expense for us.

I didn't do my homework before buying the stove (at Lowe's), and I didn't know that most older cooking pans, including cast iron skillets, are warped enough that the bottoms don't make good contact with the smooth glass top. Consequently, it takes longer to heat up a pan, but I'm not willing to replace all my cookware. The elements seem to take much longer to cool down after being turned off (compared to a regular electric stove burner), a problem for me, because I use the stove-top as part of a buffet area. With the smooth-top you don't have to clean or replace burner pans, but one maintenance issue is traded for another. According to the manufacturer, the glass top requires a special cleaner, and a special scrubbing pad, which I use, but spills and spatters need to be cleaned up asap, so that they aren't 'baked on'. In that model there is a rubber gasket/trim piece that surrounds the glass top, and catches crumbs and spills. It's difficult to clean out all the grunge--that's my biggest gripe.

The oven is convection, with optional 'speed bake', which I use occasionally. I've never been able to get the hang of baking several trays of uniformly browned cookies at one time, which is disappointing, as I bought the stove just before Christmas in 2008.

I can live with the stove, but if I had it to do over, I'd get the model with the small oven on top. My brother-in-law has one, and says that a large turkey will fit in the bottom oven, and the top oven is sufficient for everything else, and uses less energy. HTH

Here is a link that might be useful: pics 8, 9 & 10

Mama_goose, I use Barkeepers friend for cook tops on my glass top stove and it works well Scrape it first with razor blade in the handle thing. Think paint scraper. Then between Barkeepers friend I just use windex and paper towel and it really helps to keep the top shiny.

We do not have as nice a stove as you do. I bought it on Craigs list. But it works well / LOL First time I had to work an oven with no knob.

Mama, I remember reading a discussion on one of the boards about cleaning the inside of the glass door. They took the door off, turned it upside down (there are holes) and used something long (don't remember what) to reach inside and clean the glass!
Some brave sould actually took the doors apart! I don't think I'll be doing that.
I'm going to try to find the thread.
Loretta

Mama, here is the thread. They used a brush and a sock! about 1/3 down the page of replies.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cleaning Between Glass Oven Door

shades, thanks for the tips. Does the Barkeeper's Friend, or Windex leave an odor when the burner is turner on?

idie, thank you for taking the time to find that info for me! I was able to clean the outside glass which had only condensation marks, by using a large ruler and cotton cloth. My stove also has a 2 layer interior window that I can't access without taking the door apart. The thread also has instructions for that process, so maybe some rainy day...

Here's a related thread:
crumby stove a>

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}

MamaGoose, the Frigidaire stove must be similar to the GE that DH has in massachusetts. It is a 30" glass cooking surface, has a convection big oven on bottom, and then a broiling top/bottom small oven on top.

But I know what you mean about the rubber gasket around the edge of the top catching everything and being impossible to clean, I've used my fingernails and sort of "bevelled" that sticky groove thinking in the beginning it was gooey grease. But then I realized it was the seal keeping the burners beneath free of gunk. Both ovens are self cleaning, and I've only cleaned them ONCE. Boy do they heat up! You can do only one at a time.

But my DH likes to cook a turkey breast all during the year. He would use the big oven, and I felt it was a waste of electricity. Then while he was here in Alabama, he used my Sharp 930 convection/microwave oven which gets pretty fancy with what it can do. And he started singing the praises of that oven. He called me this evening as happy as a bug, because for his Father's Day present, I sent him the next size down oven by Sharp which will do everything the bigger oven will do, and it arrived this afternoon. :)
Bless his heart, I know he will be cooking turkey soon.

And my very favorite cleaning product is BARKEEPER'S FRIEND. I have several cans of it in powder form, it has silica in it so it is less abrasive than any other powder. But now they also have the paste/liquid bottle version which I snapped up a few weeks ago. That must be the one that does good for glass cook tops. It is also very good for stainless steel. However, to remove the tarnish after using it, take some club soda on a paper towel, or some rubbing alcohol on a paper towel, and go back over the polished surface. It will remove all trace of tarnish which might get on your hands and then transfer to any surface you touch. I guess you could use Windex or Glass Plus for this tarnish removal too. I've used BKF for years.

This is so interesting. I have had a Maytag double oven stove (3) in my last houses. Love them and worth the money since I'm single and really don't cook large meals. So the small top oven is used constantly, plus it has a toaster option and was able to eliminate one more "something" on my counter. Large dinners work great having the two ovens for different temp requirements at the same time. I won't ever be without one wherever I go, unless they show up with more issues like this glass thing.

Thought I was the only one with oven window dust. This never happened to me 5 years ago with the same stove model...and new. I have to look at that dust every day and is the only thing in the kitchen that I see. Wonder what they did to pose this problem in the new design? The fact that Maytag was bought by GE? It is odd that many of the designs by them are having the same issue.

Just looked at my ovens and the openings are quite large. With the heat that occurs when self cleaning I'd wonder if any of that dust would catch fire.

Thanks for the link, was posted 4 years ago which does say something about the manufacturing changing. The response from GE was worthless though.

There are a couple of things learned with a smooth top stove. One is use a razor blade to clean off tough stuff. It doesn't scratch the surface and doesn't need a holder, just gently run it across the hard cooked leftovers. The other is to gauge your cooking needs, use the time a burner takes to cool down for part of the cooking.

Opted for a convection micro wave combination once and never could get the darn thing to cook right. It baked too, which did well, but apparently I'm just not a convection user. Plus using it meant there was no microwave available during cooking.

A couple of years ago I saw a hint to use simple dishwashing soap for everything. Even windows. You wouldn't believe how easy things clean up and my windows sparkle. Very inexpensive.

Moc, thanks for the stainless steel tips. I do use BKF. The mixture sounds interesting and will try it. I do get rid of scratches with wet sand paper used for auto paint detail. Doesn't take the stains away though.

Be careful using drain cleaners on stainless steel. It has taken me 2 years to get rid of the spots from this stuff. And once the green bottle (can't remember the name) of crud remover totally ruined a new faucet from splashes. Clean up with a tooth brush works just as well on a normal basis of cleaning.

Happy gardening to all. Nice to know we have common inside/outside passions.

Mama_goose there is no odor left on the glass from either the windex or barkeepers. The windex evaporates and barkeepers gets buffed off.

I love my glass/ceramic top stove. :o) It's the second one I've owned. I use a 'scrunge' to scrub the top. It works fantastic - at first I was scared as it's so rough - I thought it would scratch it, but it doesn't.

Here is a link that might be useful: vileda scrunge

Thank you all for the information and advice. I suspected that products other that what mfgr recommended could be used. I use dish soap for cleaning a lot of things--I buy the antibacterial type and cut it in half with water for the handsoap dispensers. I've never seen the Vileda scrunge, but I buy my scrubbies at the dollar store. I'll have to look at Wal-Mart.

I also like to cook turkey breast often. It's usually good for several days worth of meals, and anything that cuts down on cooking is great.

LOL, Enough of cooking and cleaning!! :) Here are new flower pics:

Here is a link that might be useful: flowers IV

OH WOW So pretty!!! I have been caught up in work and the primary election and weeds in my garden. We are starting to get a few flowers. The tulips have been wonderful this year. Great pictures. My clematis is starting to grow again. We seem to be quite a ways behind you. Well and most of my main flowers are on the north west side of the house.

Thanks for the viewing pleasure.

Chris

Thank you, shades, you are welcome. Weeding is something that I can't seem to get caught up on. Some of my clematis are already faded and making 'fuzzies', and the elderberries are blooming this week, a sure sign that summer is on its way.

Summer flowers are starting to bloom--hollyhocks, daylilies, roses, and fruit is starting to develop.

Here is a link that might be useful: Flowers V

Those little birdies look like they thought you were gonna feed them, lol
The hollyhocks are beautiful.