Clothesline of Love

Since there is a long-going drought in Texas, we have appreciated all the rainfall we've had in the past few weeks--mostly from tropical disturbances moving north. But today is the first day there is muggy, steamy sunshine, so I get to hang clothes on the clothesline again, which I love to do. Yay!

The image of hanging love out reverberates within me. That is how I feel as I handle clothes of my family. It was especially true when there were children at home, when I also had to wash clothes much more often. I am glad I can hang clothes on the line almost year-round in Texas.

One Good Thing About Texas Heat

Spanish Clothesline

Spain, April 2011

It has been too cold and rainy for me to hang clothes out on the clothesline lately. Here is a reminder of clothes hanging out from my trip to Spain in April 2011 when I visited youngest daughter MJ there.

Home!

No delays on the flights from St. Petersburg, Russia. Dear husband CB met me at the San Antonio Airport last night, as did youngest daughter MJ. Wonderful to see them!

During the 33 hours since awaking at 3 am in St. Petersburg on November 12 and finally getting home to Corpus Christi, TX at 11 pm on November 12, I did NOT sleep at all, unlike some of my friends.

Mary Jane, Ann, and Paige asleep on the final leg of our journey.

That was probably a good thing, because I slept 11 hours last night--from midnight to 10 am this morning. Yay! But I've been waning since dinner and will go to bed after being awake after only 11 hours. Maybe the jet lag will not be as bad as when I returned from Spain in the spring.

I am glad to be home. It was wonderful for everyone in our group to arrive in the USA when we debarked at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC. We were (are) really glad to be back in the States!

It is about 60 degrees warmer here than in Russia today, and so I enjoyed hanging clothes on the clothesline in the warm sunshine.


Now it is time for me to go to bed. Good night!

TX heat is good for something!

The heat and humidity have definitely arrived here in Corpus Christi, TX. At least, we are about 5 degrees cooler than Austin and Dallas, where it is reaching 100 degrees F. or more every day.

Even with my RA hands, I still like to hang clothes out on the clothesline, which is behind our garage.


Here you can see my turquoise swimming cover-up and the bag I carry my pool stuff in (given by the Shalem program).

Clothesline Alaska-style

By Barbara Lavallee

I have this magnet on my refrigerator. It's from our trip to Alaska. I really like the happy art of Barbara Lavallee.

Dig-Free Fence?

If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you know that our two youngest dogs Cisco and Maisie like to dig under the fence--to freedom. Ever since Maisie arrived, Cisco has been showing her how to do it! We've placed bricks to stop up the holes, sometimes belatedly.

Today my wonderful and diligent husband CB spent hours before church and after, digging, moving bricks and nailing fence boards to the bottom of our fence. It is hot and humid and felt like it was 100 F. degrees most of the day.

You can see how thrifty CB is--he used an old fence board (that he replaced) on the bottom of the fence to the left. Below is where he took it!

This was the major opening for the dogs' last escape. You can see how the boards start to rot and then the dogs chew and push at the bottoms.

It was so hot today that I was able to hang two different loads of clothes on the clothesline, this one being the second at 2 pm, when I had already taken in the first load (dried) inside to fold.

Maisie is looking through a knothole at CB talking to our next door neighbor on the other side of the fence. This is another "skill" she learned from Cisco!

Grand-dog Troy and Our Dogs

Hyper Troy is still pretty energetic, but he is more ready for petting than he used to be. He and Maisie played a lot for the three days he stayed with us, while his master BJ was at the beach.

BJ and Troy before they left for Houston

Troy has the ball, while Maisie and Cisco look on.

You can see that Maisie is slightly larger than Cisco, but Troy is still taller and longer.

Troy often stops to look up for birds.

Maisie and Troy

Maisie loved playing with Troy. We really liked her keeping busy and getting tired!

After BJ and Troy left this afternoon, CB was sitting at his computer. Maisie kept standing next to him, then staring at him barked. CB really felt like Maisie was asking him where her friend was!

And here is Maisie walking by my clothesline. If you look at the bottom of the fence, you can see where bricks have been shoved in to stop Cisco (and sometimes Maisie) from digging.

A puppy lesson for me!

This morning I hung sheets on the clothesline for the first time in weeks, because it has been cold and rainy here for awhile. Holding the laundry basket as always, I dropped it to shut the backdoor. I was so surprised when I heard the puppy yelp and disappear. So I thought Maisie had run off into the yard.

After I hung the clothes on the line, I started looking for the puppy who appeared to be lost again. I searched behind every bush along the fence in our backyard and kept calling and looking. Then I got worried, because after the second and third times around the yard I could not find her. I even prayed for Maisie's safety.

Then I worriedly called CB, who is working at one of the Habitat (for Humanity) houses, as he does almost every day. Speaking to him, I realized I had not looked in the house. When I came in, there was Maisie asleep by the love seat in the family room. She is lying just as she was last night when I took this picture:

So today I learned (AGAIN) how quick puppies are!

Blog Action Day!

Go here for ideas about getting involved about climate change. As this cartoon illustrates, we are hanging ourselves without changes in the way we live and relate to all living things on earth.

Here is a Climate Orb that can show you places on the globe that are already being affected by climate change.

Help by hanging clothes outside (or in a basement) to dry! It is fun to hang items on the clothesline to dry, and they smell so good when they come inside. Go here for a good article about this.

Lint as Lent

From Roberta at Spiritually Directed. . . is this darling story:

WHAT IS LENT?
On the way to All Saints

"Lent Event 2009"a mother

listened to the conversation

between her two children.

One child wondered aloud:

"What is Lent, anyway?"

The sibling responded:

"It's the stuff on your clothes."

taken from here.

What is sticking to you like lint sticks to clothes?

(and you know how I love clotheslines. . . .)

Windy day!

It is another windy day here in Corpus Christi, TX. This is a picture of the things I hung on the clothesline about an hour ago. Sheets and shirts are wound around other lines. We're supposed to have three days of extreme wind because of a low pressure system coming from the northwest and a high pressure area approaching from Florida.

My clothesline is placed behind our garage. To the right is a storage shed CB built a few years ago. If you look at all the bricks and the round piece of granite (left over from a house CB remodeled), you will see that they line the bottom of the fence. Our shepherd mix dog Cisco likes to escape the yard--by digging under the fence and/or chewing away at semi-rotten boards. The bricks have solved the problem for this area of the fence.

I'm off to hang the next load of laundry on the 1 1/2 lines left. I'll untangle the sheets, but it will only momentarily fix them. They'll still dry with the warm temperatures (70s F.) and the wind.

Clothesline accessories and info

Project Laundry List is making air-drying laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy. In other words, CLOTHESLINES!

They now have a store, too, where you can buy clothespins, clothespin bags, clotheslines, books, and other things related to drying laundry outside. (And remember, my mother-in-law dries things on a clothesline in her basement in rainy WA State.)

I find it hard to find a clothespin bag, so today I ordered a new one for me.

Hot Sun

Personally, I think it's both. It is HOT. It is 90 degrees F, but feels like 99 degrees, probably because the humidity is 61%.

One good thing about the blasting heat is that all MJ's towels from camp dried in only three hours on the clothesline--while I was at church. I keep taking things off the clothesline that have dried to dry more today; I'm on my fourth load of wash to be dried outside. (MJ brought several bags of dirty towels, sheets, and clothes home from camp.)

MJ is off with her boy friend CS and his two younger brothers to play soccer, even in this heat. They are all Texans, after all. The bonus is that they will go swimming afterwards.

Gretchen Markle logo

"Spring Crocuses" by Gretchen Markle

Looking at Project Laundry List, I discovered a link to the art of Gretchen Markle, who painted my profile logo:

"Cumberland Clotheslines 1" by Gretchen Markle

Gretchen Markle was born and raised in a small mining town in Northern Ontario. In 1976, she moved to Vancouver Island. The isolation and beauty of both locales have had a profound and lasting effect on her art making.

Conservationist Endorses Clotheslines!

Now this makes sense to me! In Vermont, Alexander Lee has founded a movement endorsing the use of clotheslines, which he calls Project Laundry List. He learned that

"One dryer, he knows today, eats up to $100 or more in power each year while emitting up to a ton of carbon dioxide. Collectively, America’s more than 80 million dryers annually burn 6 to 10 percent of all residential electricity - second only to refrigerators and the equivalent of 30 million tons of coal or the output of the nation’s 15 least productive nuclear reactors."

To read the rest of the article, go here.

Of course, one good thing about the dreadful HEAT in Texas is the ability to hang clothes out on the clothesline almost any and every day. Still, I also had clotheslines when I lived in RI and NJ, though I could not use them as frequently as in TX. My mother-in-law has used a clothesline in her basement for years and years--and she lives in WA State.

My clothesline

This is my clothesline with sheets hanging on it.

One good thing about the heat in south Texas is that it is ideal to hang clothes out on the clothesline to dry. I've always liked to do that, ever since moving here. I used to hang out cloth diapers to dry!

My clothesline is behind our garage in the space between the garage and the fence.

There is a book about Clotheslines!

Silly though this may be, I found a book about clotheslines. (I like the book's cover picture.)

I hung things out today in the south Texas hot sunshine, where they still are. I always like to do this. Our two dogs always know it is time to go outside when I put the laundry basket by the washing machine and fill it up with wet items. Our deceased lab Licorice would not go outside unless she saw that the basket was full! (Licorice did not like the hot and humid weather here.)

Book Review
By Judith
Fabrics.net

The Clothesline, a book by Irene Rawlings and Andrea VanSteenhouse is not just about hanging your clothes on a clothesline, it is a delightful trip through memory lane. Add in a recipe or two for soap, delightful photographs by David Foxhoven and Jason McConathy and the result is a book that will make you smile.

From types of clotheslines to clothespins of today and yesterday to ideas for sachet bags, this little book covers many topics in whimsical, effortless writing. Remember hanging your linens outside or watching your neighbors hang their laundry? Perhaps, like me, you can remember bringing in frozen laundry to dry by the stove?

Clothespins as collectables or works of art? Certainly! You may be surprised and the variety and types of clothespins that have been designed and used since 1832 when the first clothespin was patented. This book has ideas for displaying your collection of laundry bags, dish towels as well as clothespins and other collections. Suggestions about storing vintage linens and fabrics can also be found in this book.