redecorating…

…seems the best course of action, at this time of year when action, in general, is not at the top of my list! And as it is too cold in the house to do much real redecorating, I’ve decided that my online homes will receive some refreshing for the next while. So don’t be surprised to see things come and go in this space until I find a place for everything and then put everything in its place.

When I began my online journal nine years ago, I called it my “bower”, which is an old word for home. I’ve casually called this newer space my “rosehip bower”, but just lately I’ve felt that this is more my Rosehip Hearth…a place to come and warm yourself…stare into the fire…be in each others company.

I wrote this last October, when we were reading the book Serving Fire together at Wisteria & Sunshine…

“Honoring the hearth is a state of being that radiates outward, nourishing other parts of our lives. The hearth keeper holds both the inner and outer worlds simultaneously. Daily actions, thought, and feelings provide kindling for the fire of the hearth.”

-Anne Scott

Serving Fire

“Tending the hearth”…one of those thrilling phrases for the domestic heart. But what does “the hearth” actually signify, for each of us? In Serving Fire, it mostly means the kitchen and cooking and nourishment….but before we move more deeply into our book, I wanted to get clear on what, and perhaps, where, our hearths really are. I have a fireplace, a woodstove, an oven and stovetop in my home…are one or all of them my hearths? Or is the hearth mostly a spiritual thing?

Does the hearth begin once you cross the threshold of home? Or does it revolve around warmth and sustenance…material or not? Like so many things after mothering, it is harder to put my finger on, now that our home is so much emptier than it used to be. How can one tend the hearth in solitude? And what might that look like? If “hearth” means center, does it reside within me?

-October 2014

I suppose I shall be trying to answer those questions here, in and amongst all of the “tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden-seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, invitations, scoldings and puppies.” (Louisa May Alcott’s words about the post office in the hedge in Little Women, which I’ve long likened blogs to.)

Now I am going to get back to creating some new corners, moving some pixelated furniture and putting a cosy chair to two near the fire…