Our Kitchen at Christmas and Otis & Milo

In the words of Dee Hardie, my beloved Christmas Mentor, from her book Hollyhocks, Lambs, here is our kitchen dressed for Christmas. A picture of Dee's kitchen will appear at the end of the post--after pictures of our new babies, Otis and Milo!

"The main valve of Thornhill, without question, is our kitchen."

"Like the head of the River Nile, it's where life starts flowing.

At Christmas, it explodes with excitement.

When Tom cooks, it is delirious."

"It's our active verb, where I cook, concoct, create. It's center stage."

"These days…nothing, unless I really care about it

or unless it is Christmas,

sits too long in our kitchen.

Dogs have diplomatic immunity."

"

[Katie Belle, big sister now and not terribly thrilled about it!]

"The kitchen has become, for me,
the most personal room at Thornhill,
I choose to edit what it contains.
I couldn't always do this when our children were younger,
nor did I want to,
but as they have grown up, so has the kitchen."

"Later we exchanged the spotted floor for a grander covering
of Vermeerlike black-and-white twelve inch square tiles of linoleum.
It's still here and I have spent a large portion of my life
trying to keep it clean. Everything shows."

"A professional decorator might think the black-and-white blocks
are too formal for a country floor,
but what is more country than a checkerboard?"

"Country furniture, which often looks like its mother forgot to tell
it to stand up straight up straight when it was a child,
sits well, looks well on such a definite platform."

"And facing each other, on either end wall of the kitchen, 

are two bulls' heads.

Woven of raffia, we captured them, by strenuous bargaining,

from a street vendor in Seville."

"[The kitchen] is where we make decisions and raspberry jam,

where I weave baskets 

and neighbors weave country intrigue over teacups."

"It's a studio, a workshop, the core of Christmas.

It's probably my best friend if friendship depends

on being there whenever needed.

"The kitchen is where Tom and I sit before dinner to discuss our day.

And it's where we seem to make decisions."

A major decision R.H. and I made recently was to try to adopt two nine-year-old little dachshund brothers. I lost my heart to them after seeing their picture on www.petfinder.com. After losing our 15 1/2 year old dachshund Penelope on December 14, 2012, I still had a dachshund size hole in my heart. R.H. only remembered the pain, the hurt, the loneliness after she died. Then he dreamed about them. 

And he told me to find out if Otis and Milo had been adopted yet. 

They had not. Their mother is seriously ill and they made the decision to surrender them. Can you imagine how very hard it was for them to make this decision? And how hard it was for Otis and Milo to leave their home for a rescue shelter? Thank God they stipulated that these two loving brothers be adopted together. 

God bless the wonderful woman who helped us be able to adopt these two black long haired miniature dachshunds, and who does such marvelous, caring work for so many dachshunds. It is a labor of love entirely. And they are so careful. We had to fill out an application, with references, they checked with our veterinarian, and there was a home visit. Because they wanted to know two main things, whether we had a safe fenced in yard, and whether we knew, understood, and loved the breed. 

Finally, one year to the date of losing Penelope, we were able to go see these twin brothers, Otis who is 12 pounds and Milo who is tiny at 8 pounds. We fell in love with them and signed an extensive contract for the protection of these babies.  By the time we had been driven home by our son, almost 4 hours, R.H. holding Milo, Otis in my lap kissing me the whole way, they were in love with us. 

Please, if you are considering adding a dog, or cat, to your family, please check into the rescue organizations run so capably. Petfinders.com is an excellent way to start. There are so many dogs who need a good home. They need you, and maybe you need them. We did.

Otis and Milo wish you as merry a Christmas as we hope theirs will be and that your new year will be wonderful.

I want to end this post with a magazine page that I have had for 30 years, Dee Hardie's kitchen. It was on the cover of House Beautiful magazine in December of 1983. It was the beginning of my love affair with a kitchen with a black and white checkerboard floor. But it only solidified my admiration of Dee Hardie that had been going on since I discovered her columns in House and Garden in 1973.

To Dee Hardie, my Christmas Mentor, thank you for all that you have meant to me and so many others: