Things to do at the Jarvis House when you are snowed in!

These are signal flags from the historic lightship, the Nantucket.  On the right are the numbers, and on the left are the letters.  They needed some hemming and repairs for the return of the ship to Boston later on in the month.

A week before the snow started, 

 

I washed them and 

 

dried them outside.

I used the Charles Chapman book, Piloting Seamanship and Small Boat Handling, 1963, to identify the flags,

and then checked off the flags on a printout from the Internet.

I replaced and made uniform the lines and clips and wooden toggles, some of which

I cut from dowels and sanded, then

hot glued and hand sewed to the lines.

 

I reinforced this Coast Guard flag, but kept the original ragged edge inside the mended portion.

 The lines were threaded through the bindings and reinforced at each end with hand sewing.  Fortunately I had a spool of very strong thread.  Wind can really do a destructive number on ships' flags.

 

While I was repairing signal flags I alternated with the repairs to items that I am bringing to the Greenlawn-Centerport antiques Exhibit.  Here are drawers to a really nice chest.

I rewired and polished brass vintage desk lamps, and 

 

 primed and re-painted wrought iron garden pot holders, and

plant stands, which I painted white later.

 

With so much snow all around the garden, I had to sweep it away so that the winder birds could get at food.

I cube whole wheat bread loaves, and

fill up the suet baskets and seed holders.

 

This silly arrangement actually works very well.  It is the wrought iron bottom from my metal birdbath, and a large plastic planter dish.  The seeds are kept off the ground and the Cardinals and squirrels love to sit inside the dish and stuff themselves.

Seasonal creeks and ponds appear in the Jarvis House Garden. 

In the mud room several pairs of boots, which I got at a tag sale, are alternated as they dry.  The corn broom is really perfect for sweeping off the snow from the back stone steps, and for bopping the 100 year old boxwoods, releasing them from the unusually heavy snow.

Sorry this was so long, but a lot has been going on around here.  The groundhog was right.