 A friend shared this with me earlier in January, and I reshared it across social media from the original page, but that link has since been cut, so now I am sharing the picture on its own. The OP said it was by "Nakata" and I am going to see if I can find out who that is, or if it's a program, whatever, but the point of all of this is... THIS IS GOALS.
THIS is the feeling I would get when looking across the Umpqua Valley of SW Oregon from my Rosemary Hill. THIS. THIS is what it looked like there. THIS is what I miss. So, when I remember my farmette there, this is what I see in my mind. And this is what was taken from me when "they" sent us 3,000 miles away. THIS is what I'm working for now, to find this again. I'm not angry anymore because karma is getting those who did this to me... and I laugh every time I hear some new thing that's going wrong with them. But, what you put out into the world comes back on you threefold, and while I will never forgive them for what they did to me, I am just remembering my beautiful, peaceful piece of paradise that I used to have and thinking about the new paradise I haven't met yet that I'll get to enjoy someday that no one will be able to take away from me.
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Loki Moyer, 2-25-2013 to 1-19-2025
The three faces of Loki... we miss you so much. We lost a very beloved family member this month. Words cannot even express our incredible sadness over the fact that our sweet Loki is no longer with us.
Last year, he began losing weight. But, he’d always been a big boy at around 19 pounds, BUT he was also a very long, large cat. He could stand on his hind legs and reach things on the dining table, he could stand on his hind legs and grab the edge of plates on the kitchen counter… built like a little horse when he was little, we even even measured his tail once and found it to be 13 inches long. Solid black, with sleek, short hair, his huge orange eyes were nearly human. For such a big kitty, it was funny that his meow was less of a meow, and more of a high-pitched squeak. He was 100% love. He got along with all the other kitties since he came home, and back then, we had two sister rats, Candy and Clover, and he especially loved hanging out with them. At the time the three were about the same size. Then he quickly outgrew them, and then he outgrew everyone else. Loki was born in a litter of roly-poly black kittens, to a family who was living in an apartment at a storage facility in Longview, Washington. I found them online, after searching for black kittens, because we had seen the Avengers, and Mama had a crush on Loki. And I wanted a black kitty to name Loki for my birthday in April that year… and this family’s litter was set to go around that time. It’s funny how one thing or another leads to great things, because there were two families who had black kittens that answered my query – but Loki’s litter would be ready to go home first, so I went to meet her and see her kittens first. The woman was a little scattered, living in a storage facility with who-knows-how-many little kids… when she opened the door to their apartment, there was nothing but noise and chaos coming out of it, but she came back with this adorable, tiny black kitten with huge eyes. BUT – it wasn’t Loki! It was a little girl! The woman said she’d tried to catch him, but couldn’t, but she caught his sister and she swore that the two were identical. We were sold. LOL We agreed to come back and then we stayed in touch on Facebook until the kittens were old enough to come home. Bringing him home was so exciting. A little scrap of a kitten, he was into everything, loved everyone, and played until he dropped. Naming him after Loki was exactly the right thing to do, because he was definitely the Kitten of Mischief! He also loved ice cubes! Every time anyone came in to get ice, he would hear the fridge door and coming running, hoping for one to fall to the floor. Then, he’d bat it all over the floor forever, leaving it somewhere to finally melt into a surprise puddle for someone’s sock. He also loved playing in the fridge whenever anyone opened the door! He’d dive into the open space, then start rolling around inside the open door, refusing to move. Purring and squeaking and merping the whole time. We’d beg him to move so we could shut the door, but the answer was usually no. And, his other favorite thing was to reach up and pull the tea towels off the handle of the oven, or from the fridge handle if someone had hung one there. Up on his back paws, streeeetch, grab the towel, and down it came. The number of times I’d come into the kitchen to all the towels on the floor…. Another of his tricks was every night, he would check every surface – every table, the coffee table, every desk, every counter, and look for anything to knock off of it. Pens seemed to be a favorite target. So, then we started leaving pens all around on purpose, and they’d all be on the floor in the morning. He was such a good man. Such a handsome man. He soon gravitated toward our daughter Mary, and then they were best friends. That continued his entire life. She always signed her cards, “Love, Mary and Loki” Their birthdays were only two weeks apart, which was also fun – February meant their birthdays were finally here again. (Irony: Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the Marvel movies, was also born in February… in fact, he and Mary’s birthdays are side by side.) One of his scarier tricks was during a slumber party for Emily’s birthday one year in the Buttercup Cottage when we lived in Astoria, Oregon, Loki managed to slip out a bedroom window! All the kids in the house, especially all night, was too much, and he found one of Emily’s old windows in her closet that had no screen. Somehow, he squeezed out the smallest crack, and was just… gone. OMG That was Saturday night. We looked and looked and called for him all Sunday, and all Monday. We lived in downtown Astoria, but our house backed up on a long forested green space. We were all terrified. He was maybe 4 at this point? We had no idea if he would ever find his way home. Monday night, I was beside myself with sadness and worry, and I was in my bed and thought I heard him outside our window!! I got up and ran to the window, and it was him!!! He’d somehow figured out how to get to our bedroom window, and I got it open and yanked him inside the house. The relief I felt was nothing compared to Mary’s reaction. We were up for a while, trying to clean him off. He was covered in tree sap and dirt and we don’t know what else, and we gave him food and water and he ate like crazy, telling us all about his adventures. That was scary!! A few years later, when we lived in Roseburg in SW Oregon, we had an even bigger scare. Loki became very sick and we had no clue what was happening. He was only 5, and then it came down to – he had a blockage from crystals in his urine! Unless treated, that is a death sentence to a kitty, and so we were really scared. They couldn’t do anything more for him, so Mary and I took him and drove 90 miles north to an emergency vet in Springfield, Oregon. I didn’t know where I was going, we had nothing with us like food or water or anything, and this place wasn’t really near anything, and we were both so afraid we were going to lose him, and I was terrified of what it was going to cost… they saved him. It was thousands of dollars. And it took hours. It was past midnight, we’d had nothing to eat…. The entire night was a complete nightmare, but he was alive. We couldn’t pay for it, and had no credit card or anything. Early on, I realized we were in trouble and I got on Facebook and screamed for help. And my friends all came through. Money poured into the vet’s office and his estimate was paid and then they did what they needed to do to save his life. I still owe everyone who helped us so much… I lost track of my small list of those I knew about, but the people who called the vet – I didn’t have any of their names because the vet wouldn’t tell me who they were! So, from then on, whenever anyone in my circle said they needed help with an animal bill, or something for their child or the classroom, I helped with whatever I could. Pay it forward, am I right? Loki survived and thrived. And he made it from Oregon to North Carolina with our other five kitties, even though eight days in the car was NOT fun, but we all made it. That was in 2023. In 2024, he started losing weight. But he was so happy and hanging out downstairs more, and he was being so social and playing with the other cats, sleeping in cat trees… something he couldn’t do when he was 19 pounds. But, I was concerned, and so we started blood tests and all that. But nothing was ever really showing up. Closer to Christmas, he was really losing weight and it was getting more concerning. The vet thought this, or maybe this, he was on antibiotics, and then more blood tests. And then an X-ray, and then finally an ultrasound. Maybe it was abdominal cancer, maybe it was wet FIP… we even got the first half of that treatment and started those pills, but it felt like all of it was too little, too late. We were losing our man, he was losing his fight with whatever it was that was taking him away from us. And that was breaking our hearts. On Saturday, two days after starting the FIP meds, I was syringe-feeding him over four hours, but when I went up to Mary’s room at 1 a.m. to try and feed him anything, I knew it was bad. We petted him and told him we loved him, but it was just too much. He passed around 1:30 a.m., but he knew we were there, he was with his family, and we knew he was no longer in pain. I have never cried this much over losing a kitty. It’s been days and I still can’t believe he is gone. I think of the kitties who have gone before him, and we’re taking comfort in knowing that they are up there in Kitty Heaven, together, running and playing, sleeping in the shade while my mom rocks in a rocker reading a book. My brother and grandmother are there too, Kitty Heaven, that great meadow in the sky. But the house feels empty. And there are nine of us still here. My heart has hurt for days, Mary and I even crashed in the living room last night because sleeping in her room by herself was just too hard last night. We all miss him so much.
FINALLY -- today was the day I finally got outside to work in the yard and didn't die from the humidity AND I didn't get eaten alive by bugs! It's a freaking miracle! Last year, it was in October sometime that the humidity finally started lifting, and today I sprayed Repel on my shirt and hat and gloves and it kept the bugs at bay, so I didn't get eaten alive, either. Another miracle. I trimmed all the poor hydrangeas (I don't think they were trimmed last year, and possibly the year before that), so they lost about 2/3rds of their canes, but now they can breathe and they have a ton of huge buds coming, which is exciting. Then, I started working on the front yard where our forest of giant azalea bushes are trying to grow across the driveway, and now I also have a small grove of yaupon hollies coming up IN those azaleas.... but, the hollies coming up in the center of the azaleas can stay, but we'll lose those others, as well as all of the nandina and other tropical plants I can't stand. LOL I have a huge list of natives and a few non-invasive non-natives I'll be looking for in nurseries over the next two months or more. Then, next year we'll be able to watch the yard explode in a chaotic cottage garden, as it should be. With only the kitchen left to paint, and only about 40 more boxes to go through, the house is coming together. (Most of those boxes are in a storage unit. They're all my things.)
What I've been waiting for is the weather to knock off the humidity so I can go outside longer than five minutes at a time, because our yard needs an overhaul. Today was a tour of the pollinator garden at the Nash County Extension Arboretum, and believe me, I took notes. I also have notes from that garden in the spring as well, and between these two lists of plants, our yards will look much different next year. All of the insane tropical plants are out of here except the banana trees, because those are just funny. It will be nice to get out there and trim back everything that's already overgrown, and plant the flowers that will bloom next year, turning the yard into a Pollinator Oasis. It seems like we just moved in, but I've been painting like a madwoman, and the girls have been painting their rooms like a couple of madwomen too... My goal is to get the major painting done first, and in there we did flip the couches into the correct rooms, but then we can start bringing in the smaller furniture and figure out what pieces we may need to find for the cottage. I always paint all of our homes, most people think the colors are too bright, but honestly, I'm painting over colors like grey, greenish grey, blueish grey.... come on. And I'm doing a lot of prep work this time, like caulking cracks and things I usually ignore. Emily's art space needed to be completely re-taped, so that's held up her second room longer than we wanted, but it should be done this week. Then she can move in there and unpack her art supplies. Mary's art room is ready to go. Each girl has their own bathroom and they are both seriously so cute! I'm super jealous, because our bathroom off of our bedroom is a tear-down. As soon as we can swing it, that room will get an overhaul! Enjoy the progress photos below, and some of the kitties. There's more to share, but I'll keep adding as I plug away at the to-do list. Peace. Yes, it's true. We are moving again! This will be move #13 in 27 years, but THIS TIME, it's MY idea, and that makes all the difference!! We started looking at homes for sale in the Rocky Mount, NC, area after Christmas. All four of us were checking out Realtor.com daily, comparing homes we looked at, thinking about how far the drive would be from there to anywhere... then we started looking, engaging our amazing Realtor, Crystal. And we started going to open houses, which was fun too. I really loved one house in particular, we visited many times, once with our agent, and as other homes came and went, we decided to put in an offer. But, between the strange behavior of the owners and their agent, the less-than-stellar inspections, and just general sketchiness of everything, we decided to pass, even though I really loved a lot about the house. During the whole process, I kept myself at 80% excited, because I just knew something was wrong. So, now we know why we weren't meant to buy that house... Because we found this one. This is my Forsythia Cottage!!  Yes, slightly larger than a "cottage," at 3200sf, but, wait... it gets bigger! LOL (In my defense, the door IS painted TARDIS blue, and so it's no surprise that it's bigger on the inside, AM I RIGHT???) Above the garage, is an 700sf unfinished bonus space! And so we are going to be finishing that with a guest room and bath, and then the rest will be the home of Forsythia Cottage Writing & Design!!! I CAN'T WAIT. When we visited the house the first time, it was the day after it went live online, and we were the first ones to see it. We were there for two hours and we made an offer. They accepted at 10:30 the next morning, Sunday. Boom. We close on April 18. We arrived before our Realtor that first day, but it was 2 p.m., so I knew the owner wasn't there and our Realtor was a minute away... I walked up the driveway, curious to see what was above the garage, because there'd been no photos of that space, and I knew there had to be something up there. This is what I saw!  This meant the bonus room went across the ENTIRE three-car garage... omg... FOUR DORMERS?? Then, I peeked into the backyard, something that was also not included in the early photos online (this house was "coming soon" for four days starting March 11, which was my mother's birthday), and my heart stopped. I walked up the path toward the back of the house as the entire yard came into view. I don't even know how to describe it except to say that I felt like I'd walked through a wormhole and come out in the Pacific Northwest! The home sits on an acre, so the backyard is HUGE, and it's entirely landscaped in these beautiful undulating gardens surrounding a grassy center. Pine trees way overhead, followed by holly trees all around... their little red berries adding color to the sky. Camellias, each a different color, were everywhere! Hydrangeas were just starting to kick out their leaves, and I can't WAIT to see what colors they are!!! Kerria japonica, crepe myrtles, and so many azaleas!!! They were all throughout the border gardens... and ferns and daffodils and wood hyacinth, hellebores, euphorbia, and a lovely little white Chinese fringe flower. (We went back a week later and even more plants were coming up!) I stood there, trying to take in the whole yard, and I just couldn't. I started walking around, just freaking out, and realized in the back corner there's a little woodland path leading to the far corner... so I'll even have a woodland path? OMG Back there I saw a concrete pad that looked like there was electricity to it... okay... but by this time, everyone was in the house yelling at me to get inside, but my Realtor came out onto the back deck, and I was like, "I'm done!!! This is it!!!!! Get out the paperwork!!!!" But, I went inside!!! Now, in the photos online, in addition to no photos of the bonus room, there were no photos of the backyard... and they also didn't include the money shot of the kitchen... so I was dying to see the entire kitchen. I come in and turn the corner and see the kitchen and just scream. IT IS SO FREAKING HUGE AND GORGEOUS. OMFG!!!!!!!! So, at that point, I was done. Like, really done. I didn't need to see anything else!! haha And fast-forward, I learned this past weekend that they didn't include that shot of the kitchen or photos of the backyard on purpose... they wanted to bring those into the description when the house was truly available, but we got there first! So, in addition to all of those that convinced me already, is a formal dining room, two living rooms, an owner's suite on the bottom floor, laundry room, and then a staircase up to the bonus room... all on the first floor. The second floor has four rooms, one of which has its own full bath, and then there's another full bath in the hall, so each daughter gets two rooms and their own bathroom. Perfect. One of those rooms actually opens to a rudimentary staircase that goes up to a third-floor attic space that's not finished -- but it could be, and then another room opens to an unfinished storage area that leads to the bonus room above the garage (which means the bonus room has two exits, which is cool). Out back, I want to put a greenhouse on the concrete pad, and then I'll put in a fenced kitchen garden, and an aboveground saltwater pool. We don't want it to be too crowded in the backyard, but we're all pretty set on a pool, so somehow it will all fit and look awesome. And I need to get my husband plenty of tools, because this time, I want my TARDIS tool shed. We did visit the house again for its inspections yesterday, and we already received the overall report back. She needs a little help in a few areas, but we'll fix all of that, except for what we will ask the owners to take care of. But, honestly, not much could pull me away from this house. When I'm there, I FEEL LIKE I am in Oregon. I feel like I'm in the Pacific Northwest. The backyard is LUSH and GREEN, and full of all of the plants I already love. The front yard is just as landscaped as the back, and has a curved driveway leading right up to the front door, just like Rosemary Hill -- just on a much smaller scale. Now we will have a home base for all of us so we can finally relax, settle in, and get on with our lives, and THAT is a freaking miracle. We have felt like we have been in limbo this entire past year. Like, the rug was ripped out from under us, we landed somewhere where nothing is familiar or normal, and we have no friends. So, we are moving to the much larger town with crazy things like Target and Books-A-Million and multiple coffee shops. Real food I can eat when I don't want to freaking make every single thing I eat, Office Depot, omg... REAL grocery stores... our new home is two minutes from a Harris Teeter. The first time I went in there, I nearly cried. I couldn't believe how clean it was and that the produce department was FULL. Joanns, Sam's Club, and some really good restaurants. Raleigh is also going to be only 45 minutes away, which is super awesome, because Raleigh has literally everything. I can get my business going, the girls can figure out what they want to do, and Charley can continue his job knowing his family isn't dying on the inside. After closing, we'll first paint bedrooms so those are ready for furniture. We will schedule the movers to move the large furniture, freezer, and the beds, plus whatever furniture doesn't fit in our trucks. We started filling a storage unit weeks ago that ended up only being 3 minutes from the new house, so that's awesome. I've been packing, and now the girls started packing, and Charley packed his extra things already and has been working on everything in the garage. We have a few weeks to get the rest of our things down there, and we're doing a lot to this house to get it ready to sell. Then, we close, paint, move, clean this house top to bottom, then it can go on the market. We secured a bridge loan in order to get us into the next house first, so we can empty this house, because there is no way I wanted to try and show a house with six cats and six cat pans. Nope. No way. LOL Then we will be in the new house, and this house will go to the next person, and everything will be groovy. They aren't native, but I will be adding a few forsythias to the front and backyard. Also, I didn't see any roses, so I need to ask about the deer population, because that is for sure just deer candy. I have one plant here I need to dig up and bring with, I hope it survived the winter. I brought it from Oregon! My moon flower. Oh! And the neighbor next door has chickens! We heard them the first time, and then this time, we saw one pecking in their front yard! I feel like I'm starting to wake up, and that's also a good thing. I even bought an office chair for my soon-to-be office. Woo! Oh, until the bonus room is finished, I'll be using half of the front living room downstairs as my office. But, I will still need a chair! Happy times!!! Outside Forsythia CottageThe kitchen!!!!The bonus room... soon to be my studio!I can't wait to transform this room. We'll find a contractor and get started -- insulation everywhere, drywall, outlets and lights, new flooring.... and then we'll carve out a nice bedroom and stub out a bathroom at the one end, then any guests will have a nice, private spot. And I'll someday have a bathroom upstairs too. Maybe we will be able to get the bathroom done with the rest of the work... we'll see!
Thanks for reading!! Cynthia Ready to start writing and making art every day! It's still in the 80s here at the end of October in eastern North Carolina, so on Saturday, husband suggested heading to Medoc Mountain, about 30 minutes south... elevation 325'? 375'? Anyway, not much. ha... But I thought, "Maybe there will be a view?? Maybe?" No. No view... but the weather was great, 80 with a breeze... and the bugs weren't bad except at the "top." We have discovered that, along with soybeans, sweet potatoes, and tobacco (gross), we are surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton. We have never seen cotton growing, so when the countryside burst wide open in a storm of white over the last few weeks, it was magical and amazing and looked just like snow. This field is behind my husband's office, and we've gone twice -- once to get the first photos at sunset, and then again a week later at sunrise when Jack Frost had come to town. The fields went from cotton bolls to snowballs. It has a very complicated history for sure, but we all still need cotton. Now machines run through the fields picking all of this pretty fluff and packing it tight in cubes and rolls to head to the factories where our pretty, pretty fabric is made. When I moved here, one of the things I wanted to do was see if I could keep a sourdough starter alive. I had no clue how to start one, but when I read that I could start my own instead of getting it from someone, I decided to try that. Well, it worked!!! It took 12 days of feeding and watching and checking on Betsy, over there on her little shelf in the living room, before I saw the bubbly action I needed to see to know she was alive, but I did it: I feel like I should be sharing the discard, but then I'd have to talk to local people! haha OMG
Halifax is a tiny little town just south of Roanoke Rapids and apparently there was a lot of historicalness going down there in the past, but today we focused on, well, today. I had been through this town when I visited in May, so I knew there was an art studio, nice shop, and three restaurants, so today I took the girls to check it out and it was wonderful. Definitely something for the YAY side of the list. The next two days we have so many deliveries coming, we won't be able to go much of anywhere except the store for more ice cream and cream for our coffee. #Priorities
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AuthorHello, I'm Cynthia. 
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©2025 Forsythia Cottage Writing & Design LLC
P.O. Box 7191, Rocky Mount, NC 27804
All rights to anything posted on ForsythiaCottage.com are reserved.
P.O. Box 7191, Rocky Mount, NC 27804
All rights to anything posted on ForsythiaCottage.com are reserved.