Here’s Paul Smith standing next to the shelter he built recently in one long weekend in our back garden. After summer #1 of the pandemic we realized our great luck at having a peaceful spot to sequester, but were pleased to have Paul agree (after we saw the shelter he built for our son and […]
Wow. Plunged by weather into the 19th century, this past weekend has given each of us plenty to think about…the Friday night freeze and the wrenching sound of trees cracking and ice tinkling, the explosions and blue flashes as power transformers blew up around the neighborhoods. Lying in beds piled high with quilts and comforters […]
We’re getting ready…enjoying having all the usual stuff out again… Adding some festive touches… But kid-wise, it’s a dinosaur Christmas…and we’ve brought in the big guns… We’ve had a book here that Sidney always has liked and in the low-shopping mode this year I thought maybe I’d wrap it up and give it to him […]
We do the familiar things. The furniture and umbrellas come in off the deck, the porch. We make soup. We read and draw and cut the last Hydrangeas from the garden. We vote. We prune… But this winter is perilous. The Covid-19 virus is raging around the country and the cases are so numerous that […]
Oh my. Remember the “Friday feeling” (relief), the “Sunday feeling” (dread/anticipation), the “Wednesday feeling” (half-way)? Now that we’re in a different realm entirely, the landscape is only populated with random events, delights, dreads in no sequential order. Maybe the senses are more alive? Though I think I’ve always enjoyed my life as it flows around […]
This would have been the Garden Tour day, Patrick’s wedding in Idaho, tomorrow the kids and the grands would have arrived for the summer. The world would not be in turmoil and contaminated…if only…if only… So this post is for my reading group. We are three…one in Denver, one in Santa Fe, and me. We […]
In the spirit of the times, and with the inability to go to a nursery, I’m devoting my plant-pot attention to the old plants, the plants R put in the basement for the winter…geraniums mostly, and a begonia. They were bone dry, full of cobwebs, spindly…but I brought them up, tidied and trimmed and repotted […]
I’m having a one-person Maira Kalman reading festival since I discovered Alibris as an antidote to Amazon. I don’t buy many books these days, but these books have such appeal for me…she’s an artist, writer, illustrator, wit. In 2011 Kalman was invited to curate an exhibition of her favorite things from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum collection […]
This is the second state Capitol Building here in Salem…the one that burned on April 25, 1935. Many many photographs of the views of the surrounding town were taken from the top of this cupola. One of the early views of Salem though was a drawn as an aerial map …before photos were readily available… […]
Here is an iconic moment in time for Salem, and for our neighborhood. On April 25, 1935 (85 years ago from this writing) a raging fire consumed the roof and copper dome of this, Oregon’s second State Capitol building built in 1874. It was designed by the Portland firm of architects Justus F. Krumbein and […]
