in 1871 Illinois botanist Elihu Hall took the train to Oregon to collect botanical specimens. Sometime in the 1850’s Hall had discovered there was a market for specimens of native plants from the west…plants that had never been collected or identified. His first collecting trip was in 1862 to Colorado, accompanying Dr. Charles Parry (the […]
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 […]
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 […]
We are living in a tragedy, all of us. It is of epic proportions, we are beginning to fully understand. As artists we try to bear witness to what is happening to us and around us. We know other artists and writers and musicians are doing the same and this gives us a certain resilient […]
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 […]
Yesterday was kind of, well, let’s just say “underwhelming” and let it go at that. I did get an invitation for us to wander through a local garden, and it seemed miraculous on a sunny morning…our first time out in a month so excitement was high… we risked a drive-through coffee… and while out wandering […]
The first spring we lived here and I started with this garden I thought the bluebells were so nice I gathered armloads of them (oh I should have known, eh readers?) and brought them in. 40 years on I consider them weeds and my annual drill is to get as many out as I can […]
This time at home has been a time to really think about things for me. About my creative work for sure, but about the structure of my life. When Katy Sewall said to her friend Tiffany Parks on a podcast I listen to (The Bittersweet Life) “…is this the life you built, or is this […]
It’s amazing how much there is to do around here…I had to take a blog day off yesterday, and I don’t have a lot to report today…though a few more window photos have come in: Salem: Portland: Texas D.C. Long Island I suspect you’ve all been zooming…we had two social “outings” this week that involved […]
No “topic” today…a walk around the house before heading into the neighborhood, wherein I am grateful I didn’t cut down the Euphorbias in the fall… The Henk begonias are blooming… I made barley flour muffins from a package I found in the freezer with some slightly-freezer-burned-frozen blueberries, and they’re good! (I didn’t have buttermilk […]
On The Way 