visiting nature

It's been lovely to have a full week in the Catskills. 

I devoted some time to the store.

 Love this old drop leaf table painted yellow with green legs, and four mismatched green chairs, that I scooped up at a local auction. (The yellow is not as bright as pictured--I think that's a result of of the flash bulb. It's softer and a little faded.)

This circa 1940 corner cupboard was all white. I thought it was cottage cute, but it wasn't getting any love, so I took out my paints and put on a blue wash which looks beachy and weird against the red wall. Not sure how I feel about it.

Much time visiting nature

and connecting in a way I've been missing when I just come up for the weekend and work at the store.

"I am not always in sympathy with nature-study as pursued in the schools, as if this kingdom could be carried by assault. Such study is too cold, too special, too mechanical; it is likely to rub the bloom off Nature. It lacks soul and emotion; it misses the accessories of the open air and its exhilarations, the sky, the clouds, the landscape, and the currents of life that pulse everywhere.

I myself have never made a dead set at studying Nature with notebook and field glass in hand. I have rather visited with her. We have walked together or sat down together, and our intimacy grows with the seasons. What I have learned about her ways I have learned easily, almost unconsciously, while fishing or camping or idling about."  Naturalist John Burroughs, 1912.

 Burroughs was born on a farm in Roxbury, a nearby town, and in his later years spent his summers there at Woodchuck Lodge.

"Where cattle and woodchuck thrive, there thrive I. The pastoral is in my veins." John Burroughs pictured at Woodchuck Lodge.  via