Bow Street Flowers

Today I visited Shelley at Bow Street Flowers.

 I am in love with the shop.

 It has a wonderful cottage secret garden ambiance.

 Those are my colors! Note the little pink bunny gate.

Yes, there are bunnies! Who helpfully munch fallen leaves in the work area.

 There is a bunny house in the window. And a pink door. Shelley has been talking to Urban Cottage Steve about painting it, but that won't happen if I have anything to say about it. (Which I don't.)

 I want to live in this little flower shop.

 This is Hortense. She has a story--maybe Shelley will tell you one day. 

The name Hortense comes from the Latin root "hortus" meaning garden.

Isn't she beautiful? 

Catskill weekend

 Most of the wildflowers are gone. Gone to seed, I guess. 

But there are other things to see.

Ferns growing amongst a fallen tree.

 Little shadows in the stream look like footprints but are some kind of insect. 

Water strider? Pond skimmer?

Holes have formed in the rock at the bottom of the waterfall.

 We used to find crayfish in them sometimes. 

Where did they come from? Where did they go?

We used to see newts, salamanders, and tiny toads, regularly, 

but haven't for a couple of years. 

Where are they?

A woman came to the store and bought a little guide to bats. She said she used to see lots of bats, but doesn't any more. I realized that I don't see as many as I used to either. That scares me. It all scares me. 

By the way, bats are your friend. They eat mosquitoes. I strongly recommend Diane Ackerman's book The Moon by Whale Light, which includes a great essay on bats.

As for the store...everything is on sale and selling. Thank goodness--I don't want to have to carry too much back down the stairs I wrote so much about here! Three more weekends, then I close the door. I hope then I'll take the time to find some answers, instead of just asking questions.

whippoorwill nights

Remember a couple weeks ago, I wrote about the whippoorwill (here)?  (This time, no hyphens.) When I went to the Catskills that weekend, I listened but didn't hear it. I think, I hope it's because they stay deep in the woods, and the sound of the waterfall is very loud next to the house. But that night I was haunted by the sound, I heard it in my head, and realized it was a sound of my childhood, when we lived in the Virginia woods, summer nights, the windows open, falling asleep to the song of the whippoorwill.



I think of smells as having that visceral, deja-vu power, but not sounds. In this case though, the sound of the whippoorwill inhabited my five year old self, so deeply that now the sound takes me back to that time, deeper than a memory.

rocks, water, moss

On a recent visit to the Catskills, I spent a lot of time walking along the brook,

mesmerized by the flow of water over rocks, the paths and patterns,

each rock and group of rocks 

unique, creating countless variations.

  And in the rockless shallows,

moss patterns look like a map, 

some verdant part of the country, as seen from an airplane.

the world in your pocket

Did I tell you about my love for vintage Golden Guides? We had some, including all of the above, when I was a child. Two years ago, when I prepared to open the store, I was obsessed with collecting them to sell. I got them at library sales and on Ebay. I sold them at my cost, just because I wanted people to have them. And I am happy to say that they are one of the things that really rang a bell with customers, that they wanted for themselves and their friends.

The nature guides are the most well known, but there are also regional guides, like this one of The Everglades and Florida Keys, published in 1960. Florida and the Everglades have changed a lot since then. If you want to know more about that in an easy to digest way, read the zany Carl Hiassen books. He writes wonderful books for kids too (middle school age-ish). Hoot was popular around here. I liked it as much (maybe more) as my kids did.

The American Southeast, 1959

The American Southwest, 1955.

 I tell you I am almost afraid to look at these books,

 so much has changed since then.

Insects, 1956.

 Lots of pictures, just enough information.

Appealing pocket size and simplicity. 

Goodnight Irene (or, flowers in the parking lot).

There are flowers all around Margaretville. The little garden above is in an alley.

Main Street is lined with planters. These are all the handiwork of Sue Ilho and high school students doing their community service. Sue owns The Cheese Barrel, which was devastated by floods following Hurricane Irene on August 28, 2011.



The ice cream cone marks The Cheese Barrel . (Those are bales of hay, not giant marshmallows). Inventory was ruined and the store had to be gutted. Sue set up shop in temporary quarters. I remember how great it was to be able to get a cup of coffee in town, something that wasn't possible for a month or so after the flood, with 2/3 of the town washed out. Sue's a hard worker (when I think of her the words pluck and gumption come to mind); she rebuilt the Cheese Barrel, and opened the doors in May.

This year, there are even flowers in the parking lot. 

Margaretville is starting to feel whole again.

flowers in the house

 Technically it's not even mid-summer, but it feels like it. My garden is a little raggedy, though the hydrangeas are calm and reliable. Some of the flowers look like they spent too much time on the beach, if you know what I mean.

I stopped at a farm stand on my drive home from the Catskills and got zinnias, which I love for their cheerful, unsubtle colors.

 Also sunflowers. Nothing subtle about them. Not having a container the size of a garbage can, I cut three feet off the stem. Flower people, what do you do with sunflowers?

I love them, but they look a little goofy close up...

Visit Small but Charming to enjoy flowers in the house from all corners of the globe.

Jen