windows, Barrio Viejo

The Barrio Viejo (old neighborhood) in Tucson is filled with charming adobe houses painted the colors of Easter eggs and Jordan almonds. Tucson is only an hour's drive from Mexico, and that influence is everywhere--food, architecture, music, art, clothes... I was in heaven with a taqueria on every corner. People were very friendly too. I took a lot more pictures of the houses, and will post them another time.

I can't decide if I want a lime green house with pink trim, or a pink house with lime green trim. And a yellow door. (And if the house is pink, what shade?)

See a great slideshow of colorful towns here.

Tucson to Tumacacori

Goodbye cactus, canyons, taquerias, roadrunners, baby scorpion...
Back to cool, green, rain.
(More soon.)

no flowers in the house

I can't take part in Flowers in the House today,
because I left home, which looks like this,

this

this

and this

for a place where the things I might pick

 look like this

this

this

and this. 

But don't you miss it--the tales of Jane, Gus, Lucy and friends and flowers will make your day a good one.  

p.s. I am mostly internet-free this week, but will catch up with you when I'm back in the verdant northeast.

Catskill cabin cabinets

Remember these cabinets I saw at Brimfield and went bonkers over? (here)

 I was just breezing around on pinterest, saw this picture and thought, boy those look like the Brimfield cabinets. Turns out they are--and they're in a cabin in Big Indian, in the Catskills! Lots of pictures here and here. It's just the kind of kitchen I pictured them in. I drive through Big Indian on the way to our house--maybe one day I'll track them down. I think the designers, Jersey Ice Cream Co., did a great job with the whole cabin. It's warm, rustic, funky, calm and comfortable.

gathering

I collected a basket of lichen, moss, and birch bark for a future project.

Maybe I'll arrange little deer in it for a personal portable forest,

or make a diorama like the shoebox ones we made in grade school.

I'd like to make some crazy outsider art version of a diorama. And...

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over...

... I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

                                   from Birches, by Robert Frost

the summer of wildflowers

This was the summer of wildflowers.

other summers, I enjoyed them in a careless sort of way

 (aren't you pretty, let's put you in a vase)

this was the summer I slowed down

really looked

got acquainted

So now I miss them, in an intimate sort of way, like summer friends,
those searing moments
on the beach, or by the pool, except now I'm not fourteen.

Some days I was just old and tired,
other days alert, inquisitive, even happy,
this summer among the wildflowers.

a country road

Our house in the woods is on a dead end road, several miles long, some of it paved, some of it dirt. There's still a working dairy farm, but another one is gone and the cauliflower farm shut down a generation ago. There are hunting cabins and log cabins, split levels and farmhouses, shacks and a-frames. There are a couple of trailers, and a compound belonging to an actor who comes in by helicopter. At the farmers market I got to talking to the old gent who sells blueberry wine. He has a pick your own blueberry farm and used to be a bus driver--our road was on his route. Last weekend two ladies showed up at our house, part of a 50 year reunion. When they were girls they used to have picnics by the waterfall that is now on our property. There wasn't a house there until the 1980's, and every now and then someone shows up to see the waterfall and remember when they were young. I left the ladies on their own, and through the open windows I heard them laughing, their voices rising high and happy.

seed to stem

You know how I love anything related to nature, so when I heard about Seed to Stem in Worcester, (Massachusetts) I had to go. Filled with natural objects and curiosities, it's one of those stores that's really loved by its owners. You know what I mean?

Fun and interesting, science and nature and art.

Everything beautifully displayed.

Filled with air plants, succulents, and cacti, in a marvelous variety of containers.

A year ago I closed the doors to my own nature-inspired store. I know the hard work that goes into a store like this--time, money, effort. You have to be passionate about what you're doing. It's about sharing something you love as much (if not more) as it is about selling.

Inspiring, educational, beautiful, weird, it's all here.

Cute, and he doesn't eat the birdseed.

I fell hard for this starfish fossil, so it came home, along with the little air plant in a geode. For someone, like me, who hates to shop, this is a great place to buy gifts. A bit of fresh air in the polluted world of buy, buy, buy. Do you have a place where shopping is enjoyable, positive, not a chore?

Something fun on their Instagram page.
Seed to Stem website and blog here.