SUMMER BOUQUET

A friend called it "Shabby Chic"

I'm all for that!

JUST A LITTLE QUESTION...

Who said that pink and orange don't go together?

FROM THE BEDROOM WINDOW

No, it's not snowing, sleepy head.  Wake up and enjoy the view.  The cherry tree is treating you to its ephemeral show.  By tomorrow it will be gone, so enjoy it today for all it's worth.  A good way to live your life, you know.  

ORCHIDS FROM A FRIEND

Rules were made to be broken, so I'm breaking my own rule.  From the start it's been about MY flowers, MY garden, MY photos.  Then this work of art arrived as a gift.  How to say no to a vanda sent by an artist? 

Marielle Deluna has a vision of her world that defies all preconceived ideas.  Her work is  moody, dramatic, spontaneous, exotic.  With her camera she captures the dark side of the tropics.  The Caribbean sea becomes an inky morass, the palm trees are enveloped in fog.  This is not your grandmother's sunny postcard.  "Wish you were here" becomes  "Enter at your own psychological risk".  It's a trip well worth taken and an excellent reason to breach one more silly dictate. 

Thanks, Marielle, for helping me take a different road.

FIFTY CENTS

Every winter, when the darkness and the cold and the inability to at least take a walk in the garden get to me, I promise myself to learn how to make hypertufa planters and bird baths.  Every spring and summer I look at the list of materials, the time constraints, the mess involved, and say to myself, 'no way!'.  Admiring from afar the nifty troughs and statuary, the lovely leaf-shaped bird baths and fountains, this failed sculptress sighs and looks the other way.  And then... the Methodist church down the road had its world-renowned rummage sale!  Denise Boal, an old hand at this kind of rumble, outlined the plan of attack for me, a mere neophyte, and in we went, plodding through the crowds.  Dodging sharp elbows we waded through the maelstrom of old stuff, new stuff, the good, the bad, the ugly.  We saw, we chose, we grabbed, we conquered.  Voilá la piéce de resistance:  A birdbath just as I always dreamt I'd make myself someday!  No schlepping of materials, no mucking up, no fuss, no disappointing results.  Life is good when your dreams come true with a pricetag of fifty cents.

THE FLOWER LADY



Lucky me!  I'm the happy owner of a full set of Constance Spry's books on flower decorating.  One of the founders of our Garden Club gave them to me when she was moving to the retirement home where she eventually died, after many years of hands-on gardening and teaching.  On reading her books and those of Beverley Nichols where he mentions her, I had this idea of Constance Spry as a little bundle of sweetness and a grandmotherly figure immersed in her world of beauty.  She was indeed all that.  And then much more.  Not surprising as we tend to catalogue human beings into very narrow stereotypes.  This is a very good biography with some very good old pictures.  The kind of book one hesitates to lend in case it never comes back.  So get your own copy. 

MAY DAY 2012

May Day bouquet.

An embarrassment of riches.  And it was a rainy May Day!   Washed my face with "la primera agua de mayo" [the first rain of May] and I will never be wrinkled.  I'm beyond the days of praying to dream with the boy I'd marry but I still repeat the little ditti I learned as a child.  "Primero de mayo/ postrero de abril/ hazme soñar con el hombre/ de mi porvenir".  That's something like "Last day of April/ first day of May/ help me dream of the  man/ I'll spend my life with".  The tradition is to write the names of all the boys you know on little slips of paper and put them under your pillow.  In the morning, before opening your eyes, reach for one of those slips and voilá!  That's the boy you'll marry.  Year after year I put all those pieces of paper under my pillow and year after year I forgot to retrieve one.  And year after year the maid threw them away when she made my bed.  What a waste!  I may have married a millionaire!  Or a politician.  Or a famous artist.  Not that I'm complaining...