We have a nasty patch of rubble in the back alley guarded by unsightly bent pipes that protect a gas meter. Every fall I throw a packet of wildflower seeds down, scratch them in, and wait to see what the rains will bring. It’s different every year. Nasturtiums and poppies duke it out neck and neck for starters…
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Dig this wondrous display of succulents on an unused staircase (well, er, we assume it’s not used, otherwise it would quite an unusual challenge to navigate)! It shouts JOY and a kind of uninhibited artfulness. Succulents are in the wind…or are we just SEEING them now? Maria Robledo brought us one as a house gift.…
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We are big fans of outdoor rooms—outdoor spaces defined in such a way as to make them feel like rooms in plein air— and have featured a number of them over the years. (One of our favorites is the lovely outdoor “room” that Constantino Nivola created on his Long Island property.) We were smitten when we saw this…
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Keith Stewart is a writer despite himself. Even with the massive responsibilities and demands of his organic farm with it’s hundred or so varieties of produce, he has written regularly and wonderfully about the inside of farming and living a rural life, from numerous magazine articles to It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic…
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We’ve written about the unexpected stylishiness of stacked logs before but love this particularly charming and effective storage for firewood and fallen timber: a fence of stacked logs (snapped by Susan Jacobson as she drove by in her car). Related posts: storing firewood indoors = firewood as storage unit d-i-y stacked wood fireplace mantle woodpile…
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Mindfulness practice – learning to be present in each moment– is something many people are embracing these days. Business are incorporating it and classes abound. Perhaps the most often-recommended “exercise” is washing dishes mindfully, although we know few people who really do it. Recently, we heard of one that did, truly. No surprise, it is…
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Last Fall, designer Susan Dworski, a reader and frequent commenter, happened to mention carving rubber stamps out of Staedler Mars erasers to make artworks. “How did you get into that? we asked. Her answer was stunning: Been carving them since 1980 when our house burned down, and only my studio was saved. All four of us all…
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Recently, we emailed a friend-fearful-of-the-future our version of a care package: a handful of uplifiting signs and images about taking risks, leaping, going forward into the unknown, one of our favorite subjects. We had just sent off “Leap And the Net Will Appear” when Cynthia Allen from 50 Years 50 Recipes sent us a link to…
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There’s a movement afoot to change Columbus Day to Explorer’s Day. First, because Columbus didn’t really discover America (it was explored by MANY before him). And second because America has always been about exploring; it is a country of explorers. Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing-Boing says it eloquently: ….exploration is inclusive. The ancestors of Native Hawaiians were…
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Recently Brain Pickings‘ Maria Popova posted about Hermann Hesse’s Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte [Trees: Reflections and Poems] (public library; it’s not available on Amazon). To us, the best part of the post was Popova’s own words used to introduce Hesse’s: I woke up this morning to discover a tiny birch tree rising amidst my city quasi-garden, having…
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Holton Rower sent us this photo from his travels in Argentina. In the courtyard of Home Hotel in Buenos Aires he found a suprisingly crocheted tree. (Those crochet bombers are everywhere…) post-valentine’s message (be a chalk graffiti guerilla!) the magic of guerilla poetry (become a poetry bomber) guerilla florist bella meyer: “flowers as natural art…
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In the past we’ve seen dumpsters transformed into adhoc-ish swimming pools. Even easier to do is to turn dumpsters into giant planters, the brain child of designer Michael Bernstein called “Ten Yards of Futopia.” Imagine them scattered around a city. They’d act like mobile public parks, bringing blasts of NATURE (from gardens to forests) to…
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Just as we were thinking we couldn’t write another thing – didn’t have a clear thought in our head – Maria Robledo sent us this photo of the crazy-beautiful flower she was balancing on her knee as she and floral designer Lindsey Taylor were driving home from a photo shoot. Somehow, it seemed like a…
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Lush, fragrant summer strawberries are in their last week or two at farm stands. We bought some home and were inspired to serve them in the giant horn spoon Maria Robledo had given us, for an unexpected presentation. We ate them right off the stems, no powdered sugar necessary. It reminded us that there are…
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Our friend Maria Robledo sent this photo with the words “Color inspiration”. It was a two-fer gift: a virtual bunch of flowers AND a color combo we couldn’t imagine otherwise (for wall or floor or…) …that has us looking around…
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Now that we have a terrace with a fatso view, we’ve been looking at minimalist planter options and found this image of a cool one at Houzz: a four cabinet file cabinet with drawers removed, turned on its back. It is one of a series of file cabinet planters made by Minimis and has a pricetag…
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Photographer Maria Robledo emailed us a couple of images of her impromptu flower arrangements, with these words: I love making these freehand arrangments. I dont start with that intention, i start with looking at the leaf or flower as a photo then i bunch ’em together w/o thinking. it’s a surprise to me too because…
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Innovative uses for shipping pallets continue: here a play on shipping pallet gardens, painted bright colors and hung on a wall. In a post we wrote about how-to transform a shipping pallet into a vertical, layered garden, some readers brought up the question of food-safe paints for pallets that will house herbs, greens, nasturtiums and…
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We written a couple of times about the big transformation of pots of inexpensive potted bulbs when you tilt the whole root ball out of its plastic pot and into a wide ceramic bowl. But we never showed what actually happens over the course of a week as the tightly-closed bulbs open and bloom. So…
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(Video link here.) Cara de Silva sent us an email with this video and one sentence: “Four plus minutes of extraordinary nourishment for the mind, eyes, and heart.” We thought it would make a fabulous breakfast/start to your day, in the first days of Spring. (We found it to be even lovelier with the corny…
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