Good Thing I'm Not PMSing Right Now!

....or else i would be screaming at five men today. our house is in the midst of being painted and i knew this would happen. i cut shrubs down and cleared everything back away from the house and yet there is not a superhighway (as desired by those who paint homes) leading to the shingles on the walls. my delicate plants are smashed to smithereens. some were expensive hostas others are groundcovers that have taken a decade to fill in and create a lovely carpet of fragile foliage (ducks feet + trout lilies). my japanese anemones squashed. hardy fuschias flattened. a mountain laurel in full bloom (that was one of the slowest plants to mature to blooming age) broken right down to the roots...the whole plant destroyed. if i were pmsing right now my blood would be boiling. i guess i need to look at it as an opportunity to do some new planting. so long you lovely plants. you were so beautiful while it lasted.

Seed Packet

after saving lots of seed from my garden i thought it would be fun to try to sell some. but after looking into all the regulations governing seed sales i decided to forget it (way too complicated!). this would have been the packaging for one of the marigolds i wanted to offer (with one of my gilded oil paintings of the featured plant).

Rare Sighting

i saw a cedar waxwing today. they are so rare around here. i don't think i've seen one for years. what a beauty! solidly built and hued like a weimeriener with a red dash on the wings and a stripe of egyptian black mascara over the eye. cool sophistication. glad to see they haven't gone extinct here.
it was my lucky day to see it. happy 7/7/07!

Shocked!

i found out yesterday that the bird that i have been calling a rufous-sided towhee for years and years and years has been renamed! it is now called a spotted towhee. the name change isn't recent. the post about the name change i read was dated 1999! sorry birdie for calling you by the wrong name for so long. see cornell's great birding site for details. apparently those that get to rename animals decided that there were two races of rufous-sided towhees, with slight variations in their plumage. they decided that the west coast race would become the spotted towhee and the eastern race would become the eastern towhee. happy new name birdie!
i'd like someone to reclassify me and give me a new name too! i have had it with people writing to mr. terry all the time or calling up insisting to talk him! so what if i rename myself tere? that's ambiguous still but it doesn't gravitate towards the male gender. tere means hi, welcome, + good in estonian, looks slightly exotic, and it could still be pronounced the same way as my current indeterminate name. this is precisely why i wanted to give my children names that were not gender ambiguous.
(spotted towhee, gouache on japanese newspaper mounted on masonite, 2007)

Express Your Liberty!

i can get pretty worked up about national politics. i won't get into all of that right now. it can seem a bit overwhelming to try to change things on a national level. but when i see something in my hometown that i feel is going the wrong direction perhaps, just maybe, there is a chance to change the tide that is flowing in the worst direction imaginable, with a little civic involvement.

when I moved to this town I found an intact charming main street that was thriving with commerce and a center for sociability due to its scale. it was this real, unaltered, genuine small town scale of our city that was a huge lure. this is the scale of towns that have been repeatedly obliterated by planners and city officials with their lust for grandiocity. this is the town, that if you and i don't stop it, will turn into the Walnut Creek (CA) of the northwest: homogenious construction materials, scale of streets way out of touch with real need, vacuous of inherent beauty, overdesigned to where it could be seen in anywhere USA. i don't want anywhere USA in my charming town.

walking the streets of Rome, Paris, + New York...i know what an urban street scale feels like and the proposal for our small town main street far exceeds the scale of streets in these huge cities. cities like Boston and Nantucket town, where settlement has occurred over hundreds of years and where thousands upon thousands of tourists flock every year don't have sidewalks the width that are being proposed here. Nine feet is HUGE! the designer told me today that he wanted it wider than nine feet. he said that he wants strollers to be able to pass each other on the sidewalk. well, today at the greatest gathering of the year on this island i saw two strollers pass each other on our EXISTING five foot sidewalk. there will be no room for delivery trucks to service their intended target as they do now. when you make operating a business more difficult, through design flaws, merchants will not be pleased, and there is risk for business failure. there is just so much that is wrong with this new plan for our main street.

i love trees. i am a dendrophile! but adding the quantity of trees proposed in the plan will substantially diminish sunlight to enter our main street. i love walking in the sun when it is out. in the northwest we don't need to allocate the sort of tree cover to streets that los angeles or pullman might require. adding more trees, as proposed in the plan, will take away much needed parking.

the travel lanes are proposed at eleven feet wide. that is dangerously narrow. if i am going to travel past a hummer (and there are a bunch here) in an eleven foot lane i will be squished into the the parked cars. the plan proposes back-in parking. in neighborhoods in seattle where this occurs drivers can pull up behind you where it is impossible to back into the space where you intended to park. how long will it take to park in this way as opposed to simply pulling into a space head on?

the designers don't want curbs for the sidewalk. do you want to have to worry about your children on the sidewalk when a car is pulling into a space and the driver is not going to stop where they should?

the whole plan is way overdesigned without regard to the real needs of this town. the designer said that they want to make it more people friendly. as is our main street is people friendly. does it really need such a huge overhaul? yes the sidewalks need some help in places but the plan as it was shown today at the street fair does not reflect the real need of our city and will destroy the small town feel.

working in urban design firms throughout the west coast I have seen the destruction of perfect little jewels of towns by city engineers, city council members and paid consultants that believed they had good intentions, but in reality had no training in the design of livable thriving cities, and yet were making decisions that effectively ruined their downtown core. it took millions of dollars in construction budgets and design fees to bring these towns back, through restoration design work, from their botched ill-fated redesigns.

rise up fellow islanders and make your voice heard that you don't want to live in a vision crafted more suitably for California, but you want to shop in a village that is appropriate in scale. there will be a public meeting august 1st. please don't let our sweet town be overwhelmed by this poorly composed main street plan.


as a disclaimer: it is true that i am a licensed landscape architect in three states. it is true that i have worked in urban design/architecture firms in san francisco for projects across the usa and internationally. it is true that i am very fond of the small scale streetscapes of european cities and of old cities in this country. and it is true that i long for the main street of the town that i grew up in before it was destroyed by planners as reconfigured to a scale, again, out of touch with real needs.
happy fourth of july! use your liberty to express yourself.

Rust

i should be doing so many other things right now...wrapping presents, making a birthday cake, weeding, doing the laundry, etc. etc., but sometimes i just want to write. it seems to happen every year on this day. i think to myself, "where did all the time go?", it is just so hard to believe it's july already! i keep thinking that july is a few weeks off and here it is already. time just escapes. i think when i put my blinders on and dive into projects i loose all track of time. i'll think of an idea in the middle of the night and can't wait for daybreak to start working on it. with dawn so early in this wonderful northern summer i get many hours of creating accomplished in one day this time of year. i make lists of things i want to make. will i ever get to them all? i need a bunch of lifetimes.

the photo above is the ceiling on the ferry between new orleans and algiers that crosses the mighty muddy mississippi. it pretty much summarizes me right now, a couple of weeks before the calendar marks another birthday: rusty, yet functional, patinaed through time, but always wanting to do more. me and that boat have a lot in common. when everyone else on board that boat was taking photos over the rail towards the city, i was interested in the vessel itself. the stories it could tell in that amazing city. i was taking a photo above me and other tourists were wondering what was so interesting in that peeling paint and rust. they'd look at my photo spot and turn away toward the view again. i didn't lure anyone else to take the same photo. as i've said before, i love the sublime in life.

What is Etsy?

when i mention that i have a shop on Etsy most people say, "what's that?". even my avid crafting friends haven't heard of it. Etsy was developed to be a website where only hand made items are sold. there are artists, jewelers, sellers who make yarn, purses, baby clothes, aprons, bird houses... anything that is hand made.
to give you an idea about the gorgeous items available on Etsy you can visit my shop, towhee, and click on my favorites. sellers from all around the world gather in one website and leave feedback for one another and share ideas in the forums section of the site.
if you want to purchase something on Etsy you need to join the website and create a user name and password. then you are set to start browsing the great array of products available.
if you feel like purchasing an item you don't need to have a paypal account to buy anything. paypal accepts your credit card number but the seller may be paid through the services of paypal to enable them to accept credit cards on line.
i created a banner (which appears at the top of your account page) and an avitar (a little icon for your account) for my shop (shown above) and for someone when she joined etsy (it's not a requirement yet without those your account looks rather stark):if you would like a banner or avitar designed for your etsy account just let me know.
one of the really cool search features on etsy is the flash animated color page. drag your mouse across the web page and watch colors dance around before you. click on a color and it will direct you to an item for sale on Etsy.

check out Etsy and enjoy all it has to offer.

The Latest Birdie News

mama + her husband built a fine nest on top of one of our front porch columns. it was woven tightly with paper birch twigs (i had to take a winter bud test in college to identify hundreds of trees) and neatly recycled plastic twine, all in a beautiful spiral pattern. mama sat on the nest for the longest time. i was wondering if her eggs were okay since she was there for so long. then one day two tiny heads peeked out above the rim of the nest when she was out hunting for food. two little black heads. every day mama would keep them cozy warm. she quietly sheltered them from view when i would step out to get the mail or newspaper. and after a while, when it got rather crowded, she left them for longer periods of time. she was never far away. just on a nearby tree branch, keeping an eye on them. then one day the two stellar's jay chicks stood up on the rim of the nest and we could see their whole bodies. i didn't see any blue. just black with the faintest hint of a "comb" on top of their head. they stood there, not making a sound for three days. never seeming to move. and then they were gone. off to their new world of flight i would hope.
the whole nurturing process was so quiet and purposeful.
then one day last week i was getting out the hose from storage and went to connect it up to the hose bib and two stellar's jays started squawking at me constantly. then they jumped from tree limb to tree limb getting closer to me, squawking all the while. such a clamor! and then they started flying at me. that was enough and so i heeded their warning and left the area. but i was curious too. would they do that again a while later? yep. and with my harms a-waving, since i didn't want my eyes pecked out (i watched THE BIRDS when i was little and lived in marin, near where it was filmed!), i scanned the area for evidence for the commotion. and there it was. another nest in a tree. but what a different family this was of stellar's jays. they weren't quiet parents. they were quite the opposite. would their babies turn out to have different personalities than our sweet family that lived on the front porch?
and so the world goes. all families, including birdies, are different and have different parenting styles.
(the painting is a photoshopped edition of one of my oil paintings called "clarity of adornment")

Such a Relief! now that it's over

it has been such a roller coaster ride of emotions for the past few weeks. going to high school sailing nationals in new orleans, where i really did not want to go, yet forced myself to go, and yet found that it was such a great experience after all. then end of year awards and parties. then the finale, the big one!, graduation.
before graduation i would be driving around in the car and burst into tears. i'd see little sweet angels of kids in the grocery store and burst into tears. i'd look at pictures in iphoto and burst into tears. i'd put a pot of broccoli on the stove to steam and set off the smoke detector because, yes, i forgot to put water in the pot, and i was actually barbequeing the brassicaceae on the stove (yeay, the pot was salvaged from its crispy fried state). trying to make perfect desserts and happy tummies i was a wreck. at commencement the beautiful voice of a senior and her ukulele accompanist sent me bawling. but when it was over and i hugged and kissed my big boy, and he went off to his overnight adventure with the rest of his graduating class, i felt such a relief. yes, my baby would go off to college soon. yes, i have done pretty much all i could do to raise him to be a good person. and now it is up to him to police himself from now on.
and here i am back to normal without all that built up anxiety any longer. it just evaporated when my boy and his classmates loaded into their school buses for the very last time and were escorted by police cars and fire trucks with their lights a-swirling and horns a-honking off to the ferry for their big party, while i waved goodbye to all of those ecstatic kids i have watched grow up.
so now instead of focusing on "where did all that time go?!", i have another one that needs attention to reach the same point as her older brother. i'm now not dreading the impending vacancy my boy will leave for college. yes i will miss his unexpected humor, and all the activities that gave my life a bit more excitement, but wait a minute!, i won't have those stinky sailing booties around anymore. hurray for small things.
the photo above is my boy just after changing out of his cap + gown at graduation. when i first looked at the photo, that my husband had taken, i thought what is this? all cut off. but i like it very much now. it is his essence. his trademark sweatshirt and his handsome profile. i transformed it with a tutorial i read about photoshop techniques with some madrone bark embellishment. i think madrones are such regal trees. i love them very much. i love my son very much. what is a mother to do but to photoshop bark on her boy's face, right?
happy summer sweetie-pie. happy life.

Sea Oats

i love Chasmanthium latifolium!
they look like fish hanging off a fishing pole. as the shade in my garden has increased in density and other plants have been squeezing out my few plants of sea oats, the precious seed heads are becoming more scarce. i guess i better propagate before it disappears entirely.
lots of weeding and thinning out in the garden today.
everything is getting so monsterous.
but i look around, and even with all the weeds, i think how happy the garden makes me feel.
how can you not feel fabulous when peonies and roses are in bloom?
take a deep breath and soak in the scent.

where's the shed?

cecil brunner covering the shed
here's another view of the shed back in april when you could actually see it. now you need a machete to enter.
petalless flowers...thalictrum
i love the ball shaped buds of this rose
ahhh siberian iris...just in bloom for a couple of days and then gone for another year. such fleeting brilliance.

home grown corsage

i removed a few more cotinus leaves after the photo was taken and it looked better. i loved foraging through the garden to find the perfect ingredients for a corsage.

bald eagles

often eagles are sighted flying overhead around here, but today as i walked near the beach i saw two bald eagle standing still as statues on the tidelands. the crows kept bombarding them but the eagles wouldn't budge from their station.

Yum!

some of the best food i have ever had in my life
new orleans.....yummy!

KATRINA

just back from five days in new orleans.
what an eye-opening experience!
there is a vast untold story that needs attention. the city is active and busy with tourists. but what do tourists see? well, the french quarter was untouched by the flood that swept through most of the city. many businesses are open there. as you creep through the downtown traffic it allows you time to look about and up to skyscrapers with every single window blown out of their facade. you see traffic signal lights flashing their warnings while prostrate on the ground. sink holes wait for their next auto casualty. one way traffic signs and street name signs have blown away so caution is imperative to getting where you're going. and since traffic lights aren't always in working order drivers blast through intersections at full speed, even when there appears to be a red light, with their horn a-honking. it's an odd mix of urban decay in a modern world, almost a surreal mad max's world.
while driving through vast suburbs that were destroyed by the flood of katrina you can't help but wonder what will happen to all those abandoned houses. a standard spray-painted x adorns the front door to these homes, within average middle class neighborhoods, indicating the date the house was inspected in one quadrant, the group that assessed the house, the number of animals found dead in the house, and the number of bodies found in the last quadrant. fortunately we saw mostly zeros in the body quadrant, but many animals in others. new homes are under construction in between condemned homes. fortunately the new homes are being constructed higher off the ground. entire shopping centers sit abandoned, not razed, just in limbo. the ground, since it was saturated for so long, created pot holes that want to swallow your car. some are marked with a construction cone if you are lucky. i couldn't help but feel the worst about the animals that were left to drown. the photo shown here is on the banks of lake pontchartrain. graveyards of buildings and boats sit as a reminder of the ferocity of weather.
but amongst the carnage lives a city that prides itself with an amazing array of fabulous food. you can't be a calorie counter in this city. i tried mud bugs (crayfish) and alligator. standard on menus is turtle as well. while at the southern yacht club a steady stream of shrimp boats, right out of a forest gump movie set, motored by to unload their catch. if you like food this is the place to eat the best of it.
joy and sorrow coexist in this place on equal footing. the story of new orleans, post katrina, needs to be heard by more people to understand this colossal paradox.

a wee selection of flowers from our garden right now

luna purses

more fun with vinyl!

enkianthus

the bee magnet

who would have guessed?

that sewing with vinyl would be so much fun?

oh the abundance!

snowballs, with their corpulent fluffiness exude the tone of the moment. the rampant billowing spring growth, luscious greenness and flowers make you want to wrap your arms around this plant and give it a big kiss for the pleasure it evokes.other bits about the garden are lilacs, the buds bursting on the blue ceanothus, kolkwitzia (aptly named beauty bush), columbine, chive flowers, species geraniums, red twig dogwood flowers, weigela and a mess of other stuff.