Posie Gets Cozy

The Dirt, as Promised

Yep, like I said. Though it's actually mulch/compost. Remember that we don't know what to call it. What's not pictured is the ginormous mountain of it that was piled in the driveway. Four yards of it (that's lots and lots), which Andy Paulson almost single-handedly dissemenated around the property, and on our neighbor's flower beds. My sister saw the pile before it was dissemenated. When she heard, the next day, that it was gone from the driveway, she apparently could not believe her ears. But I am here to tell you that four yards is about 479 wheelbarrows-worth, or at least that's how many times I think I watched Andy load and unload this thing. My job was just to spread it around stuff and even that was exhausting, so I can only imagine. Anyway, PHEW. Good job, babe.

These beds are the parkway, and they are a major problem for me. More dirt than plants. Space too big. The bed on the left is actually very dry, very clayey shade, presided over by the infamous plum tree (there is a better picture here). Almost no rainwater makes it onto this location in the summer. You can stand under this tree in a total downpour and barely get wet. When we first moved in, we vigorously amended the soil, but it reverts very quickly to a hard, dry layer of tree roots and dust. A raised bed might be a good alternative, though we can never decide on how to edge it, and worry that it, too, would turn into clay. Would it? Only the vinca seems not to care where it lives.

Gravelizing our backyard was truly one of the best things we ever did for our property.We have another enormous plum tree back there, too, and were having the same problem. Unfortunately, for the parkways, gravelizing is not really an option, though I see people do it. When you see it, it seems like such an act of desperation — but I can completely understand the impulse. But it just looks wrong to me, in such a public location, and our parkways are quite wide.

Xeriscape, naturally, is the right thing to consider. It has taken me quite a while to learn this. But look at this: a list, with pictures, and links. And THIS, which is just awesome and small and not overwhelming and you can make a little shopping list for yourself. And a thorough exploration of how to save money with xeriscaping, because these plants are expensive. My mother, who has the greenest thumb I've ever seen, did not pass this gene down to me, and gardening books seem to overwhelm me — I just want to be on a need-to-know basis, somehow, with this. So . . . whatever they've got that will make it easier for me to make it happen. It is times like this when I say THANK YOU Al Gore, for inventing the Internet!!! My goal for the summer is to befriend the dry shade garden.

Pensive Pansy

It was time to plant the front-porch pots yesterday.

I chose a mix of grapey purples with a bit of honey thrown in.

Clover has been learning to be in the front yard, which is not fenced. She starts off on a long, 30-foot lead.

The idea is that, on this lead, she is free to wander about the property, but we are supposed to correct her from afar when she crosses the boundaries.

In four days, we haven't had an opportunity to to correct anything since she pretty much sticks to us like glitter.

We should probably ask our doggie tutor Steve about that.

Why so pensive, little pansy?

She has a heart of gold and is so sweet and generous, so much like her auntie. So much like her.

It's hard to take photos of black-and-white dogs, I must say. It's hard to get the detail in both those colors to come out well. And you need the eyes, most of all. Sometimes you're lucky and you get the tongue, too.

I have so scored in this marriage: I pick out the plants, arrange them where I want them to go, and then take pictures while Andy Paulson cheerfully plants them all for me. Every year.

I don't enjoy planting things. I enjoy picking them out, arranging them, I'm getting better at watering them, but I don't love the actual stuffing them into a pot or the ground. Andy likes that part, not the picking them out or the thinking about what to get in the first place.

They should have questions like that on Match.com. "Do you like picking pansies out or planting them?" and if you both say "picking them," keep looking. Or know that you'll need to hire a lawn service.

Andy Paulson, while sensitive and literate, also brings considerable brawn to the relationship.

Mmmmwah.

Puppy loves her daddy most of all.

My cup runneth over. xoxo

My Signs of Spring

Camellia, leaving.

Like lilypads.

Petalwalk, with foxglove fronds.

Shy-lings.

My neighbor's tree, an umbrella of cherry-blossom froth.

And her backyard, from the sidewalk, through the fence.

Another neighbor, and a breezeway gate to a cherry-foam explosion.

Clover in clover.

My miracles, clematis.

A Dogwalk, Later

This season feels like sort of an interlude. Spring comes slowly, in a way — it's green but cold; it's sunny but muddy; it's lighter out later, but we're still not outside. All around town big clumps of daffodils cheer me, and I plan, once again, to plant some in September. Why don't I ever do that? Eight years in this house, and the only bulbs I've planted were a few pink tulips, in the wrong place, later to be replaced with candytuft and sweet woodruff. But this year we have a fence, and I have visions of little, nodding drifts of pale yellow greeting me on the house-side of  the pickets, so I must make a note to myself to remember how pretty these daffodils look right now, and do it right this fall.

I did get a daffodil-yellow spring coat this year (from the Gap; the umbrella is very old, from sadly now-gone Daisy Kingdom) that is making me happy. I'm ready for my dogwalk. Our girl Clover Meadow has gotten so big; I'm hoping we'll get out today and I'll take her picture. Last night her boyfriend Bennie came over for a playdate. They romped, a small tornado, through the house for fifteen minutes until Bennie found a bone that he liked better than he liked Clover. Clover was flabbergasted. She did everything she could to get his attention, including clambering on top of him, then lying four feet away and barking in his face (this dog has the loudest bark I have ever heard), then just looking with total bewilderment at us — what was this guy's problem? Couldn't we see? Bones are boring! Sigh.

Today we'll take a walk and see what's blooming; the magnolias are starting to unfurl as the daffodils turn crepe-y and gold. I hope we can get into the woods this weekend. There's so much to do all the time that we forget to go, or it's pouring rain on Sunday, or who knows what. Before I can rub my eyes and blink in wonder a whole season has lapsed and I've only been around the block a few dozen times. But I'd like to go out and see some little snowdrops, wild violets, maybe find a four-leaf clover. I'd like to get out of the neighborhood a little bit.

Pearly Dewdrops

Something I like about living in the Northwest is our early and lengthy spring. It is my favorite season. Here in Portland, even the scrappiest, most average-seeming front yard explodes in a riot of haphazard blooming, often before it's warm enough for us to really want to be outside, often before we've cleaned up last year's spent hydrangea crowns and withered oak leaves. A melancholy sky and its pale, chilly light makes those luminous pink petals glow and blush, a tangle of flickering candles.

Naturally, I've spent almost every waking moment this week staring at the computer (now backing up for the third time, renaming, and finally transmitting all 227 hi-res images for the book, which is taking about 780% longer than I expected), escaping only to get out for a lap or two around the block with Clover Meadow. There is so much to smell and see right now. Every picket fence and rock wall circumscribes green things she's sniffing like a tiny hound. Sometimes someone will have brought in a load of mulch already, and in that yard the nose goes absolutely wild.

Thank you thank you thank you for all the Country Girl orders, both dolls and kits! Thank you! I'm keeping all orders open through tomorrow, as I mentioned, remaking dolls that have been ordered more than once, so nothing will officially sell out until sometime Friday. I'll leave all the photos up on the site, too, in case you want to look at them while you're making your kits. I'm just so thrilled by the orders. Thank you so much.

Dog House Ideas

A room of one's own. What is it about one's own room that is so seductive? And a whole little house? Oooooh, little houses. So adorable. I want this one. I love it so much! Mmmmmwah. Love you. This photo is from Summerwood Products, who designs beautiful little sheds and cabanas and all manor of delightfully diminutive dwellings.

Alas, such a human-size beauty is not in the Paulson budget (though I might start saving for one). But I think we could swing a corgi-sized pad. At Western Pet Supply, where we went on Saturday afternoon, they had several different sizes of prefab but very roughly finished dog houses for under $100, I think — I don't see any pictures of them on their web site, but they're very cute, though very rough. Absolutely begging to be painted or shingled or something. It has never occured to me to get the dog her own dog house before. I don't know why, because she really loves her crate. I think she would love a little housey, for when we're all outside in the yard this summer.

Thanks for the links yesterday! I love those Tumbleweed houses and the tree houses. I found this photo and article about building dog houses inspired by your own house from the This Old House web site this morning, and it's really cute with lots of good ideas (and some dog-house history). I don't think I'm up for building one from scratch, but I think I could easily swing decorating a prefab one. I'm wondering: Do other animals (possums, raccoons) tend to move in to dog houses? We have all manner of urban critters in our neighborhood. I can just see an entire clan of 'coons settling onto our property, huddling up in our pooch's shingle-sided condo.

Oh, spring!

The grapes of March: my clematis, ready to bubble over. I can't wait I can't wait.

I think it was last spring that I was at the plant nursery, talking to one of the gardeners about my MIRACLE CLEMATIS. I was explaining how, for years, my clematis in this spot bloomed faithfully, sporting these enormous white flowers with big magenta stripes down the center. Like, six inches across. People walking by would stop and remark. Etc., etc., etc, I went on and on. On and on and on. But then, said I to the patient gardener, all of a sudden: Something Weird. The plant bloomed just that week but instead of big white and magenta striped flowers I got a whole bunch of itty-bitty pale pink flowers, about the size of a half-dollar. What in the world? The gardener was bewildered. Really? exclaimed she. Seriously! said I. She called someone on the walkie-talkie to ask them how it could be. No one knew! She tried someone else: No luck! The whole time I remained adamant: It was a miracle! The gardener finally conceded: It had to be! Strange things happen in the garden sometimes! Wow! So weird! Etc., etc., etc., on on on. We parted happily, both pleasantly befuddled by the mysteries of Mother Nature. I went on with my day. I returned home a couple of hours later. I went in the house and looked out the living-room window at the clematis and suddenly remembered: Oh yeah: The big clematis had bitten the dust; I'd ripped it out and replanted another one with little pink flowers. Oh yeah. Ooopsie. Forgot about that. Mystery solved: just my miracle airhead brain.

First Flowery

These frothy delights are the first flowers I am seeing in my yard. They are Camellia japonica 'Ave Maria,' planted haphazardly by me maybe five years ago now, too close to the house but as such bursting forth with these prom-night poufs immediately outside the dining room window. February 25th — wow. That's a nice winter treat.

To take this photo, I used natural light in my kitchen, which is fairly dim in the morning and gives me this lovely, moody luminescence. I put the camera on my tripod (I always use a tripod for anything that's not moving), and set the 2-second timer. I almost always have my camera set to the "A" setting for Aperture-control. I open my aperture as wide as possible (this one allowed me to go down to f/4.9) and zoomed in on my flowers with the lens (meaning, the lens was pushed out all the way out to 300mm). Using a wide-open aperture and a zoomed-in lens will give you the shallowest depth of field possible — so the flowers will be in focus, but the chair in the backround, which is actually about eight feet away, will be blurry. To zoom in on the flowers, you actually want to pull the camera and the tripod back — I think I was probably four or five feet away.

To focus, you first want to make sure that your auto-focus is set to allow you to choose what the camera focuses on. If, when you hold your shutter halfway down, you see one little rectangle in the middle of the frame which beeps of turns solid when it has finally found its focus, you're in good shape. Use this little rectangle to focus on the spot in your composition where you'd like the focus to settle, but remember — this does not have the be the center of your final photo. To focus on that most forward-facing flower, I hold my shutter down halfway (mine beeps when its ready) with a small part of the petals of that flower within the boundary of the rectangle. Continuing to hold the shutter halfway, I recompose the shot, shifting the flowers a bit to the right. When you've got things where you want them, then you push the shutter down all the way. The timer takes over, and two seconds later snaps your photo, using a shutter speed of its choosing.

If, when you hold your shutter down halfway, you see several rectangles (gathering exposure and focus information from lots of places in your composition), you need to consult your camera manual to figure out how to turn that off. I prefer to control where my camera focuses, and from which places it reads the light. Once you get used to it, you'll find that this is a lot more fun. Don't be scared.

I try to explain camera stuff in a non-technical way because the technical jargon tends to make me start panicking. And again, this is just how I do things (or rather how I get the camera to do things), and what works well for me — and that's typically always changing as I learn more stuff, or as my habits and interests change. Mostly, I've found taking photos to be something that's best learned by doing. If you're unsure, pick one thing and learn a little bit about it — concentrate on that one thing for a while, playing around until you think you get it. A professional photographer told me recently that he shoots every still life at every aperture setting — then picks the one that works the best from the contact sheet. I love that idea. I also Photoshop all of my photos, and I can tell you about that too. But not today 'cause I gotta finish about four half-finished smocked things.

Also meant to say that if you know of any other photography tutorials that have helped you, please leave them in the comments, definitely.

Pleasant Kitchen Silkscreen

It's still morning here in my south-facing pleasant kitchen so the light is dim, but I found a home for my Valentine's Day presents made by Andy. Aren't these so awesome? They're silkscreened images on canvas of my Pleasant Kitchen drawings. I love them so much. Can you see the glitter coming out of the Dutch oven?

You may remember the stationery he made for me last year? So beautiful. These canvases were a surprise. I put them in the corner of our little kitchen nook, where I keep my favorite cookbooks and a few little things on this little Colonialish hutch. The little shelf has been there for a while and holds an ever-rotating little still life of whatever I happen to like at the time. This little flower-and-gingham-rimmed pasta bowl was Grandma Ieronemo's. The egg cup and gray-and-yellow pitcher are thrifted. And you can just make out the pancake mold in the pitcher. What a sweet present. Thank you, my dear love. You are just so good to me.

And thank you to all of you for the compliments on my bulbous, poufy, and weird-looking bottom! I NEVER get compliments on my bulbous, poufy bottom!!! The smocking continued throughout the weekend. It is so much fun. I seriously recommend it. I did the smocking for another bag and the Polish-pottery apron I mentioned last week two weeks ago (time flies), now just need to put them together.

The sun is shining today! It's a President's Day miracle. My friend David sent me an email last week about why he is voting for Obama and I asked him if I could share it. I think it beautifully articulates how I and many of my friends and family are feeling. Andy has the whole day off and I am determined to put together a plan for fun that involves us actually leaving the house. He and the puppers are out right now, having a little walk in the woods. I am going to cook up some oatmeal with strawberries and blueberries, red, whitish, and blue.

I just noticed that most of my house is painted the same color. The last three posts have photos from the kitchen, the bedroom, and the dining room, and it's all blue. I really like blue. I'm about to paint another one blue, too.

Hearts and Flowers

Happy Valentine's Day, sweethearts! Blowing you little kisses from here. Andy made me a present that I really love. I have to figure out where to put it and then I'll take a picture to show you. I know I'm starting to get a long list of things I've said I will show you! I finished my smocking bag yesterday and I want to show you that, too. The days go so fast. I said this morning, "It's so weird that it's Wednesday 'cause it really feels like Thursday," and Andy said, "Except that it is Thursday." "Oooooohhhhhhh . . . yeah." What is my problem.

I don't know if I've ever told you about my fireplace roses, but I think I have. I made these little plaster roses many years ago, using plaster of Paris and some candy molds. They just pop right out. I hot-glued them to the bricks (er, probly not sposed to do that, no . . . ) and then piped vines connecting all the flowers and leaves. Then I just painted the whole thing this khaki color. It was really easy. I saw it on the Christopher Lowell show a long time ago (whatever happened to that guy?) — this lady did it to cover a whole bunch of cracks in her wall that she just couldn't get rid of. Hers was really pretty because she did it over an archway.

Big huge kiss and a thank you to everyone who has written with kind words about March's Country Living, which has a little story about Posie. I'm so honored to be featured among the inspiring and creative women they are focusing on this month in their entrepreneurial issue. Country Living has been so good to me. I heart them bigtime. Many people have asked me if I've repainted the studio pink, because the photos of it in the mag are very . . . pink (and you probably know it as insanely blue), but no — all of the photos they used in this issue were ones they had on file from another story we did back in 2005. This March 2008 issue is packed with so many interesting stories, good advice, and truly fascinating people. If owning your own business is your dream, I think you'll love what they've collected here. It's a great issue. I'm very flattered to be included.