Installations

When I met Mary Elise six years ago, she was sitting by a bonfire, embroidering a replica of her friend's chest hair, plus detailed nipples, onto a white T-shirt. I knew immediately that she was my kind of girl.

A few years later, I got to step inside her bear yurt, a large dome filled with flannel, plush organs, thermoses of whiskey, and Mary Elise herself, donning a full red union suit, wielding an axe. 

When she moved to Seattle for a time, she sent me a set of paper dolls of herself: in her museum guard's uniform, or in a date-ready outfit, with her trusty dog Hawkeye in paper form beside.

But recently, all of that over-blossoming creative spark has been turned to one giant installation project: her own wedding. Get this:Mary Elise hand-embroidered every RSVP card. She made the beer herself, then hand-drew the labels. Walls and tables were covered with perfect little wood-and-paper arrows. There was a photobooth with a backdrop of a half-painted paint-by-numbers set, and handmade fox masks to wear in it. Marquee lighting (also made by hand) spelled out YOU & ME. The ceiling was covered with macrame and yarn; a giant woven rope backdrop made the altar; the tables were covered with antlers, moss, candles, and terrariums.

And I got to do the flowers.

This is by far the most fun project I've tackled yet. It's a great time of year for yellows, oranges, pale pinks and white, and Mary Elise gave me a pretty open hand to use whatever I thought might be beautiful.

So I collected flowers all week, trying to keep them cool and calm in the midst of a heat wave, put together the handheld bouquets on Friday night, and tucked them into the refrigerator to rest. Then, after some stops to steal ... ahem, florage ... roses and roadside daises on Saturday morning, I blanketed the barn with flowers.





And then I bought a dress, took a shower, and went to the most fun wedding ever.

This is a summer of weddings, and this was a very hard week for me. I can't tell you how redemptive and reconnecting and hopeful and f*cking magical it felt to play with flowers.










RIGHT TRACK, PEOPLE! I think I'm on the right track.
 Oh, and I got to meet that friend who's chest hair replica I met all those summers ago.

Total goodness.

*unbelievably glam photos courtesy of Bryer Photography

Field Trip

To the Farm at World's End. This is Nea.

This is Sarah, and Blondie, and Poochie. Blondie did not like me. Sheep didn't care.

We planted some rows of foxglove, also known as digitalis, which I learned is useful for the heart. The soil is rocky; rain came the following day. It felt like a dream of the future.

. . .you know, I don't even want to tell you about this. This is like a little secret carved into my sort of sad Monday, and it was comforting and hopeful, so you can just look at the photos. And go see Sarah's farm blog, here.

See you soon,
xoC

Yum?

This was going to be a sunflower. Personally, I think sunflower sprouts are bitter, astringent, and basically awful. I hope this bird or groundhog friend decides the same, before she eats them all.

PLANTS ARE ALMOST ENTIRELY IN THE GROUND! I will relish the feeling of having been behind, once I'm no longer behind. Time could really slow down a bit; that would be alright, but I'm also pretty ready for these stick-like objects to burst into bloom.

Been Makin' Stuff

. . . like a half-dozen big bouquets for the annual Troy BID meeting at the Historical Society,

and a parade of tiny bottles for the opening of the Fort Orange General Store,

   

and a corsage for a friend's son's prom,

and a flower crown for a first communion, which just looks so damn good,

 

on all the heads.

 

And also a boutonniere and corsage for a special anniversary. Unphotographed, as yet.

Please, send more requests my way!

( . . . also here is a picture of my brother with his Great Dane in a wheelbarrow, for yr viewing enjoyment: )

Thanks, everybody!

MAMASAN

My mom is amazing. She's an expert quilter, a grower of gardens, a marathon runner, and recently a PhD. She paints rooms on a whim. She's owned the same sweatshirt, a sweatshirt I've tried to steal about a hundred times, for over twenty years.

(not the sweatshirt)

She made my dresses when I was a kid, and offered to make another just the other day. She's listened to my Flower Scout worries and jumped in with scissors and advice, even when I was like PLEASE MOM LET ME DO IT MYSELF. Because I am a stubborn jerk.

We've always gotten my mom a tree or bush for Mothers' Day: a flowering cherry, a magnolia, a Japanese maple, etc. Flowers and plants are a good thing for moms. Guaranteed success.

(My mom is also a procrastinator, a trait I not only inherited but somehow magnified. Hence the last minute-ness of this post.)

AND SO: I have a bunch of extra seedlings, over at the Flower Scout homestead. These plants have been lovingly cared for, as you may have read about in previous posts. And they're selling for the low low price of:

$5 a six-pack, if your momma's got a garden to stick 'em in, or

  or $20 a pre-arranged pot, for fire escape container gardens, staircases, windowboxes, etc.

Available varieties include two kinds of cosmos, zinnias, Thai basil, marigolds, nigella, and others.

Each will be followed up by an informational email, telling you & yr mom all about the variety you've chosen.

WIN SOME MOM POINTS! Email me today/tomorrow, and we'll work something out for you. flowerscoutfarm@gmail.com

Routineshift

Guess what? Change is constant.

Plants grow larger. They want more space.

Every morning, if the weather looks okay (I trust wunderground, generally) I carry manifold trays, six-packs, and red party cups full of plants outside onto the new deck our handyman built last month.

I dip a coffee cup into the accidental rain barrel I made when I shoved this red plastic bin directly under a clogged gutter pipe. It's heavy with rainwater, which I hope I can trust, that's rolled off the roof. I thought I'd store extra soil in the bin, but the natural world/architecture/happenstance thought otherwise, and now I have a really easy source of water. I pour lazy heaping amounts onto my seedlings, hoping to hydrate them thoroughly enough for a long day of sun, wind, and other uncontrollable conditions.

Then I hop the deck fence with a sort of swinging self-launch I've perfected over the past week, and I carry each tray out onto the roof. I was hesitant to bring the plants all the way out here, thinking it would be too much work, but every morning I get some pretty serious satisfaction from the repetition: water, swing-launch, step step step, place the tray down. Walk back to the deck, swing back over the railing, and repeat. It builds a little internal heat, and involves almost no mental activity = perfect for morningtime.

When I'm finished, I stand up on the edge of the roof and monitor my little dog, Govinda, as he wanders around below. I spend a minute thinking about all the things that need to happen in our veggie garden out back, and the finishing touches the chicken coop needs before the long-awaited feathered ones arrive (on Sunday, cross yr fingers please). Then I realize I'm still wearing sweatpants, and I turn and launch myself back over the railing and into the day.

At night, they all come back in. Every day more big and green, or shriveled and dead, or windblown or new-leafed. All inevitable results in the life of a little green plant in a constant state of change.

Sun and moon, sun and moon...

"... time goes. In Mrs. Smith's garden, crocuses break the crust. Daffodils and narcissi unpack their trumpets. The reviving grass harbors violets, and the lawn is suddenly coarse with dandelions and broad-leaved weeds. Invisible rivulets running brokenly make the low land of the estate sing. The flowerbeds, bordered with bricks buried diagonally, are pierced by dull red spikes that will be peonies, and the earth itself, scumbled, stone-flecked, horny, raggedly patched with damp and dry, looks like the oldest and smells like the newest thing under Heaven. The shaggy golden suds of blooming forsythia glow through the smoke that fogs that garden while Rabbit burns rakings of crumpled stalks, perished grass, oak leaves shed in the dark privacy of winter, and rosebud prunings that cling together in infuriating ankle-clawing clumps. These brush piles, ignited soon after he arrives, crusty-eyed and tasting coffee, in the midst of the webs of dew, are still damply smoldering when he leaves, making ghosts in the night behind him as his footsteps crunch on the spalls of the Smith driveway. All the way back to Brewer in the bus he smells the warm ashes.

"Funny, for these two months he never has to cut his fingernails. He lops, lifts, digs. He plants annuals, packets the old lady gives him--nasturtiums, poppies, sweet peas, petunias. He loves folding the hoed ridge of crumbs of soil over the seeds. Sealed, they cease to be his. The simplicity. Getting rid of something by giving it. God Himself folded into the tiny adamant structure. Self-destined to a succession of explosions, the great slow gathering out of water and air and silicon: felt without words in the turn of the round hoe-handle in his palms."

   - from Rabbit, Run by John Updike, a novel of winter into summer, of immense natural beauty and horrible inevitable human error. This passage reminds me so directly of this particular week of this particular spring we're having right now, or maybe of a week we'll have very soon.