Knot Sew Crafty

Happy Saturday

These are pictures of Oma's garden, which is spectacular. A woman almost fell off her bicycle yesterday in front of Oma's house because she was so distracted by the cosmos that are growing everywhere right now. I hope you have a lovely weekend wherever you may be. I will be in Oma's garden, drinking mint tea.

Crazy or Brilliant? 2

According to The Jew and The Carrot, there is a company in San Francisco called My Farm which will come to your house, plan and plant a garden, and then take care of it for you. This seems somehow fundamentally wrong to me, but then again, if you've got the space and the money and you don't have the time or the gardening-savvy, it would be great to be able to get homegrown veg and fruit anyway.

I wonder what Lance at Greenthumbr would say about this.

What do you think?

Hooray CSA!

I've been unhappy for the past few years because, although we've really wanted to join a CSA, we've been unwilling and unable to drive for 45 minutes in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, to pick up the food. This year, we found one that will deliver right to our house, and our first delivery came today!

This week's shares include Napa Cabbage, Garlic Scapes (long green stems with one unformed flower bud at the tip), Lettuce, Baby Greens of many varieties, Radishes and Red Kale. If anyone knows of any good recipes--especially for those mysterious garlic scapes--please let me know!

Parisian and Stockholmian Goodness, Via Japan

I promise to post later today about all the wisdom I've gathered in my long forty years on earth, but for now I'll share my birthday present to myself, fabulous Japanese books about interiors in Paris and Stockholm, from Yvestown.

Sorry for the blurry pictures--I'm so giddy about the books, I couldn't hold still!

Proud Mama

Look at that beautiful Columbine!

The buds, my God, the buds!

Now I know that I'm getting old.

I'm beginning to love what my friend Karen refers to as "the grandma sport."

Myrtle, Columbine and Bleeding Hearts

Now that we are approaching the combined age of 81, CMR and I have decided that we must learn something about gardening--or at least, for the sake of the neighbors, fill in the ugly bare patch in front of our house. Our neighbors were enormously patient and generous with us last summer during our epic renovation/addition and we feel that the least we can do is plant something and do a little watering.

We headed off to the local nursery, where we threw ourselves on the mercy of a very nice woman who knows a great deal about plants. We asked her to steer us toward things that would require very little maintenance and would be hard for us to kill. She told us many things about soil and dead-heading and root systems and zones and perennials and annuals, and I retained enough to get the plants we bought into the ground. Does anyone have a suggestion of a good gardening book for beginners? We might just have to go back and see that nice woman again.

Does gardening count as a craft?

P.S. Our friend Lance alerted us to a very cool website he and some other folks started, called Greenthumbr. It is chock full of great gardening info and fun, and if you have even the vaguest interest in greenery, you should check it out.

Blume

The earth laughs in flowers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it,
it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to
someone else. Most people in the city rush around so,
they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see
it whether they want to or not.
- Georgia O'Keeffe

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
- Iris Murdoch