Design

Time to check in with Designer's Guild ! As always, their website is brimming with inspirational, drool-worthy interiors. According to them: Our beautiful new Spring 2009 collections of fabrics and wallcoverings reflect the quintessential Englishness of the country house and its garden and are imbued with a gentle floral tradition, set against a lively graphic style reminiscent of a bygone age. In addition ‘Manhattan’ Prints offer a dynamic and contemporary new look designed to appeal to the young at heart of all ages.

Amid the enjoyment of robins singing, and the general increase in morning bird activity, I've got vegetables and fruits on my mind. We had an excellent presentation last Saturday by our state peach expert, essentially telling us to grow the easy, no-spray fruits at home (many of which are native like blueberries, blackberries, paw-paws and persimmons), and leave the peaches, etc. that basically need life support (my words, not his) to the experts. Not bad advice, at all, actually, although I continue to be hopeful that my Esopus Spitzenburg bare root transplant that's on its way (for our bit of mountain space) won't turn out to be a donation to Monticello. Esopus Spitzenburg was supposedly Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple, and surely he wasn't spraying on a weekly basis? But maybe he was using copper sulfate, and some of the organic materials recommended today for those of us unwise enough to attempt apples in the Eastern U.S. We'll see!

I was so happy to receive the Love Ya award yesterday from Style Rumors , a design blog filled with such inspirational and colorful rooms! That is where I found these images of the Viceroy Miami designed by Kelly Wearstler. Talk about chic. Wouldn't that be a grand place to stay on your next vacation?! Thanks again, Style Rumors ! :)

I had an interesting conversation today with a very experienced vegetable gardener. She grew up in a rural community in NC where seeds were saved and shared, vegetable gardening was a regular activity, and putting up vegetables was part of summer life. Her journeys have taken her to European cities (where she saw lots of vegetable gardening first-hand), to Detroit, where she helped organize a community garden, and now to Clemson as part of the Sustainable Ag Initiative and the Student Organic Farm. We share a love of vegetable gardening, clearly. She was surprised to hear that SC Master Gardeners are now becoming enthusiastic about the idea of growing vegetables (when I started at the Garden 15 years ago, there were maybe 5 MG's in our local group of 60+ that I knew who grew vegetables). She thought that that was the point of the MG program (I wish!) I've done several programs over the last year to different MG organizations in SC with a 'Creative Vegetable Gardening...

A few weeks ago Delikatissen featured a slew of beautiful images from the portfolio of photographer Carl Dahlstedt. How could I not immediately fall for this bedroom? Love the wall of course, and those cute little lights under the window.

Recycling for the garden. I've been collecting odds and ends to use for the garden. Empty toilet/paper towel tubes, plastic take home salad containers, paper egg cartons, yogurt cups, and dryer lint to name a few. Also the compost bin is filling up with veggie and fruit scraps, along with said lint, and strips of newspaper. In another day, this bin will be finding a dumping off spot in the back forty under a tree that has some dirt poking through the snow. The top two pictures show my tomato, petunia, and marigold seeds that I've planted using household 'trash'. I also discovered that my oven's lowest setting for proofing yeast bread makes to perfect temperature for germinating seeds (75-85 F) ... so don't be alarmed seeing my starter trays in the oven :). Let's just hope I don't forget about them and accidentally turn the oven on ;) After they sprout and get a bit bigger, the plan is to make little biodegradable pots from newspaper to plant them ...

Hepatica americana We saw the first Hepatica in flower this morning. It was expected; it's one of the first of our native woodland wildflowers to flower. We'd actually made a detour on our walk to see if flowers were open in a spot we knew and we weren't disappointed. I checked for a post about seeing Hepatica last year ( it was on February 29 ) -- I couldn't remember if I'd made one, but of course, I had. This is an image that my gardening companion took last year. Hepatica flowers open in late morning and close at night. I love retelling the story about the entire lab group in Germany (where I studied after graduate school) making the trek to see the first Hepatica nobilis flowering in the snow. A beloved symbol of spring in Northern Europe, I'm also reminded of the graceful Hepatica logo for an International Botanical Congress in Berlin years ago.