Art, Haiku, and other stuff...

Look!

While Margaret didn't make this specifically for the Haiku challenge, she must have been receiving the haiku energy I was sending out!

(artwork courtesy of the kind and generous Margaret Etzler)

It's great, isn't it? I love the great texture. Take a stroll over to Margaret's blog and let her know what you think of it!

We finally got the dining room carpet pulled up - yay! We're one step closer to getting my art supply cabinets built. Here's what it looks like. We have the dining room table pushed right up to the front window - that's it on the right with the red tablecloth. Pushed up against the wall is a bunch of my art supplies. That wall is where the cabinet is going to go. Here's another picture of the "supply wall." It looks all nice and neat doesn't it? Things piled neatly on top of the table, other things hidden under the tablecloth. Wouldn't it be nice if that were reality? First, it only looks this neat because I'm not actually using anything right now. Secondly, that's not nearly all the supplies! There are still all of these supplies that have to be crowbarred into that area. I have no idea where to put them. Right now they are on a card table in the middle of the kitchen, on the breakfast bar in the kitchen (behind the pens are more magazine holders and books and another floral basket thing full of stuff), and on the opposite side of the dining room.

So, a couple of weekends ago I went to a lecture given by Dan Hinkley at Molbaks in Woodinville, WA. Dan is commonly referred to as a "plant explorer." Many would call him The Plant Explorer. He founded a famous rare plant nursery, Heronswood, here in WA and recently began working with Monrovia to bring rare plants to more people. I was a little nervous going into the lecture because I'm relatively new to gardening. While I've absorbed a lot, and even know most of the latin names of my plants, I'm still pretty much a newbie. I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep up at a Dan H. lecture. Well he turned out to be completely charming and accessible! I've decided I love him. Uh, gardener to gardener love, that is. He was really funny. He said of one particular Euphorbia plant, "It turns out we didn't have to mail it. You just give it your address and it grows right to you." Okay, it's gardening humor...

He did tell a funny story concerning Martha Stewart. Years ago Dan got a call from the receptionist at the nursery one day when he was about 45 minutes away and she said, "Martha Stewart is circling the nursery in a helicopter and she called and asked if she could come in and take a look." "What did you say?" asked Dan. The receptionist replied, "I asked her if she had an appointment."

Too funny. No appointment? I'm sorry we'll have to turn you and your helicopter away, Martha Stewart. (Heronswood was a by-appointment-only place) Needless to say she did visit that day and if you're a Martha watcher you may know that Dan became her chief gardening advisor.

Anyway, the lecture was great and I put 15 new plants on my plant wishlist. Considering the number of plants I still have waiting to be planted it's kind of foolish of me to even have a plant wishlist. Here's a sampling of the madness, every one of these is still in its nursery pot, even the ones in the tall planter. See the yellow tinge? It shows in the picture on the left, but not the right, that the lighting when I took these pictures was positively golden. It was so odd. I did not alter the color at all. I looked out the front window and even the air itself looked golden. It was amazing. I went outside and took a bunch of pictures of the garden. Unfortunately that surreal light didn't show up well in the photos.

Here's a picture of the only part of the dining room that is even close to complete. Of course, this cabinet has supplies in it, too! (And dishes, and tablecloths and...)

Have a great weekend everyone! I'll be cheering my cousin through the finish line of the Cure Autism Now Walk (her son is also autistic, much more so than Rexy), and going to a performance of Little Red Riding Hood with Rexy and my DH. I hope she likes it!