Love Notes

I am circling around a query that often arises when my brain feels stuck ... What drives creativity?

I design mostly through color and texture.  So I'm always looking to nature of course, and to gardens naturally.  I also lean into fine art and interior design, to inform my collection with juxtapositions of color and pattern which make my heart sing.  Creativity - whether in writing, designing, or with a paintbrush - is almost like turning on a big engine.  It can be hard to get it started, but once you get it to turn over, it hums along with ease.  READ MORE

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In "Beautiful Swimmers", William Warner's small gem of a treatise on Chesapeake Bay sea life, he writes of blue crabs molting time and again - as many as 18 to 21 times after reaching maturity.  Perhaps we humans are that way too:  growing, renewing, always moving forward alongside our little community of ever evolving friends and family.  Maybe our crab cousins are nature's reminder that significant growth may require vulnerability, as each new era is preceded by a tender, uncertain,   sometimes even scary step.  READ MORE

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It’s July, how could that be?  My mind today is on the fleeting nature of things - flowers unfurling, bees buzziing, champagne bubbles rising and vanishing into the warm summer air.  I watch from my desk as a hummingbird feeds on a coral honeysuckle vine.  My lilies above have just put on the most spectacular fireworks show.  And now, they are mostly gone, petal after petal scattered across the garden like confetti after a parade. 

Last week, I broke a rule and cut some stargazers to bring inside, hoping to coax a few more days out of their riotous celebration*.  As they fade, I try to remind myself that the future holds new surprises in its tightly closed fist.   For evidence, I turn my gaze to the tomatoes ripening on the vine, while my tangerine tree teases with its promise of tiny fruit.   READ MORE

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Have you ever used a hand crank ice cream maker?  My maternal grandmother had one, and she’d sit me next to her on her porch sofa, where we’d take turns at the handle.  I imagine more progress was made when it was her turn.    I remember her kitchen, and the hand stitched sampler that read “Apple pie without some cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze”.   I didn’t think that sounded very appealing - cheese on any kind of pie.  And I was pretty sure that I’d never seen her eating pie with cheese on top.  I was a quiet little girl.  I liked to observe.  I knew fully well my grandmother's profound love, and I had no doubts about her bountiful kiss with a squeeze.   READ MORE

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I had the most glorious intentions of sending you a postcard from the Cotswolds, but one thing led to another, and I did, literally, end up stopping to smell the roses.  So today's note is a longer version of that postcard, with some dreamy images and inspiring highlights from my ten day garden tour through the Cotswolds.   I think I visited a total of eighteen gardens, all offering unique beauty and much to ponder in dreaming up my own garden schemes for many years to come.    Among them was Highgrove, and its the beautiful thyme walk shown above.   READ MORE

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