With a Bounty Like This...

With a bounty like this you may wonder why I feel so bad for myself. And I do. I missed a time machine of sorts and it made my heart beat funny. Walter Søren Silas and I went to the fleas this morning. There was a mysteriously wonderful amount of olde store stock. All over the market. So I axed. There was a general store in Fleetwood PA that closed years ago. Living next to it were the owners. They died and there was an auction, or 3 (last one, yesterday). The treasures and the building are disbursed. Hither and thither. So it isn't so much that I missed the stuff (though I would have loved the stuff). I missed it together, as it has been for who knows how long. All gone. Time wandering off...

(bits, preserved.)


Fuck.
Yeah, though I am trying to curb my 'fucks', this hear deserves the biggy. Fuck.

Aside from that, I shall show you our treasures. And my new journal! And also the fact that somehow we do not have our wretched fleet of mosquitoes this year. So actually, life is really rather superb.

And next weekend is Renegade! And Art for the Cash Poor. We signed up for both accidentally. Oops.

This is my third year as a gardener. (the nerve!) I mean, as a sower of seeds and though I am new at this and far from having natural abilities, we did have some delicious meals last year including something minty and eggplanty, loads of cold cucumber soup (mint again) and delicious salads with blueberries, strawberries, snap peas, lemon cucumbers and loads of cilantro. Our tomatoes failed, withered wonders, some, and others grew into a mysterious green crop, began as winter approached.

Each year I find myself more and more involved and also, (I am much better at sowing and growing these seeds so far) with more little hands to help turn the soil, plant the seeds and pluck our crop. This year I have ordered loads of deliciously rainbow looking possibilities from Cubits. The shoppe is so wonderfully tempting (and promising). The photographs (2 above) are gorgeous throughout - worth the trip to Cubit's for a peek.

To finish our tiny haven in the back, in addition to the garden, Walter will finish building the studio out of reclaimed wood and coziness, and we also hope to be able to find some good little chickens which busy interfered with last year for fresh eggs and kinship. We plan to build our coop early this year in preparation and intend to expand our 'gardening' section of Peg and Awl as well. As all things Peg and Awl, we must need before the making.

a garden treasury on Etsy made by me! A Garden in the City

Victoria Magazine

If only life were as calm and as beautiful (if just for a day) as it appears to be in Victoria Magazine. How is it that yesterday, a day I spent cleaning, was filled with dreams of doing something great yet to-day, a day I am spending on another Anthropologie order, I wish to throw myself over a bridge? I am considering starting a cleaning company.

Schedules don't suck

I have recently learned that schedules do not suck. And are maybe even necessary when there are more people involved. In our case, there are four. Wow. Four people. I have been one person for so long it is so hard to believe that i am one of four.

So Walter and I have created a schedule that enables us to work and watch the boys. I will spare you the boring details, but this means that we are working/playing from 7:30 to 9:30 by schedule, but really, we work until about 2:30 am (at least for the past 5 months or so).

I must confess: It is more difficult on the 'boys' time than the 'work' time. And I am a hard worker... so all of you out there who think stay at home moms have an easy life, I will tell you they don't.

Knowing that something is looming makes it difficult to do something that always is. So, work looms and children always are (somehow) but when there is time set aside for both, even MORE gets done. I am holding Silas in my lap right now while Søren lifts an antique wooden one-pound juggling barbell looking thing over his head calling, "look mama, look!" It is my time with the boys. Søren and I have taken to reading and writing more, visiting bookstores more often (his favourite thing) and of course, experimenting. We have been collecting seeds from foods that we eat and we have planted them. We have learned some things, like replanting apple seeds from apples results in bitter apple trees more suitable for cider and other tiny details, so our planting of our seeds is merely experimental. We watched (again) a BBC show about Darwin. I tear up every time I see him and his 4 children examining critters and seeds because I want nothing more than to teach my fellows so closely. We have begun.

First we collected the seeds in baby food jars and then we wrote the labels - we have been teaching Søren to write by writing lightly first and having him trace the letters. Then we planted them in an egg carton. I hope to post our progress!

Walter surprised us for Valentine's Day with a trip to The Franklin Institute and dinner at Fig and I never thought I'd think this a relief, but alas! it sure was, a day off!

Søren whispered the secret to me as "Ben Franklin's House" I was pretty excited about that. Funny that he mixed the two up, but I read him a story about Ben and told Søren that Ben was from Philadelphia. Clearly he remembered this.

Nothing like a photo booth photograph to say where you've been.

Yummy Book, A gift for an olde friend.

I made this book for my dear friend Neil who is in the incredible band British Sea Power. They are coming back to Phila. Yay. Along with Pete Seeger and Jim White, BSP was one of the first shows that Søren went to (out of my belly). He was a month or so in this world. It was a quietish show.

This was made from turn-of-the-century cowboy chaps. The raised bubble was where a metal piece rested for 100 years. Crazy. And then I took it off. I put a chromolithograph of foliage from an antique medical book beneath it. The day after Neil and I met we were scrounging about for foliage (which we turned into a back pack of said foliage!) for his show in DC the next day.

A year or so later his pa accidentally threw away my blanket (my baby blanket, yes.) in the community dumpster. They went fishing for it (and found it!). I was thankful for their being vegetarian for my blanket smelled only of the banana skins that it was thrown away with. (He thought it was a rag.)

The Positive Effects of the Tub Caddy by Peg and Awl a drawing by Søren Scout and a journal entry.

click twice on the journal page if yer wanting to read!

2011

A new number. New things. I am going to make an effort to be better at this.

Me and a few friends have started a book club. More reading generally leads to more writing.

The first book:
Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

I have had a lot to say about this book but I will only write this: I loved it.
And ask this: Did you?

And this from it:

People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.
-James Hilton

and this:

Certum est, quia impossibile - It is certain because it is impossible
-Tertullian

post script: Happy New Year. When I awoke this morning I dreamt of eating gobs of Gruyere and a sticky bun in bed. I do not actually like eating in bed, but I did fish my wish otherwise.