Before the storm hits ...

I wanted to get out on my bike for a little ride, and was pretty confident the predicted thunderstorms wouldn't reach us before 3ish, so I took my library book and a plastic bag to protect it and headed off to nowhere in particular, thinking I might just go for a little ride and back home, or I might go for a coffee and take my chances.

There are a few coffee shops about a mile from my house in different directions, but my favorite these days is Peace Coffee, which is a bit more than two miles. By the time it started to rain and I thought maybe I should be a bit more cautious and stay closer to home, I had passed the Riverview Cafe by several blocks and was well on my way to Peace Coffee. So I figured, what the heck.

It was still mostly a misty kind of rain when I got there. I ordered a large latte, hoping this was not the beginning of hours of increasingly intense rains.

The barista said, "Look, I made you a squirrel."

After nearly an hour with my squirrel latte and Vita Sackville-West traveling in Italy — ... Then to the Pineta, where we were extremely arty: left the motor and went into the wood, and lay under the pines, and read snatches of the more obscure poets to one another. ... *— I noticed that it wasn't raining and decided I had pushed my luck far enough and so headed home to harvest peas from the garden just as the next round of rain was getting underway.

* Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings. Mary Ann Caws, ed. (NY: Palgrave, 2002); page 101.

Tea and Memory

I have read about how a smell or flavor can trigger a memory response, and I have occasionally experienced it, but as it's not something one can really ever anticipate, it's always a bit of a surprise.

So. About this cup of tea.

I had this idea to make some sort of little booklet that would be small enough to fit inside those packets that tea bags come in. I thought I would stitch them with a three-hole pamphlet stitch, with the tail to the outside, and attach a little tab to the tail so that you could pull the booklet out of the packet just like you do a tea bag.

Naturally, the booklet needed to be about tea. But how so? A collection of quotations about tea seemed too obvious and, besides, it's been done.

I started doing a little research on the history of tea, which led to many interesting ideas, all of them a bit too involved for the tiny booklet I had in mind.

Then I came across a little story that I dubbed a tea koan. Like a koan, it poses a question to which there is no clear answer, but, unlike the typical koan, it's not so obtuse as the sound of one hand clapping.

Having found my story, I made my booklets, and I inserted them into a variety of tea packets that I had been saving, and I listed them for sale in my Etsy shop. A few of them were also accepted by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts to sell in their gift shop.

Recently, a woman who purchased one of them from my Etsy shop asked if I had a Darjeeling tea packet I could put it in. I did not, because I haven't had Darjeeling tea since maybe the 1980s, after which I developed a taste for the stronger Assams and such.

Ever eager to please, though, I went out and bought some Darjeeling tea, made myself a cup, and saved the packet for her booklet. And a funny thing happened when I stirred a little honey and milk into my tea and took a sip: I was, ever so fleetingly, sent back to college, where I drank Darjeeling tea with the man I would eventually marry, and to whom I've been married for over 32 years now.

All that, in a cup of tea.

From the wee to the Wowza

I do tend to follow the same route when I walk the dog a little too much, so today I decided to turn a different way, to provide her with some new smells and myself with some new views. Besides, I had learned from our letter carrier, Marianne, that there was a rather ostentatious house going up over on Edmund Avenue, and I was curious to see it for myself.

This route, as it turned out, provided a rather distinct display of contrasts, as far as houses go, so I went back later on my bike, with my camera, so that I could share it with you.

On the wee side, there was this charming little door in a tree. With windows, even.

On Edmund avenue, I walked past this understated brick rambler, with its low profile and modest inclination to recede into its woodsy garden.

The path leading round the right side of the house looks inviting, doesn't it? Back that way, the company whose sign this is, Alchemy Architecture, is building them a deck. All the more to enjoy the natural surroundings and their neighbor's back gardens, would you say? (Interestingly, you may note that the url of this company is www.weeHouse.com.)

Oh, but look, just two houses down, this is going up between them and the park at the end of the block. A big and blocky house that spreads nearly to the very edge of the property line on either side, and almost all the way back to the alley, with a flat roof so as to provide even more upper floor space than the usual peaked roof you see to the left. So much for everybody else's view.

Monday Flowers

In a normal year, April 30 would be the middle of spring, but this year it's late spring. Likewise, I'm a bit late to Jane's flower party — nothing unusual there, however.

The lilacs have been blooming since Easter, and I was a little worried that that would mean no lilacs in May, but my neighbor's fragrant blooms reaching over the fence are mostly still looking lovely, though showing their age; so, yes, I believe there's time for one more lilac bouquet.

The purple ones I paired with the one fernleaf peony that's almost ready to open, and a couple of crabapple stems, discretely cut from the tree we just planted last spring, and which is blooming quite abundantly for its first spring in the ground, as you can see.

 And the white ones were arching over a rogue amur maple volunteer, so I thought, why not? And white is such a good color to set off this little blue glass vintage pitcher I just picked up at an estate sale on Friday. The company name is Rainbow, but so far I haven't been able to find out much about it, except that somebody is selling an identical one for $18 and I bought this for $3. Don't you love it when that happens?

That's Julia to the left of the white lilacs, btw. She came from the estate sale that was held at this house right before we closed on the purchase. I named her for the lady of the house before me.

As for flowers on the house, the pansies outside the kitchen window are sure enjoying this cool weather.

That's all for now, though I just might gather a dandelion bouquet later in the week — I've got a bountiful supply. What would you pair dandelions with in an arrangement?

Fun and Games, 1930s Style

More estate sale fun. A bachelor who died at age 85 had hung onto all sorts of items that had once belonged to his parents. The scattered collection of items in this small house was diverse and fascinating. I'm just going to show you the games for now.

The people who work for these estate sale companies also have a clear interest in and enjoyment of these old things. I don't know how they manage to avoid buying up all the best stuff themselves! There must be rules about that. For me, it would be a challenging and counterproductive job (I would end up spending more than I earned).

I was looking for games first, because I like to use the pieces in the mini toy collections I package in small tins and sell in my Etsy shop under the imaginative title Stuff! (Yeah, I didn't exactly use a focus group for that one, can you tell?)

I have often thought that it would be great to find a used Monopoly game some day, because few things have more little kid appeal than the fanciful game tokens used in Monopoly.

And, whaddya know, there was a Monopoly game — a very old one, possibly from the 1930s, with wooden houses! Apart from that, the game appears to have changed little, if at all. The board, the game tokens, the money and the Chance and Community Chest cards all look pretty much the same.

But then I saw another game I had never heard of before, Easy Money, and when I opened the box I was struck at how the little houses looked like Monopoly houses.

Easy Money game tokens and houses

As it turns out, Easy Money was introduced in 1935 by Milton Bradley, right after Parker Brothers came out with Monopoly, and there's no question that it was intended to grab some market share from the popular game the company's rival had introduced.

Give-or -Take cards instead of Community  Chest & Chance

According to World of Monopoly, Both Milton Bradley and the Parker Brothers originally turned down Monopoly when the game's inventor approached them in 1934, but then Parker Brothers got smart and changed their mind. They secured a patent on Monopoly by the end of 1935 and forced Milton Bradley to make some changes to its copycat game. The one I have is the 1936 revised edition.

The board is so colorful and delightfully graphic that we will probably mount it on the wall in the basement TV room like a poster.

Easy Money is no longer around, although the game went through many revisions and modernizations right up into the 1970s. One of the women working the sale said she remembered playing Easy Money as a kid.

Easy Money wooden dice and houses

The play money for this game is smaller than Monopoly money, at 1.5" x 3"

You can read more about the history of the two games, and about Milton Bradley, who was also a supporter of the kindergarten movement in the Progressive era, at these sites:
World of Monopoly
Reference for Business (Company History Index)
The Play & Playground Encyclopedia

Willowy

You know those curly willow branches you can buy in bundles for floral arrangements and pots? I really like those, and I thought it would be nice to grow my own, which would be easy enough, since they root readily when you stick them in the dirt.

But willows can grow up to be monstrosities, so I am experimenting—I put them in a half-whiskey-barrel planter last summer, and set it next to the house and air conditioner, on the south side, in a space that isn't really well-suited for much else anyway. I figured that if they didn't make it through the winter grown in a container like this, I was none the worse off, since I had bought the twigs for the previous winter's front step arrangement, and so wasn't investing money in a plant of marginal hardiness only to risk seeing it perish in a Minnesota winter.

Last winter didn't really qualify as a Minnesota winter, it was more like Seattle, or something. So of course the willow cuttings came through just fine.

They've sprouted a lot of small, delicate stems so far, which look lovely in a vase with some daffodils. It remains to be seen if I'll get any larger, showier specimens from it, but I'm rather liking it so far, anyway. If it simply fills the barrel with curly willow stems, that will be all right with me, too.

Stacking stones

There's something irresistible about stacking stones one atop the other, isn't there? I spotted the above cairn in a front garden recently, shortly after noticing this series of cairns just a block away:

This mini cairn sits on my patio table, and must be reassembled frequently. I've added one more small stone since taking this photo, which sits below the topmost stone now.

And this one, with a spiral shell on top, I assembled a few years ago when staying at the family lake home up north. I turned this photo into a note card.

Part of the appeal for me is the sturdy permanence of the stones in contrast with the fragile balancing act involved in the stacking of them.

And I just like how they look.

Playing apothecary

Not surprisingly, my lavender plants came through the unusually mild winter very nicely. Today I moved them to a sunnier spot, one that was just lawn last summer; but after sitting through the fall and winter under layers of newspaper and a covering of woodchips, the turf was beginning to break down nicely, so I dug four holes and placed the lavender plants in them. It's supposed to rain again tonight. Perfect.

I had a nice quantity of lavender buds from last year, sitting in a jar all winter, and I was pleased to discover that when I started to mash them with my mortar and pestle, they still had plenty of lovely fragrance.

The buds don't quite get ground into a powder this way, their texture kind of reminds me of rubbed sage. Soft like that. I added them to a mixture of cornstarch and baking soda to make my own body powder, something I've been meaning to do for some time now. I'm happy to report that it turned out fine and has a lovely fragrance.

Here's the recipe:
1 1/2 cups cornstarch
1/2 cup baking soda
1–2 Tblsp lavender buds, ground as finely as you can

Mix it all together, and you're done. And just in time—it was surprisingly warm and humid when I was working in the garden today, moving those lavender plants, but I didn't work long or hard enough to get truly sweaty and dirty, just a little moist.  So a freshening up with a bit of my newly made powder was just the thing.

This little shaker holds about a third of the total, the rest is in a pint jar, ready for refilling. I tied a few more lavender buds inside a bit of cheesecloth and placed it in the jar to infuse the powder, because I wasn't sure I had ground up enough of them. I might try just doing it that way next time anyway. Or buy a spice mill for easier grinding. Although there is something satisfying about working with the old mortar and pestle, like a medieval apothecary.

Three Little Birds

Sweet little bud vases from Catherine Reese, a potter in San Francisco whose Etsy shop is full of charm. These are just 2 inches high, perfect for dandelions and violets plucked from the lawn. But they also look lovely standing empty, don't they?

Happy Easter!

Flowers Out of the House and into the Window Basket

I missed the flowers in the house tour last month, for reasons that I can no longer remember, but now that I'm getting a few flowers going outside of the house, I'm feeling some floral momentum. And these primrose yellow primulas are certainly worth a bit of celebration! I bought them back in February as houseplants to provide a bright spot in the drabby midst of winter and did not expect them to have much left to show for themselves come spring, and yet they are still blooming! One of the plants had, in fact, finished, then recently started again, the other has been a continuous bloomer. I don't recall them ever lasting this long.

I had set one, pot and all, in the front step urn amid the willow and dogwood twigs from my winter display, just to add a spot of color until I could get around to planting it up proper. That's on the west side of the house, and its leaves got a bit burned, so, since it has been blooming happily in a north window for several weeks now, I planted it in the kitchen window basket, which is on the north side.

There are two windows, and so two baskets. One now has the two primulas, some English ivy, rooted from cuttings from last year's basket, and a chive plant in the center. The other has pansies and ivy and the Muehlenbeckia, or wire vine, which I bring in every fall and then try desperately to keep the cats from devouring. I barely succeeded again this year, but now that it's safely outdoors, it should thrive once again. It has sweet little round leaves on wiry stems. I'll share a picture when it recovers a bit from its winter ordeal.

The urn doesn't look like much yet, but the pansies should start putting out more blossoms once their roots have nestled in. Also in the urn: the Dutch white clover that I had grown indoors for St. Patrick's Day. I figured, why not? I think it's sweet, and I thought it would fill in around everything and be like a little green-and-white carpet.

Some of the willow and dogwood branches are sprouting leaves, kind of a fun bonus from having them in moist sand for so long. After I took everything out and replaced the sand with soil, I re-planted the more attractive of the twigs, and noticed that the dogwood stem even has flower buds on it. What fun!

I've been meaning to plant these two spots for some time, and feeling as if I am a bit late to the garden party. But then I remember that planting anything outdoors so early in April is indeed unusual in Minnesota!

Trading cards, anyone?

Among the vintage ephemera that I have amassed over the past few years are a few small trading cards from Wills's Cigarettes, which have exquisitely crafted full-color images on one side and interesting trivia on the other, all framed with convenient little mentions of the sponsor's name. There's also a notice, in very tiny print in the margins, that you can purchase an album for displaying the pictures from any tobacco shop, for one penny.

Those cards are English (as in UK, that is), and I don't see a date on them, but a quick check on the Internet tells me that they were issued during the late 19th/early 20th century, and that complete sets of some of the series can be quite valuable.

In the book, Minnesota on Paper: Collecting our Printed History, authors Moira and Leo Harris write that trade cards reached the height of their popularity in the U.S. in the 1880s, and that, at that time, "the trade card was truly the most ubiquitous form of advertising in America."

And I, for one, can certainly understand the appeal of these little cards. As a maker and trader of ATCs (artists' trading cards), I am attracted to the artistry, the trivia, and the small format of such cards, although ATCs aren't quite as small as the Wills's Cigarettes cards; Wills's cards measure about 1.5" by 2.5" and ATCs are 2.5" by 3.5".

Little cards with art and information appeal to my arty didactic little heart. So, naturally, I thought I'd make some of my own, to promote my Etsy shop, of course, and, also, just for fun.

The bumblebee card is one of two with a Minnesota focus.

But because the cardstock I have that's heavy enough to make nice trading cards comes in a light brown color described by the folks at the Wausau paper mills as "driftwood," I thought it would look better to stick with black line art. And, besides, I already have ink drawings of animals, and some interesting trivia to go with it, which I made into note cards a while ago (and which are available for sale in my Etsy shop—here's the note card section, fyi).

The backs of the four cards are all the same

If you'd like to get a set of four Arty Didact trading cards (the size of ATCs—2.5"x3.5") for free (I'll even cover the postage!), use the envelope icon below to send me a message with your mailing address. I'll even throw in a couple of extra bits of Arty Didact original and unique ephemera while I'm at it. And if you want to be notified of art events that I'll be participating in (in Minneapolis/St. Paul), say so when you send me the message. If you don't request it, I won't mail you anything else—because I have no interest in wasting money just to annoy you.

The first set of four Arty Didact trading cards

Growin' of the Green

 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I started some clover seeds in pots about six weeks or so ago,  hoping to have a pretty display of cheerful shamrocks on St. Patrick's Day, but after a couple of setbacks, they really only got started four weeks ago. So I'm happy they've come as far along as they have.

You may think it odd, or that I am mistaken, to call this plant, the common lawn weed Trifolium repens or Dutch white clover, a shamrock. But it is far more likely that this little weed is the true Irish shamrock than is the showy oxalis sold at florists and grocery stores this time of year.

To begin with, there is no actual shamrock plant; shamrock is simply an Anglicized spelling of seamrog, meaning "little clover" in Irish.

Back in 1893, Irish naturalist Nathanial Colgan asked people throughout Ireland to send him a sample of the plant they believed to be the true Irish shamrock, and the overwhelming majority sent him T. repens. Charles Nelson conducted a similar survey in 1988, and found T. repens to be second runner up to another clover, T. dubium, or lesser trefoil. (46% for T. dubium vs 35% for T. repens, as reported by the BBC in 2004)

The plants generally sold as shamrocks in the United States are a type of oxalis, and likely would not be recognized by an Irish visitor at all!

Sunday Afternoon Tea

Sunday, about 5 p.m.*

"The calming ritual of tea is another  of those idle pleasures that have been sacrificed to productivity and profit in recent years. Whoever first conceived the idea of taking it at four o'clock was a genius. This is because 4 p.m. marks the point in the day at which one's energies are turning. The long, listless, flat hours between two and four, when it is impossible to do much and when the sensible idler has taken to his bed, have come to a close, and our brains are once again stirring. It's time not to do, but to think about doing."

—Tom Hodgkinson, "4 p.m.: Time for Tea," How to Be Idle (HarperCollins, 2005)

In my ideal existence, on most days I would take an afternoon nap and then have tea. I don't recall a day ever when I have actually done that, but one must have something to strive for.

Today, because Nora is home on spring break and was scheduled to go in to work at 5 p.m., we had an early dinner. After the dishes were done, I thought how a cup of tea would be just the thing right now. I considered sticking a tea bag in a mug and taking it to my desk to resume some things I had been doing earlier on the computer. Then I remembered that chapter from How to Be Idle, and instead made a little ritual of it, brewing a small pot of the Earl Grey tea I have in whole leaf form, setting a couple of Swedish ginger cookies on a pretty plate, sitting at the table where the afternoon sun was streaming in, and just reading a book for about a half hour. The tea was delicious.

"Tea should be a time for gentle chat and reflection, a cigarette, a little mental workout. It should last for at least half an hour." —Hodgkinson, again.

Why don't I do that more often? Not the cigarette part, but the rest suits me very well.

Well, of course, there are a host of reasons, all of which may be the same reasons that you don't take afternoon tea, either. 

But now I think I just may try to work it into my schedule once or twice a week at least. Care to join me?

* I should give a nod here to the lovely Denise, whose elegant blog, Chez Danisse, inspired this single-photo-centered-at-the-top-with-caption approach to posting. It seemed to fit the mood of this particular topic.

Yellow Flowers in the February House

I get so tired of pinks and reds after the winter holidays, that I find I'm always craving a bit of yellow in late winter, and my favorite late winter/early spring yellow flowers are the primulas, cultivated cousins of the English wildflower known as cowslip (Primula veris). So what a delight that my local co-op, Seward, had a bevy of them from which to choose. Naturally, I brought home two. They're enjoying the soft light that comes in the north window over the buffet.

So, no stunning bouquets in this house, but a cheery flowering plant instead. To feast your eyes on a delightful parade of lovely flowers in houses, begin your tour at Jane's place.

Oh, but there are also the clover seedlings, still a long way from actually looking like clover, let alone producing flowers.

Yet, they're doing pretty well, considering that there were a few false starts: a too-cold windowsill in the basement followed by a too-dark warm spot near the furnace that got them germinated but anemic; a bit of absent-minded neglect on my part wherein the pale fragile little sprouts withered and died; a new beginning in the sunny south windows by Craig's desk; and a too-curious cat bringing my four pots down to two.

But here they are, the sweet little things, even beginning to show their first true leaves. Will they look like jaunty Irish clovers by St. Patrick's Day? Well, we have almost three weeks to go, so maybe they will.

Why clover and not "shamrocks" you ask? More on that later.

Desk organizing for the chronically untidy

How to tidy up your desk:
• Stick the small scrappy notes and such on something on the wall, like a cork board;
• Put all the loose little things in a couple of bowls and mugs; 
• Gather the objects you want to keep on your desk in one corner, more or less, in a pleasing arrangement, so the rest  of the surface is mostly clear.
• If you're not sure whether to file those loose papers or get rid of them, put them in stackable shallow boxes (aka "document boxes") labeled with broad general categories like "household," "work," "school" etc. Don't use boxes that are very large, and don't allow yourself more than one box for each category! When it gets full, you must thin out the contents, when you'll find that you can discard a lot that you weren't sure about before; the rest either gets filed or remains in the box.

Two very important guidelines:
(1) Don't get too fussy about exactly where everything belongs.
(2) Surround yourself with objects that please you, especially the things you use to help you gather your clutter; and arrange the items that remain on your desk into an attractive vignette — which only needs to be attractive to you.

Although I have long believed in "a place for everything and everything in its place," I often stumble over the idea that each thing's place needs to be precise and separate from each other thing's place. And if I don't know exactly where that place is, or I haven't established it yet, I just leave things lie where they are.

So, I've learned to uncomplicate my method of organizing:
• A few mugs for pencils and other stick-like objects;
• A bowl or two for the assorted small things I like to keep handy and that would get lost in a mug;
• A rolling filing cart near at hand for assorted papers (and a stack of blank file folders on a low shelf, ready to use);
• A few shallow plastic boxes that I can easily label and stack on a low shelf nearby (I use Sterlite clip boxes, which I got at Target).
• A bulletin board for notes to myself and small ephemera I don't want to discard (including a couple of "I love you mom" notes from my kids from many years ago);
• A homemade cork strip for additional notes and arty inspiration from friends. The odd-shaped little wire picture holders are paper clips that I unbent, more or less, at one end and bent a little more at the other end and stuck into the corks. (Click to zoom in for a closer look if you like.)

The ATCs above the corks were made by, from left: Shirley Ende-Saxe, Ann Renee Lighter, and Terry Garrett

The wide shallow bowl in the first picture, that has the jump drive and paper clips and other small items in it, is one I made of papier mache, using pages from MOQ, the little quarterly zine Craig and I used to publish. I spattered it with some paint left over from some other projects and found the result both pleasing and idiosyncratic. I wasn't so sure anyone else would want it, or appreciate it as much as I do, so I put it on my desk to replace a couple of smaller containers I used to use for this sort of thing, and I find that I like this shape and style of bowl much better. It's easy to rummage in it to find the various little items I have put there.

A bowl made from a vintage math book

There are a few versions of papier mache catch-all bowls in my Etsy shop, including some made from the same mold as that one, one of which is pictured above (the mold is a plastic faux basket bowl I bought at a secondhand shop). If you appreciate handmade bowls but would like one that's also lightweight and unbreakable, this may be the thing for you.

I don't really think my system, such as it is, is right for everyone, but I figured I'd share it. Maybe somebody who has trouble tidying up because they're too much of a perfectionist, or simply too overwhelmed, will have found something helpful here.