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One of the hardest things about moving out of our house into our new flat was giving up our garden, complete with picket fence and roses. But, as my sister-in-law advised me at the time, roses also grow in pots. So I’m excited get started on designing my terrace garden. I’ve been turning to several NYC sources for ideas. I picked up a copy of Rebecca Cole’s book, Paradise Found: Gardening In Unlikely Places. It’s become my favorite gardening tome. [...]
“Tabletops are the daily canvases upon which we sketch,” writer/illustrator Leanne Shapton mused recently in her T Magazine blog column, We Three Things. She says: “A glance at someone’s coffee table, kitchen island or even computer desktop offers a revealing self-portrait: bookworm, neat freak, train wreck, mom.” It made me stop and look at my own tables. We now have two kitchen tables in our oversized dining room. (One table didn’t seem to fill the disproportionate middle space.) I have [...]
There’s a story in today’s New York Times’ science section that touts the creative benefits of daydreaming…“At long last, the doodling daydreamer is getting some respect,” writes John Tierney in the NYT. Researchers have found that daydreaming is “remarkably common — and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems.” Psychologists also found that [...]
Everywhere you turn these days in and around Los Angeles, there are Jacaranda trees covered with purple-blue flowers… The plumes, balanced on poetically gnarled trunks, look like blue clouds in the late afternoon light…. Lovely blooms — always as many on the tress as on the ground — mark the city’s colorful transition from spring to summer… In honor of the Summer Solstice this week, I took these pictures of the two old Jacaranda trees shading the lawn in front [...]
Father’s Day is on Sunday and it will be my first without my dad. I’m sort of dreading it, actually. I told my mom I would cook. I haven’t decided on the menu yet, but I would like to honor my dad’s memory by making his favorite dessert: hot milk cake. I think he’d like that! I’m also, finally, starting a container garden on our balcony. I’m determined to grow roses in pots! Every milestone holiday marks a chance for [...]
