I’ve never been one of those people who work x number of hours in the studio every day. I’d like to be but I’m not. With envy I imagine those regular-studio-hours people as having impeccable exercise regimes, and eating healthy meals at the same time each day. Laundry is done on Saturday type of people.

Not me. I’m more prone to activity binges. All studio for several weeks, followed by 2 days of website updating, followed by a stretch of solid gardening is more my style; it balances out over time.

I’ve been in a phase of house projects, house guests, a trip up to Canada for a family reunion… so it feels like ages since I’ve had concentrated time in the studio.

Before leaving for Canada I reorganized the studio, moved furniture around, tidied up. Now I’m excited to get in there and to make some new pieces. I have a little pile of envelope backs with doodles of earrings and pendants and I need to make them to find out if the designs work.

I’ll let you know.

We’ve had so much rain the last two weeks that I’ve yet to get the soil (a.k.a. mud) into my raised beds. These little peas were grown in a pot on the patio and are an absolute treat; fresh and tasty of themselves, and heralds of future food production.

Plus their shape is perfect – I’m sure there’s a jewelry design in there if I could just figure out how to make that structure out of beads…

Lucy died. Not too much more to say really. I’ve been doing some sobbing and a bunch of healthy-cat-hugging.

Her remaining two kittens are looking healthy so I’m continuing to cross my fingers and hope that’s how it stays.

Ugh. It’s a tough world.

Two weeks ago a little cat showed up late at night in my driveway. I was taking out the recycling and saw green reflective eyes at the end of the path, and when I came back out with a dish of food she gobbled it up and let me pet her. I called my cat-sitter and local rescue expert and we came up with the plan to put her in the barn overnight and figure things out in the morning.

By morning I was calling the cat Lucy (where do names come from?) and planning to introduce her into the family. But it turned out that she already had a family – five kittens stashed in a shed across the street, which I followed her to when we let her out and she aimed for the road.

Over the next couple of days the kittens were trapped and four were taken with Lucy to a foster home; a temporary place for them to stay while they weaned and got used to people. It was looking like a great tale of rescue and happy endings.

Then on Monday of this week they started to get sick and by Tuesday one of the kittens had died. It was diagnosed as distemper, a horrible illness only seen in cats that haven’t been immunized.

They’re at the vet now, getting the best care possible, but we’ve lost two more kittens in two days. Lucy has a fever but is hanging in there. It’s strange to be attached to a creature I’ve barely met, but I am; she’s my cat. Please send healthy thoughts in the direction of this little mama and her sick baby.

Kitten number five seems to have avoided the virus, and is doing well. Thank goodness for small mercies.

Sometimes beauty finds you during the most mundane moments.

Hmmm… days and days and no blogging? What’s up with that?!

I’ve been building my raised bed mandala of insanity. I have the blisters, sunburn, and hammer-bruise to prove it. Turns out it was way easier to draw on graph paper than to build. Figures.

But it is almost complete – M has hammered in the stakes (at great cost to his physical well-being), I’ve mulched the beds with cardboard and dried leaves, and I’m waiting for delivery of topsoil (delayed by truck woes) and chomping at the bit as June slips on and still no veggies in the ground.

Don’t tell me that filling the beds with soil and building the fence will be hard work; I’m not listening. Lalalalalalala!

Longwood Gardens is over 1000 acres of horticultural intensity.

Huge conservatories, an orchid house to die for, meadows, tree houses tucked into the forest of tulip trees, Versailles-worthy fountains, giant topiary…

We spent two days there and I feel like I just scratched the surface.
You should go.

In the end what struck me most were details.

The stonework everywhere:

Shapes and textures:

And the most beautiful Copper Beech tree I’ve ever seen:

I’ve come home with a whole lot of inspiration for the next jewelry designs. And an even longer list of “I need” plants than I had before.

We just got back from a little vacation in the Brandywine Valley of Pennsylvania. The highlight for me was visiting Longwood Gardens (although the new Star Treck movie was fun too.)

I’m going to post pictures of Longwood but in the meantime here are some pictures of someone who was discovered on the back patio a week ago:

Isn’t that the best belly?! The impertinence didn’t last long; we released him in a nice weedy patch out of sight of the hawk flying overhead.

Hand modeling thanks goes to Ellen.

I will not post a picture of the collection of seeds I have acquired this season, in an attempt to protect myself from the mocking laughter of all who know me. Let’s just say that my purchases have been ambitious.

I defend myself with the evidence that seed catalogs are very very pretty, and it’s not my fault I was given a book on heirloom melons, and anyway who can blame me for wanting any and all plants dating from when the house was built. On top of which it is extremely difficult to pass up seed when you live in a county sporting seed racks in every grocery and hardware store… so let’s move on.

I am willing to post pictures of my favorites, which are the seeds sent to me by gardening friends. It doesn’t get better than receiving Chrisi’s Magic Morning Glories:

Or the mail bringing a small box wrapped in hand-drawn paper and filled with these treats:

Coincidentally while unpacking some plant pots I found an envelope of calendula seed with matching handwriting, given to me by the same Michigan friend back in 1998 when we shared a garden, years before the children who illustrated my parcel were born.

I did a viability test, soaking the seeds on wet paper towel and hoping that against the odds they would have survived over a decade. They hadn’t. I’ll compost them, the envelope as well, so that they can play their part in the cycle after all.

Meanwhile the morning glories are soaking. It’s a full moon tomorrow.

I just sent out some special order earrings, requested to match this long necklace. I like making jewelry to order; very often the piece ends up being something I make again.

This time I made a longer pair of Square Earrings, without the drops at the bottom.

I like the way they came out. They would look great worn with hair up, the length accentuating the neck.