Getting Ready to Start My Heirloom Seeds

Here are my new trays to fill with potting soil to receive my heirloom seeds!  They'll reside in the greenhouse until they are several inches high, and then they'll 'harden' by being set outside for a couple of hours a day until the weather is warm enough for the small seedlings to be transplanted to the raised beds in the garden.  I can't wait to get my seeds into these containers next weekend.

The Back Yard Tour in Spring

Here are some shots of the back yard in early Spring.  The camellia bush did not have more than a couple of blooms last year, but this year, it's making up for the poor showing last time.  The bush is just loaded with lovely fuschia-colored blooms now!

Two orange begonias look festive on the little bistro table, and my new heather and ferns provide some color and texture under the rhododendrons along the new fence.  The yellow forsythia blossoms got washed away with the heavy rains this last weekend, but the color still grabs your attention.

A Spring Tour of My Yard

Here's the front yard tonight in the filtered sunlight, around 6:30 p.m.  My 1950's metal motel chair trio hints of summer evenings drinking iced tea and visiting with friends and neighbors.  My viola basket brings color to this part of the front yard as you move through the pergola to the back pasture.

Vintage Linens from M&M Antiques in Monroe

I found this lovely gingham embroidered apron a few weeks ago at the antique store with the chicken on it.  Yesterday, I added these two embroidered kitchen towels to my collection.  Since I am going into the pie-baking business, I love the blue towel below!  And the red embroidered towel is such an intricate kitchen scene that you really need to spend a few minutes looking at all of the detail to really appreciate the work that someone spent to design and create it.  These types of 'fancy work', as my Aunt Elsie called it, is a dying art.  Fortunately for me, I am able to find lovely examples such as these to evoke my childhood, and represent a time when cooking and homemaking were art forms.

Apple Pie on a Sunday Evening

This evening, we peeled a bowl of Granny Smith apples for a pie.  Baking these large 9-inch pies in my Yellow Ware pie plate guarantees an evenly-browned, flaky pie crust.  Pieces of this pie will be paired with Salted Caramel ice cream from Snohomish Gourmet Ice Cream Company here in Maltby.

Maximum Exposure

For the last four weeks, Kathy Collins, a local watercolor artist, is exhibiting her one-woman show watercolors at Kaewyn Gallery in Bothell.  These painting are impressionistic in nature, and reflect brilliant color and light.  She has a series of works of Northwest beaches.

Her show runs from  March 8 through April 20.  We bought the piece below yesterday, and it's called "Maximum Exposure".  It refers to the technique she uses with her paints and the canvas, reflecting light and capturing the essence of the feeling of walking on the beach here in the Pacific Northwest.

We can pick up this lovely piece after April 20, when the exhibition closes. It will be wonderful to add another original work to our collection that captures the places we've traveled together, and of the places we return to often.

The Ultimate Birdhouse

Here is a folk art birdhouse made in New Orleans, currently residing at M&M Antiques in Monroe.  I stopped by yesterday to see it, as I saw it on the M&M Antiques blog.  Melanie is asking $245 for it!  Wow--that would bring some high-rent to our current Maltby bird condominiums!

It's beautifully built, has exquisite distressed details, and is surprisingly heavy.  I hope someone can't live without it, and will buy it soon.