Nature!

Battery Park

 For a number of reasons, primarily the arrival of spring and the opening of the farmers' market, I've been thinking a lot about nature.

 I was happy when Mary of Uncustomary picked this as her monthly theme.

My walks in Battery Park with my grand have also made me aware changes in the season - with the little yellow flowers in abundance. My grand loves to pick them. Are they buttercups? I don't know. 

Battery Park

I love walking down the path towards the children's play area and having my grand get so happy about the flowers and the sweet gum balls that are all over the ground.

The market at Byrd House opened yesterday and my CSA had the most beautiful produce.

I got some curley kale, some peppermint chard, some asparagus, radishes, and salad greens.  I'm going so happy to have produce fresh from the fields again. Oh and eggs from really free range out in the open hens. I know my farmers! It's all real and tastes so good.

Here are the French radishes that I like to eat as a snack, crunchy and slightly spicy.

Everything is organic,

except these strawberries. They family says that they're not certified but hold to many organic practices. Hmmm. They're very tasty, sweet and juicy. 

Being part of a CSA since 2001, I've been made aware of buying local and seasonal. This really puts one in touch with nature. Tomatoes only grow certain times of the year, wow, not like year round in the grocery stores. Ditto all our other produce. It's seasonal!! It's nature.

Also, since I've gotten on Instagram, I'm taking lots of photos of flowers. Nature at it's prettiest.

After a long, cold winter, oh spring, I like you so much!!

Mail Art Monday! and more.

 Beautiful lettuces were available at the farmers' market on Saturday. I loaded up on them. I put them into "green" bags so they'll stay fresh for our holiday fest.
This is the market I went to at St. Stephen's church. It's quite convenient and will become an indoor market in winter. Yay. Fresh, local, seasonal veggies, and eggs.

I have to share my Japanese Maple tree with you. It's so brilliant, I mean like for real ELECTRIC brilliant. Isn't it beautiful?














I'm getting back into my pens, cleaning them up - I've mentioned this earlier, and now I've indulged myself with 2 new pens. Quite inexpensive ones but they write nicely. The larger one is a Lamy Nexx and the smaller one is a Pilot Petit with green ink in it for the moment. I do like using fountain pens but they do require maintenance!

#325

 Using reproduction Victorian scraps on vintage postcards is quite fun. It's kind of like Tiny Town someone suggested. Perhaps these kids are on their way there. What do you think?

#326

I like the incongruity of the kittens playing with a bowl of gold fish amongst the cacti, and the girl and her kitten having a picnic on the lawn.

#327

#328

 Here I'm using a new postcard of an old painting paired with a REAL vintage Victorian scrap. An odd series of kittens dressed up, and in this instance, holding a toy bear. My honey got the in a flea market in Paris, I think.

#329

Here the kitten is wearing clogs and a fez. So odd, so odd. He's strolling across a vintage landscape postcard.
I have more of these, so you'll be seeing them again.

Mail Art and so much more

#71

#71a

 Friday, I worked on some watercolors again. I'm feeling a bit less wimpy about them, but still, so pastel-y.  I like this one a lot more because I was able to get that purple ridge line, and then get that sort of reflection thing on water.

#72

#73

#74

This one is a big bolder, color wise, but still not quite there. I did a bit of pencil work and added dots. When I feel like the results aren't strong enough, I add dots. In this case, the dots are all the same color but change based on the background. Oh my, an Albers experience!





Saturday, I decided to tear up some postcards before we went off to the big Folk Festival. I found a good quote about landscape painting and put that up with the image on my Facebook page.









Then in Sunday, I decided to do the same - tear of old postcards. This one dealt with water, and I found a nice water quote to go with it. Oh there are those ubiquitous dots! In this case, I used them as connectors.








Today, more torn vintage postcards. In this one, the cards are like paintings and I wanted to make some visual connection between the lake and the road. I'm not sure how successful that was, but I like the way this looks.

 On Saturday and Sunday it was so hot at the Folk Festival. HOT! We couldn't stand being in the sun for long. Only listened to Roseanne Cash for 15 or 20 minutes before heading for shade. That hot! But Monday morning, while walking over to the dentist's office, I saw that over night, the leaves where turning autumn colors and falling to the ground! Wow! Overnight!

 I spotted this gorgeous tree a couple streets over this afternoon. Gorgeous, right? Autumn is arriving!

 And of course, autumn means apples in abundance. I got a half of a bushel and started to make apple sauce. I think apple butter is next.

Here's last weeks abundance from the farmers' market. It was the last week of my CSA, but this week I got some beautiful string beans and some beets there.

Some Mail Art and more

#929

#931

 This collage arrived at it's destination in 2 parts - the front with the collage, and the back with the address by itself. Woah!! I guess I didn't glue the address part on securely enough but fortunately it fell apart in the mail carrier's pack and both parts got delivered.. Whew! I must be more mindful about this.





This card was sent to a woman for her 90th birthday.  She's the mom of one of my mail art buddies.

 Market basket from this week was exciting as pickling cucumbers were available. I really like those. We also got asparagus in the fruit share, which was lots of strawberries and some veggies this time. I rolled the asparagus in olive oil, dusted some sea salt on them, and grilled them. YUM!

 My friend Kat in Greece, passed this along to me. She did the "BLUE" part, Dean did the bar codes, and I added the dots. It's being sent back to the original sender after having been to Greece, France and Richmond, VA. A nice little project. The originator will wear it and post a photo of it. It'll be fun to see all the masks that get returned.

 This is the milk bottle building that used to be - guess what? Yes, a dairy. Now it's condos/apartments as are the two building beyond it in this photo. All were commercial buildings, of course. They're a little over 2 miles from our house.

 I was at the Science Museum of Virginia the other day and took this photo of one of the stair wells. I really like all of the lines and the view of the sky and trees beyond. I still remember this place as a train station. When we first moved here, we waited for a friend to arrive and thought how grand this building was. It still is and has been re-purposed beautifully.

My honey had given a talk about his collage exhibit, which is in the cafe at the museum and then we saw an exhibit of work by Chris Jordan. He does these amazing photos of objects that relate to statistics and consumerism.  This skull has to do with deaths by cigarette smoking and is made up of lots of cigarette packages. Amazing.

Mail Art, Veggies and a recipe

 I love the way this card looks, with the uneven edges.  I cut it out of some cardboard package while in Los Angeles, using scissors. It was a thicker carton so I couldn't do a very even job. Turns out, I like it! I brought the blank home and created this simple 2 element piece with letters yesterday. #914

#915

 For this, I used a cardboard cut with my papercutter, from a piece of cardboard. Minimal with only 3 pieces, very subtle, and I like the effect.

 Though I'm struggling with a cold/cough these days, I managed to get over to the farmers' market for the first day pick up of my CSA. Here are some of the items in my basket.

And here's the veggie flan I made for dinner. I'll post a recipe on my other blog which you can find here.  It turned out really tasty and my honey, who doesn't like kale, liked it a lot.

The Market on Monument.

Today is veggie pick up day at the market. My poor farmers didn't benefit from the rain storm the other day. They are feeling the drought. We had small pickings. There were onions, potatoes, melons, carrots, a few tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and a few other items but not in huge quantities. Poor farmers!

Geraldine's space

An antiques market has been added to the Market on Monument, which is fun. We visited with several of our friends today. Geraldine of Ghostprint Gallery had paintings and other vintage items.

A peek at Maurice's stuff

Mimmy's vintage items

Mimmy's vintage jewelry

Maurice Beane had lots of interesting items to share in his area.  And another Antiques collector offered this fun range of seating.  Exile and Ouroboros were there today. Mimmy (the other Mim) and her mom, Sylvia, had a section with vintage jewelry and other items.  We managed to leave with only our veggies BUT we spotted a couple of things that we might just check out again.  If you're in Richmond, or nearby, this is a fun spot. They'll be there until October so I have plenty of chances to find some cool vintagy item, like those drinking glasses!

Pocket in use!

J stopped by after going to the farmers' market and she had on one of my Pockets. It looked so great that I had to whip out my 'phone and grab a photo before she left. She said that she likes that she can attach her keys to the strap. She "fancied" it up with a little metal button up at the top corner.  I was delighted to see the Pocket in use!

Now to make some more!

Veggies and other food!

Last week we went up to Washington, DC to the Smithsonian craft show. It was so nice to see such high quality of crafts. I even got a pair of new earrings by Kathleen Dustin. See her work here. My earrings are in the fourth row down on the left.
We ate at a "meze" restaurant, which is like tapas but from Greece. The food was yummy. Here's a view of the sculpture out front and some of the delicious food.
This week, I picked up a nice basket full of veggies from my farm share. Everything is so fresh. I'm always tempted to take home more than I can eat, but stop myself knowing that next week, I'll get more good veggies.

The Marche au Producteurs, Paris

On Saturday and Sunday, we went to the market set up in the Village St. Paul. People had come in from their farms and cooperatives down the southwest of France (and some central south) to sell their hand made products. We got soap from Savonnerie Saponaire, owned by Ania and Jean-Sebastien Canaux. J-S waited on us, speaking English, which is helpful. Their soap is all natural and smells great. Can't wait to try out what we bought. We got a bottle of wine from this stall because I tasted the Vin Chaud (hot wine) which was a bit different tasting than the one we had in Brussels, but good. She told me that it was made with their wine (a 2005 Merlot) plus sugar, orange, and cinnamon.) I made it last night and it was tasty and felt good after a long cold walk home from a flea market/antique fair. I got one skein of mohair yarn. It's very fine and natural color. The honey stall had delicious spiced honey cake/bread and almond nougat, which we got on Saturday. They both were so tastey that on Sunday we bought more of the nougat. It was so filled with almonds that was very little of the nougat. I was happy to speak with the woman who made it and tell her how much we like it (in French.) We bought honey muffins from another stand, which were also excellent. The only vegetable stand was a Bio (organic) one and he was doing a brisk business. The produce looked great. Leeks, greens, kohlrabi, lots of root vegetables, plus the man had a case of his home made goat cheese. We just didn't know what to choose! There were stands selling snails and offering samples. The smell of the garlic coming from the steaming pots was so good, though I don't eat snails. There were samples of sausage, pate (see the stuffed geese,) chicken, cheese, wine, nougat, and preserves (confiture.) We bought some confiture to give as gifts to some of the staff here for Christmas.