After lunch they might play tag

It's untoward to eat too much, but there's never much there anyway.  Always some apples left, if you're still hungry.  Pickles, tomatoes, and some bread and cheese.  Not enough to drink that's cool, but the warm beer is plentiful.  Loads of gentle stories, and lots of kidding, some not very funny.  Overall, the golden haze shows little specks of light all day, which are really gnats, but look so pretty and snowlike when you squint your eyes.  Some of us will have more fun than the others, and the dog makes us all laugh.  The pretty gold bracelet will be lost in the grass during the dancing, found only just as the sun was going down. Himself is a hero again.  TY Caleb for the postcard.

Taking tea in the sidecar

Taking tea in the sidecar, a photo by lovedaylemon on Flickr.

Careful, darling! Mustn't spill on the new upholstery.

Tea in the garden

Picnic in the garden, a photo by lovedaylemon on Flickr.

Can you hear the bees? They're singing!

Drinking beer under a tree in about 1906

Drinking beer under a tree in about 1906, a photo by lovedaylemon on Flickr.

Not exactly impressionist-ready, but real life lives in the field. Cool enough beer, warm enough cheese, yesterday's bread. And maybe a short nap with our heads on our hats before walking away the afternoon.

If it is going to be summer again, then there must be lemonade brought in..

Rue Manouche

Something sweetly nostalgic and familiar about this sound.

Watch 'An Insect's Christmas': A leftover bit of holiday dreaminess from inventive animators in 1913.

A real place that lives like a dream

Urnature in Sweden is one of those fragile places that seems like a feather, or the fragment of memory.

The Search for the Interesting Object

Hunting for interesting items sometimes means scouting through flea markets, trolling estate sales, sifting through dusty old memorabilia at tag sales, cultivating secret sources, asking odd questions, carrying cold cash, and always being tuned in to what bit of beauty might surprisingly be found in the most prosaic settings. The trick is to cast aside the ordinary reality - and curate those curious curios to re-create the gathered ephemera or artifact to serve a purpose and delight the eye. The patina of time makes the amusing assemblage all the more appealing. Antique, vintage, new, recycled, re-purposed, re-imagined...the truth is an interesting object will always be an interesting object, no matter form it takes, era within which it resides, or it's owners whim of fancy.  We love to locate arrestingly cool stuff to do nifty things with - unusual goods that are unexpectedly good to find.

The General Store Returns in New Form

Isn't it dandy? Kingston Ellis is coming to town!...an adventurous merchant's brand new shop opening late November, 2010, in Sonoma, California, promises to proffer all the most brilliant things that a person might desire - under one roof. It's a wonderfully old-fashioned-yet-modern, evocatively fresh kind of 'general store'; one convenient stop to find smart apparel and accessories, something special to gift a friend, decorations to embellish a holiday, home goods to brighten an interior, or a few simply delicious finds to delight the senses. We can hardly wait to see what elegant, mysterious, beautiful, creative, and unusual items await!  More soon on this magical mercantile enterprise.

The Unseen Presence

John Milton wrote that we '...should allow some of the earth to go it's own way'.  Meaning, of course, that some natural places of wilderness and wildlife must be left in a natural and untrammeled state, free from our human-induced need to change what is already quite perfect.  Large scale evolutionary and ecological processes need time and space to continue their own remarkable portrayals of how a healthy land sustains itself.  What places, what wildlife, what botany will be left to provide (as Aldo Leopold called for) a 'base datum of normality' if we allow all our treasures of intact wilderness to covered by the workings of commerce?  The ephemeral nature of the wild is how sweetly and quietly it continues to inform our spirit, to call to us, and beseech us to remember our identity as 'stewards of the earth'.

One begins by simply deciding to make something out of nothing.

First of all let me explain to you what an Edwardian Picnic means to me.  It's not a real picnic at all, you see, no ants nor baskets, not even a wrapped sandwich or two, though there certainly could be, might once have been, or still may yet be.  The theme for today is 'Whatever are you thinking?'  So shall we begin to honor the creative urge that brings life together: people, food, events, thoughts!... All assembled of spirit and purpose and presence.  We exist, ephemeral creatures we may be, to celebrate our mighty impermanence.  Do we make nothing out of something -- or is it the other way around?  A nice blank slate: