A Walk in the Garden

May and June have been filled with road trips, marathon sessions in the studio, weddings and family gatherings, leaving no time to stop and smell the roses.  The best I could manage was to snap quick pictures here and there, hoping that one day soon I would be able to post them to the blog.  Now, two months later - here is a walk through my garden, beginning with the row of hydrangeas, above, which are just outside the studio.

 Pink hydrangeas in the courtyard...

A basket of white oakleaf hydrangea, ready for the retail shop...

 Impatiens in the potting shed window box...

Zinnias in the vegetable garden...

 A wild clump of tiger lily...

A new variety of sunflowers in the pumpkin patch...

Another new variety of sunflower...

A pumpkin blossom...

One of the pink zinnias (who insisted on her own cameo shot)...

And finally, a pot of traveling geraniums - purchased in May in Pennsylvania, taken to New York City for the Surtex show, and now, happily blooming in North Carolina.

July and August promise to be as busy as May and June were - but I'll keep the camera handy.  Just as in art and life, a garden never stands still.

 

 

Small Town Magic

The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe called.

  She wants her house back.

You aren't looking at some Photoshopped wonder.  This is a real place.  Not only is it real, it happens to be in my hometown.  Lucky me.

 

 

  I remember Sunday afternoons as a little girl, going to visit the family who lived here and being allowed to scamper all over this little jewel.  It is a real playhouse with doors and windows and I love it to this day.  

 

 

The Shoe House, as we have always called it, sits on the grounds of historic Woodside Plantation - a beautiful old 1798 brick residence.  Woodside was the birthplace of James Pinckney Henderson, who left here and moved to Texas and got himself elected the first Governor of that great state.

Around 100 years ago, it came into the hands of some of my distant relatives, who have loved and enjoyed it ever since.  A very talented uncle is said to have built the Shoe House.  I never knew him, but my guess is he was a man with a perpetual twinkle in his eye.  I do know he created a wondrous little masterpiece.

 His attention to form and scale were impeccable.  The placement of every detail from the little hobbit doors and windows to the eyelets and shoelaces was masterful.  And I know one little girl who absorbed the magic he created without even realizing it.  She grew up and became an artist, attempting to create a little everyday magic of her own.  Wonder why?

 

If you're ever in these parts, head out of town on West Main Street and follow your nose up Highway 182 for a mile or so.  Or, stop anyone on the street and say "Do you know the way to The Shoe House?".

 

We're a small town, after all.