signs of Spring

It's flowering plum from our tree out by the street. The first thing to bloom each year, it was the warm weather over the weekend that caused the pink, fragrant blooms to pop. I just had to cut some branches to bring inside.

screen door rehab

The rips and holes in this screen door finally got to me (it is much more derelict than this picture shows). So I removed it from its track and have pulled off some of the screening and the gasket-like cording to take to the hardware store so I select the right replacement materials. The whole thing is oxidized and grimy with ancient dirt and bugs and cobwebs...will this turn out to be a big or small weekend project?

making some progress

We went thrifting over the weekend with a list of things we want for the hang-out room downstairs. At a place called The Barn in Fairfax we scored this great floor lamp for $25. The mirror we made some time back using a window from a salvage yard. Still figuring out the pillows--I Iove heaps of them, especially to distract from a tired sofa.

Our daughter has a new job at the design boutique Lotus Bleu in San Francisco. She selected a pair of napkins from designer Madeline Weinrib ($24 a pair) that we will stitch into a pillow cover.

Correction: napkins are Simrin, not Madeline Weinrib.

Rosendals Tradgard

I got an email from Rosendal Garden, one of my favorite places in Stockholm, shown wrapped in winter. With a history as small farms and pasture land, hunting grounds, and summer vacation spot for Swedish kings, Rosendal is now a beautiful organic garden and education center. We rode our bikes around the property last summer, ate at the cafe and admired the produce and plants for sale in the glass greenhouse. The round pink building is the Orangerie.

There is a wonderful apple orchard with venerable trees still producing fruit. As you see, each tree has a tag naming the variety and year planted. So this tree has stood since 1864! Gnarled and leaning, each tree uniquely showing its age, the Swedes allow nature to grow a little wild and wanton. Time isn't treated as an enemy. I love it.

weeds

...they keep on growing, even in winter. It being a beautiful sunny day it was perfect to get out and clean things up a bit, including pulling out plants that got hit by frost a couple of weeks back. Pruned some more roses too--I feel guilty if I don't fill up our green can (yard waste bin) for the Wednesday pick up when there is so much that could be pruned/raked up/yanked out. My buddy Min came out to supervise.

room triage

Yes, this room needs a lot of help, a total makeover really. We still call it the playroom even though it hasn't seen Legos, blocks or the Brio train tracks for ages. Since our daughter has moved back home we want to make it a pleasant place where she can work on projects at the big table (which you can't see here) and just hang out. We gathered up some pillows we already had to try out colors and patterns-- I like the bold patterns. Ebay has some great Marimekko fabric and pillow covers but first we have to decide on color. I happen to be a big fan of black and white with a bright splash of yellow or green.

In the spirit of "making do" and spending very little money, the old sofa will get a slipcover (I made a cover for the TV room ottoman, guess I can stitch together a sofa cover); IKEA has some over-worktable lights as well as good storage containers; and we saw a TV stand at Target yesterday for $29. So that's a start.

pruning

The sun came out today, hurray! So I started pruning the rose bushes--in our area we can do this at the beginning of the new year. In the foreground are cuttings which I have taken from the prunings and stuck in the ground. This is how I have multiplied my mini roses which are easily propagated this way. I love these mini roses, they bloom almost non-stop. The bare canes and cuttings don't make the prettiest picture but just imagine what we may have in a few months!