We just got back tonight from 36 hours in and about Philadelphia. It's funny the situations we repeatedly find ourselves in; and overall its these scenarios that make up for our missing business plan...yesterday we drove 600 lbs of soap to a small cornfield town outside of Philly.
We generally don't make business trips without the promise of a nice meal, so we camped in Philadelphia for the night and lucked out with some excellent food at a little restaurant called Pumpkin. (Joy at Oh Joy was so kind to recommend some extraordinary places where reservations were unfortunately unattainable at 5pm the night of...fingers crossed we'll have to repeat this trip again soon).

This Jeep along the way is my dreamboat. I had intended for this post to be much more funny, but I'm exhausted from the road...tomorrow we start up with flowers again after a month long hiatus. I'll share pics, and also fill you in on this morning's visit to Terrain.

Dear Josh,

Hello,
This white horse video is hilarious, and fits right into what has become the year of 80's videos round these parts; that is endless nights of Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac and Gary Numan. I actually went record shopping yesterday with the sole intention of scoring a Kate Bush album. Pathetic.

It has just come out that my father has infiltrated my mother's netflix cue to order The Secret (the DVD). We are currently lamenting this fact in a freezing hotel room in Philadelphia. Long story.

I was very anxious today and thinking about how in college you took me out to your car, opened the trunk and handed me a copy of the book "I'm OK, Your OK."

Do you remember that?

Now you are OK. And, I think I am too...

I'm really glad you read my blog, and that we still talk, even though I didn't attend your wedding.

Love,
Sarah

Mealz, stormz; the birthday week continues

A wild storm blew through here on Sunday. We had been out till 5am; a friend's final evening of debauchery before hitting the road to CA. He now knows about this blog, so I'll hold the disparaging comments on why anyone would want to leave this city. Sunday's storm was the kind that makes you want to sit in one place and wait to feel electrics in the air...as if the slightest good-willed charge could suddenly clear your head and leave you rarefied..


I could have stayed in my chair all day but then I'd have missed the ridiculous grass-fed lamb my mom had butchered up in my honor. Lamb is my favorite thing in the world. These cubes were skewered and grilled with figs. It was pretty much the best thing I've ever eaten.


She made a blackberry pie for dessert. We picked up soap. We looked again at her tomato plants which are now about 5.5 feet tall and dripping with green tomatoes. We have plans for canning, salsa, pickled green tomatoes...any other ideas?


28 today and I'm not sure how I feel. I think I will go record shopping. Thank you for all your nice comments and birthday wishes! I'm probably going to milk it a bit longer so please bear with me...

This water taxi thing that goes back and forth for FREE now between Pier 11 in lower Manhattan and Ikea in Red Hook has been hanging over my head for the past month since the whole shit started. Sometime in the last year I have developed a phobia of transportation entrapment, that is to say the fear that once on an airplane, boat, train, etc...I can't just decide to get off when I want to. Call me crazy. Don't actually...

So yesterday I conquered the 13 min. water taxi. A minor triumph in a string of triumphs...this coming from someone who never understood what anxiety really was. And I'm glad I did, because I had the opportunity to bear witness to the flow chart the woman next to me was making with her friend...a chart which detailed and linked the sexual escapades of everyone they knew. Next time your out on a boat circling lower Manhattan with nothing to do, there's an idea for you.

Last but certainly not least I will share the shear excitement of my purchases at Lyell; the tapsuit and 70's shorts. Happy birthday to me! Incidentally Lyell is having a sample sale this weekend at their nolita shop - cash only.

Which of these things is not like the other?

The clouds are rolling in over NY Harbor. Big dark clouds I hope will bring rain in buckets. The past few days have been pretty hard in the heat. Our apt. gets progressively hotter each day as the building bakes. Yesterday we escaped the afternoon heat to see The Dark Knight. All my cleverness has left me in this weather. I sit in my room staring at piles of clothes that need to be put away or washed.

I'm on the g. blog over at D*S this week.

I'm off to get a coffee. I hope we see tons of rain today so that when you check your garden later it suddenly looks like its on speed.

Sarah

You know we're been on semi-holiday* for the month of July -- and so no flower pics lately. Maybe some of you are still out there holding your breath with hopes that the crotchety-youtube-posting Saipua will soon vanish and let in the radiant beams of floral ephemera and ... oh wow I just found a corn chip on my chair ... loveliness.


Well, not so fast! I still have one more week of this sort-of holiday and I'm going enjoy keeping my fingernails clean and my cooler unplugged. Here's some bait in the meantime...lavender florals from a June wedding. Hydrangea, peonies, scabiosa, love-in-the-mist pods and flowers, ornamental thyme, flowering privet, and poppy pods.


*
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know, where do you want to go?"
"I don't know..."
"Want to stay here and get some work done?"
"OK sure."

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

Rumor has it the Real World will be filming in Red Hook this fall on Pier 41. Now we can look forward to film crews clogging the Fairway (better or worse than double baby strollers?) and a new breed of 20-somethings vomiting into their tube tops at The Bait and Tackle. (Thanks for the image P, I keep coming back to that one..)

[Aaron and I saw this on the street a few weeks ago. Plans for sonic repellent??]

for gale

This is so hilarious:

say goodby to messy gels and creams

TaDA!

Peach upside-down skillet cornmeal thing.
Trust me this never happens...ie. me baking, me baking successfully, me baking something that needs to be inverted...So when it does, I'm going to brag about it. Eric says it tastes like an "adult cake" which is to say it's not sweet enough for him. It would benefit from a pool of peach brandy or syrup, but then wouldn't we all...

Only one more day with Chapesh, who I have grown very fond of. Even though she thinks the church pew in Eric's room* is a litter box.

That's right folks, separate rooms. Why didn't we think of this before?

I love these images from Alive Structures...met with some folks this morning about their wedding - instead of floral centerpieces, Alive Structures is making a container garden full of succulents and other beautiful low-maintenance plants for each table. One lucky guest takes the square foot (recycled) container home. Alive Structures also does custom garden work and fences. [Elyse - you would love their website...]

trances, cave paintings, broccoli slaw

[a delivery of cymbidium orchids and smoke bush in a carved rock vase]

-a trip to issue project room last night resulted in 40 min. of ambient noise an a half of a Modelo that cost $5 (we should have said we were with the band). Jodi Cave, a UK sound artist, gave the better performance (it actually sounded like something) and I was temporarily entranced. Speaking of trances -- the newyorker published a ho-hum article about paleolithic cave painting a few weeks ago. It highlighted a recent theory that prehistoric cave painters may have been engaging in quasi-religious trances (due to high carbon dioxide levels found in the caves). Trances most always involve three stages - the last being the communion with animals...thus, as this theory posits, why we see animals almost exclusively in prehistoric cave paintings.

-tonight i would be cutting a rug with Aaron at my alma mater's Summer Mix Tape benefit but alas I'll be wallowing in my broccoli slaw poolside (it doesn't take much besides the promise of a cruciferous vegetable and trip to the salvation army to get us packing for the country).

-saturdays plans are secret

hope you have a great weekend - sarah

a gift i put together today for a woman who is turning 103 tomorrow! the little card stuck in there is an old victorian soap trade card from around the time she was born.

its not unusual

Eric has been addicted to muxtape lately, which is worth checking out if you have not already. I go back and forth between it and my usual iTunes repertoire of Tom Waits, Emmylou Harris, This Mortal Coil and other uplifting music as such.

HOWEVER; i found this heartbreak of a mix today (featuring the classic I Who Have Nothing) and since then I have been reconsidering the ongoing legacy of Tom Jones.

Shirley Bassey's performance of the same song here is also a treat.

Paul Fusco's bracing pictures from the train carrying Bobby Kennedy's body to burial in 1968.

Chapesh (sp?) means flea in farsi and this is the cat with that name who came to live with us for a few weeks. Saipua mean soap in finnish and also pet sitting (call us). while moving. computer about to die...2% must publish....

Short but sweet -- this peony mixed with some succulents, scabiosa and queen anne's lace* next to my bed at home.

Sometimes smaller is so much better, no? I made a big arrangement of these on Friday for a client. It was dramatic, but I prefer little tie ups like this one. I know I've been hard on the peony, but in the end it's my favorite flower. One by itself does the trick...

*in the flower market a few weeks ago; the owner of a prominent NYC florist was selecting material for a wedding...the salesman pointed out some really strong Queen Anne's Lace ... he scoffed; "Ugh! Weeds? Never!."

Emerson dubbed weeds as plants whose virtues have yet to be discovered. Another interesting take on weeds here from 1989 by M. Pollan.

An order from last week. Get knocked up and you may get something like this at your shower.

I still can't stop listening to the new Portishead album. Their little films are equally stunning.

This article on WEEDS is so interesting. In a sea of bad news about the environment I'm determined to be more positive and active.

Which yesterday meant riding my bicycle to park slope to visit the farm market and talk to a flower grower about wholesaling his New Jersey blooms. But lets back up a min. to note that there is in fact a slope in park slope, and biking up it on a 30 year old one-speed is not something I would recommend to cycling novices. not in the rain. not wearing a skirt.

On the way home (down the slope) I stopped to admire the renegade sidewalk garden on Union Street. Let this be the future of cities!


which are much cheaper than what we get at 28So the farmer, Greg, has a very excellent selection of blooms including these stunning echinaceath street. Plus he has beautiful pastel yarrow, sweet pea (not for long), cosmos and other delicate flowers that don't fair well in the international wholesale trade. SO - long story short, we're going to try to do at least a portion of our August/Sept/Oct weddings with this material. The way my friend Alice grows flowers for her designs is totally inspiring. They're farm Bluebird Meadows epitomizes how a green flower industry can work.


*Also we'll be closing the shop in Red Hook till Saturday July 19th. During this time we will focus on

1. getting organized
2. cooking
2.5 the books
3. guitar hero
4. burritos

[ "Bowl of cream" peonies, poppy pods, decorative thyme, pincushions]

I'm in a fix lately thinking a lot about all the bad news on the radio each morning (rising fuel and food costs, the diminishing US dollar, apocalyptic environmental reports, etc...)

This is the crazy world we live in.

Have you seen WALL-E? I did...then I found this website for BuyNLarge and it took me a little too long to figure out it was phoney. I mean... this has to be phoney right??

I'm working on a more hopeful post for later on...but it will not include pictures of my new Ann Wilson haircut. Because that is just not hopeful folks.

I'm here, just swamped with flowers and moving and sweating...if it's possible, I think I'm sick of peonies. We're done with weddings for a few weeks, and its a good thing, because no one should ever really get tired of a peony - I have all of July to formulate plans for dahlias and our late summer/fall wedding lineup. More soon..