postcards from the edge

It's January in New England, some days it feels like March. The snow plow arrives one morning and the next day I am wiping mud off Calley's dog feet before she enters the house.

I could use a trip, at this point I will settle for a virtual one. So here are some images from Switzerland taken by my brother, the photographer, Don McLean.

Thanks, Don!

street art

The above photos are from my archives taken when we visited Carrie in Biloxi, MS. in 2006.

I was trying to find my own version of street art.

These photos are from Mardi Gras in New Orleans,

months after Hurricane Katrina. The city did a great job

of putting on a fabulous parade.

Take a look at the street art in the link below.

Thanks to Eliza for sending it.

What a great example of the creative spirit at work.

It's all how you look at things!

Enjoy!

click on: street art

Senbazuru

Carrie and Tim, along with their friends and family, are folding 1000 paper origami cranes for their wedding. In Japan, the tradition of folding one thousand cranes is done when someone has a wish for peace, health or luck.

In Japanese tradition, it is believed that the bride who finishes this task, called Senbazuru, before her wedding day will be richly rewarded with a long and happy marriage. The majestic crane mates for life and is said to live one thousand years. The folding of cranes can be done by family and friends, who in turn wish the couple good will and happiness with every bird folded.

We are closing in on five hundred cranes! Here are the people who have contributed so far:

Carrie's Afghan Seeds of Peace campers Sajia and Sahra, Eliza, Barbara, David, Tim, Ruth, Katie O'Brien, Barbara O'Brien, Susanne Julian and Sarah Schnitzer. And of course, Carrie, who is a folding machine!

The paper (all six inch square) has come from Santa Fe, Long Island, Japantown in San Francisco, Berkeley, Cambridge, Ma and, via the internet, Japan. It ranges from solid colors to exquisite, thick squares with designs and glowing colors that the Japanese are famous for.

If you know how to fold, we would love to incorporate your birds into the flock! If you don't know how, ask a friend or try Utube! Or just wish us well as we sit and fold and talk and dream of a wonderful day on May 19th!

ARIGATOU!

1,000 Cranes

Multiple Cranes

Gallery

Links

About the Artist

160 Oak Ridge Avenue

Here is another painting done by my mother. Recognize the bougainvillea? This intrepid plant moved with my parents from where you see it here, our childhood home in New Jersey, to Brookline, Massachusetts and eventually to Andover where they retired. I am told that the plant was a gift to my mother at the time of my birth by one of her Summit Garden Club friends.

"Boug" as we all called her, thrived under my mother's care for thirty six years. My mother had a way with plants. Boug was a tropical plant that had no business blooming unabashedly in the chilly Northeast. But she did- until my mother died and the plant that we had all admired, was given to me. She was never the same after that. I think she missed her original owner as much as I did. We were kind of a sad pair; finding it hard to no longer be in the glow of this talented artist/mother/horticulturist. But luckily this marvelous plant lives on, forever blooming in several of her paintings.

Mom used artistic license in the above work, going for a minimalist look. Our real life dining room was crowded with plants every winter. My mother brought all her treasured growing things in from the terrace to winter over with us inside. As the dining room filled with plants one fall, my brother John warned me, "you know one day, there may not be any room left for us in here." I looked at him wide eyed and then at the jungle of plants and our mother completely absorbed, bending over, watering can in one hand, lovingly plucking dead leaves off her tender charges with the other. I realized he might be right (being my older brother, he was right about most things as far as I was concerned.) I imagined our house overrun with plants; a tropical paradise right here on Oak Ridge Avenue.

I'm sorry to say, my mother's green thumb did not rub off on me. My sister inherited it lock, stock and barrel. Her gardens in the Willamette Valley of Oregon were unsurpassed. Having left her farm, she now has gardens all over town, taking over a plot here, tending someone else's garden there. She has plot in a garden at a local school, one at a friends house and one in her own small yard. Once you have the gardening bug, it doesn't go away.

Meanwhile, I settled on a rocky patch of New England soil, land of the Minute Men farmers. Every time you put a shovel in the ground you hit a rock. My mother and sister both surveyed my property. Never without an idea or solution, they said, "you have a perfect setting for a woodland garden." How lucky am I? A woodland garden pretty much takes care of itself. The native plant movement came just in time!