I just heard Mama say “Oh! A-HA!” and run outside. This bloomed just this morning. Oh, sweet Southern perfection in a cut glass vase. May you all have something as delicate and divine ushering in your summer weekend.
Category: Beauty
Bounty…
Oh the Bounteous Spread! Yellow squash, magda squash, cucumbers, young red onions, spring onions, new turnips, bright pink beets, savoy cabbage, new sweet corn… and Veuve Clicquot. All of nature’s good and honest yield, about to be consumed by Mama’n’Me.
everything but the bubbly came from Amy’s Garden– Mama’s amazing organic CSA (and, yes, of course she also got the flower share).
Good Heavens
In 1769 Thomas Jefferson (founding father, renaissance man, most handsome ginger) prepared his natural observatory at Monticello to watch as Venus made her way directly between the light of the sun and the earth. It was partly cloudy. He missed it, and it only happens every 105 years. Oh, Heavens. Well, TJ, I have some good news. Yesterday, starting at 6:09pm Venus began her extracentennial trek across the face of the sun, and we saw it! The stars aligned, the clouds cleared, the champagne popped (serendipity that the cork showed a star crossing the Sun??), and we covered our eyes and Douglas’ telescope with the small dark squares of welders glass that Daddy bought for the occasion as the tiny dot of the planet moved against the light of the Sun until it dipped below the horizon. It was, well, Stellar.
We toasted to the heavens, listened to an amazing playlist that Daddy made for the occasion (“I’m Your Venus”>”Ground Control to Major Tom”>”Here comes the Sun”>”Age of Aquarius” etc. etc.), and watched the skies turning around us.
Thanks to Clay Jenkinson and his amazing Thomas Jefferson Hour, if Mama hadn’t heard his talk about TJ’s thwarted attempt to watch the 1769 transit, we’d probably have missed it.
Up Nawth
Perfect timing that this postcard from Will arrived in my Brooklyn mailbox just as I was out the door to head south for a sojourn among the seagrasses, diamondwater, and, yes, kudzu ravines of my homeland. Sorry, Nawth, I’m outta here.
ps. that charming pre-war kudzu shack is roughly the footprint/size of my brownstone apartment (but with attic space and an, um, garden) what do you think they’re asking for it? $1800 a month? $2500? $74 confederate dollars? Let me know if pets are ok and we’ll talk.
Rare Birds
It’s no secret we love nests around here, so obviously we went head over wing when we saw these newly re-released lithographs from the Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio. The story of the book is almost as lovely as the images- a girl sees John James Audubon’s work chronicling Birds of America at the 1876 World’s Fair, and she and her family decide that there should be a companion book focusing on the birds, eggs, and nests of their native Ohio. So? They make one themselves. A hundred years pass, their book languishes under plexiglass in a random corner of an Ohio museum for years until a young librarian finds it, falls in love with it and writes her own book telling the family’s story and preserving the images for generations to come. Rare birds all, no? 
Images and backstory from here. Lovelovelove.
Early Summer Offerings
Today I took my first cup of cold brew coffee out to the backyard to survey our small domain and water our little container garden and I was positively struck with early summer wonder. First off: the simple joys of homemade cold brew are not to be taken lightly and it is ever-so-much more enjoyable than I thought possible to drink it with a cuppow mason jar top. Right now there is a ton of (fabulous-yet-frustrating) construction going on in the backyard as our awesome landlord Bernie and his yappy yorkie Zeus put up new fencing, plant big lovely boxwoods, lay down a patio, occasionally spar at our window with Nipsey the Cat, and make a big mess everywhere including in the cucumber pots. In the midst of the construction chaos, ground strewn with power tools and trash, our little garden is still thriving. Is this a New York parable? Our Early Girls are putting out their first little green maters, late breaking broccoli is rearing its head, zucchinis are blossoming, nasturtiums are up, all of the little hot peppers are putting forth blossoms (the big one already has two peppers on it!), the first strawberries are almost ready to eat, and all of the herbs are thriving. It’s always the little things that matter most.
Found in Nature
On our way out to spend Memorial Day at Sweetheart’s house in Rockaway we drove past Floyd Bennett Field. I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with the old airfield (see here and here). How interesting, then, to discover this amazing photographic series “Found in Nature” by Barry Rosenthal: collections of items and objects found out at Floyd Bennett Field. This weekend, on that brilliant, sunny, fresh-hot birth of summer day, they had a carnival set up: a Ferris Wheel, a funny purple roller coaster, big fat circus lights and cotton candy. How many new contributions must have been left behind…
Read more about Barry Rosenthal and his art here and thanks to Things Organized Neatly for the heads up (man I love that site).
A Moveable Feast
This weekend we had our first ever moveable feast– a progressive dinner moving from course to course, cocktail to cocktail, between our five Brooklyn apartments. It was so very, very lovely… 
We feasted: prosciutto wrapped asparagus with peppadew sauce and lemon honey gin fizzes, roasted pear and arugula salads with cucumber gin tonics, pork carnitas tacos with home pickled onions and fresh tomatillo salsa with micheladas, cheese fondue (!!!) paired with funkily perfect hard ciders, and cool, rich tiramisu with cognac. We walked: from Bed Stuy to Clinton Hill to Fort Greene. All of the ladies rocked the flower party crowns I made. The night was warm the light was perfect, we started under a maple tree in the slanting early summer sun and finished on the roof under the stars watching at the twinkling lights of not-yet-finished One World Trade. All we kept saying was how we live SO close to each other, and how most of us had never even been to each other’s apartments. Here we were- opening our homes, laughing, breaking bread, toasting bubbly, and simply enjoying each other. How marvelous, how easy, how truly lovely.
Infinite thanks to the brilliant Oh Happy Day for the progressive dinner idea (yes, I’ve been thinking about doing this since last November, and yes, follow Jordan’s very helpful tips).
Also from Oh Happy Day- the ahhh-mazing flower party hat tutorial! I can’t recommend this little project enough. It only took me three episodes of Girls, a glass and a half of wine, and $13 worth of supplies from the dollar store to make 6 headbands (with tons of paper left over). Note: I used tissue paper instead of the crepe paper recommended in the tutorial because I couldn’t find any folded crepe paper in the hood, and the tissue paper worked fine. Also- in a moment of divine inspiration, I picked up a loopy stainless steel pot scrubber that I cut up and used for fun shiny/textured centers, you really can use your imagination here… I want to wear a flower party crown everywhere I go- and I think I just might.
Glorious Weekend
In New York, the literal distance between friends- the few blocks separating a single neighborhood- can be the difference between weekly wine dates and once-a-year-in-review catch ups. You live in Cobble Hill? Are you free next September? You live in Clinton Hill? Come over for cocktails this very minute. Le sigh. It can be daunting. BUT- after much karma, zen real estate, and wise choices in love and loft we find ourselves with four very good households of friends all living within a five minute walk of each other. This seems a New York miracle. Yes, Virginia, Brooklyn sometimes feels like Virginia. Ever since I read this post from Oh Happy Day!- a progressive dinner carousing from arrondissment to arrondissment through the streets of Paris- I’ve been dying to try it. A Progressive Dinner, in short, moves from house to house with each stop serving a different course of a meal. A Moveable Feast of Brooklyn intuition. I’m thinking that the whole shebang will probably look and feel like the above picture from Comet in Moominland– which Eben and I both read as children and made mental notes that we wanted our lives to be like this- as he agrees: so far so good. I’ll let you know how it goes. Cheers to good friends and a lovely weekend to you!
ps. I also made these for tonight. They are so absurd and wonderful!
pps. Love and congratulations to Dear Rav, tying il nodo in Tuscany this very night. My heart is full for you.
Moomin image from here, naturally.
Coney Island Love Letter
On this rainy Brooklyn day, what could be better than a little Coney Island Love? I’ve been a believer ever since Sweetheart’s dad bought me my first chow mein sandwich (a bizarre Brooklyn food tradition proffered by a third generation Brooklyner? Perfect.*) after two rounds of re-rides on The Cyclone a few summers ago. Maybe it’s the continued (de)construction, the shuttering of classics like the El Dorado Bumper Cars, or just a pang of tangible nostalgia for a history I’ve only brushed up against, but this lovely love letter seems just the right amount of bittersweet.
*reminiscent of the time Sweetheart smuggled a Yonah Shimmel’s kasha knish into the Sunshine Cinema on our second date. Eating my first knish in the dark, it was sort of like the blind men and the elephant… until he handed me the mustard.
gorgeous video from the brilliant geniuses at Land of Nod. I dare you not to watch, like, all of their videos right. now.
Feather By Feather 