summertime

Taking a momentary break from house-projects!

There's just nothing like watermelon to remind you it's "summertime"!

It's toasty and humid here in New England!

Hope you are staying cool.

A Home & Garden tour with Bunny Williams

I know so many of you are like me and love Bunny's book
"An Affair with a House."

This book sits prominently on top of a book table in the reading room!

As some of you might remember, I had the great fortune to visit Bunny's house and even meet the design icon herself!!
You can read about it HERE!

My sister recently sent me this PBS video of Ms. Williams giving a tour of her Connecticut home, and wanted to share it with you!I think the video helps to bring the fabulous photographs from the book together- you can see how all the gardens, the house and the barn all relate to one another.

To take the house and garden tour with Bunny, click HERE!

Enjoy!

decorating with nature

I have always loved decorating with nature... from an urn filled with forestwood, to antique herbariums, to driftwood, to animal horns, to shells and rocks picked up on our travels. Since moving to New Hampshire I have become especially enamoured with tree fungi... what is called bracket or shelf fungus! Dan grew up in the Pacific NW, and grew up calling these little lovelies "conks" which is indeed what the bracket-shaped fungus is called, so that is what we call them! They are rock-hard and have no smell.

Before I change out the living room mantle to a more summer-look, I wanted to share the mantle as it looks today. I purchased the large conk at an antique shop, but most of them we have "found"!

The humble conk collection shares the mantle with a pair of antique Chinese blue and white temple jars, a pair of antique mercury glass candlesticks, and an antique English hallmarked sterling-rimmed matchstrike

The small white conk on the right corner was actually a gift from our nice painter, who found it while hiking and remembered my collection!

I thought you might like to see them as they grow in nature- this is how we generally see them.

Here you can see two conks growing on this one tree. This is in the forest by our house.

(I'm keeping my eye on these two!!)

This is a dead tree with many small conks of the Ganoderma variety.

A large conk at the entrance to a summer home on our road.

a close-up

the underside

Hope you find them as lovely as I do!