the best

I got back to the city tonight and was feeling down and out. Then I found this photo in my email from the beautiful duo behind Belathee. It shows Eric, Asheley and Deanna onsite at a wedding this past March.

Damn, how lucky I am to have this crew to work with everyday? Love them so much.

gorgeous gets away with it?

[recent city scenes]

Maybe start here at this little precious and hilarious nugget of ad campaign history.

Because we're just going to have to talk about cars tonight. Last night I penned this whole self indulgent post about flowers and weddings and saipua bullshit that tonight makes me gag a bit. Also I can't have you thinking that I'm confused, or god forbid...worn out. What I am is effing head over heals in love with a Jaguar.

One thread that I will pull from last night's manuscript, currently burning in an ashtray next to me, is this: I've been doing a lot of driving. City-farm-city-farm, you get it. One morning I'm fondling - wait wrong word here - investigating - descended scrotum on a bunch of icelandic sheep and a few hours later via her majesty, i87, I'm in the west village canoodling with cityfolk. I don't do a lot of canoodling these days, so I thought I'd try to work that in.

It was on one of these back and forth's that Eric and I were mistaken for maggie gylenhall and lou diamond phillips (we were both wearing leather) in a thruway rest area and had to be escorted out the back. This is the hard life of the upstate interloper, anniminity and familarity, thrown together in line at a starbucks inside the Ramapo rest stop. Am I embellishing? You better believe it. 


So with all this milage between us we've needed a new car, and a few months ago the right one showed up -- just like that -- a jade colored 1992 mint condition jaguar xjs parked on the street in our neighborhood. What does a farmer/florist do with a fucking jaguar xjs, jade green with real wood interior? She LOOKS GOOD, son. She rolls up to the flower market on 28th street and looks good, she puts - no - someone else puts - a few neat little flower packages in her trunk (it's larger than one would think!) and looks good, she drives with leather gloves and sunglasses and people say, Who is that?!? ... "And is that double bale of crabapple branches bungee'd into her open trunk safe?)


As you can see, I've gone deep. Which is why when I saw it parked outside the wine store this evening (we have so much in common already!) I stalked it and it's owner. And by stalked I mean I stormed the joint breathlessly demanding that the owner of the jade jag show themselves. 


And this is where we cut to the montage of me driving this gorgeous piece of metal like ryan gosling; one arm casually on the wheel, toothpick in my mouth or whatever - seat way back, hair blowing in the hot wind of the interstate. Leaning over, legs switched, like hot girls do at the gasoline pump, I've never tried that move, but I could - and that picture is in the montage. Also in there is Nea, with driving googles on - jesus this is killing me! - riding shotgun, head out the window, my little shawdy up for any adventure.  

The girl who came forward was really nice, I recognized her from around. She invited me to a dance party at her house. We talked about the neighborhood and the end of Brooklyn in general. I told her about my new flower farm. She took me out to the curb and showed me the sizable trunk. She didn't say why, but she said the farm is exactly why I need a jaguar. 


That's all. 

at Locusts

We worked on a gorgeous wedding at The Locusts this past weekend. The staff there is overwhelmingly helpful and just a real pleasure to work with. It was the first big weekend using lots of local product from River Garden which made me really happy. Nothing like Bernadette's field flowers. Also; nothing like having you're own golf cart on site.

Nothing.

I can see how it might be a slippery slope to becoming a nudist.

I'm just saying I've had a few experiences lately that have lead me to believe this.

You always think; nudist colonies = nut jobs. And you list, perhaps quietly as part of an internal dialog reasons why being a nudest - or lets just say practicing acts of nudism - is absurd. Sunburn. Plastic seats. Winter. 

Expression is an interesting thing. There was a gardener, Ruth Stout who Eric and I have been reading a little here and there. She wrote a book called Gardening Without Work: For the Aging the Busy and the Indolent (this appealed to me on so many levels) and she was known to garden in the nude. How fun! I thought. I'm going to try it.

So yesterday I spent the day without clothes on. Trying to harden myself to bugs in the garden. Thing is, you just don't want to get stuck on the other side of the farm if someone stops by for a visit. I consider this lightly.

There are so many lessons here for me. It hasn't rained in over a month. We watch our 10 acre cover crop barely hold on. I find myself furiously checking the weather every hour; needing to have some control over it. But there is no control here, only the illusion of it. This is a hard lesson for me. Harder still is to watch nature and understand that there is just this moment. 


Just


this

one.

A snake runs across my path, a frog jumps out at me. Last night a pack of cayotes ran through howling and yipping just as I was falling asleep. Erie and wonderful. 

Kumbaya little chickens!