this tuesday at the cottage

I cried while making the grilled cheese. But by the time we sat down for our meal, I was fine. This cabin, filled with smokey heat and cider we brought in big bottles, it is white and calming and temporary.
I'm trying to sleep this week. This morning though, the rain came down like soft hooves, and I had to get up and make a pot of tea. I sat at the table, after I had opened the curtains. The hillside was filling with fog. I crawled back up the stairs to you, lost in the sheets. Everything was white, and just the hint of warmth left from last nights fire.
We hiked in the afternoon, missing the turn so we had to double back across the valley. Up past the still standing ponies, then back down and over the river. The valley was a field of wild grasses, red and wet from all the night rain. And so their stalks were bent over, eat bush folded neatly in half. The thin tree branches covered in lichen and moss, and just dripping with water, the ivy is what makes these bare hills green.
The mud was long, slipping and slowly us down. Kissing gates and then the river turned, sending us up the hill along the stone walls, covered with lime. I got so hot marching up the rocks, we marched right past Meg's Folly and then that nice wide farm on the left.

Just to catch the sun on the hills across the valley, the field turned yellow under the glow. A few minutes later it passes, only to hit another bluff , and then we are right back where we started.
That red wine won't drink itself, we go inside.

on the way, ross-on-wye

So we've gone on a drive this week, 'round the bends and through the valleys.

On the way, we found Baileys, thanks to our lovely friend Emily and her recomendation. Photos not usually allowed here, but I managed to get a smile, and I'm in.

Vintage meets re-made, meets France meets countryside, and the swirliest writing on tiny brown labels. Shelves of reclaimed glass, bins of pegs and brushes, enamel cookware, and classic linen towels in crisp red and white, and soft blue and grey.
But most importantly I want the industrial wire pigeonholes. And those bare filament bulbs, to fill a barn with my treasures, ladders all the way to the rafters, softened floorboards under foot.

 

wire and wood and rough wool, grey light no sun in sight

January days and the sun is so low, barely there. The building large, but inside, each corner and room give light to every object, collected and categorized.
It's the small things I save in jars, bits of string and a stone from that one day, holding onto our days however we can.

hot water heat

iceland part 10: blue lagoon via krisatomic

how nice are these photographs of the lava field and geothermal spa in Grindavik. icy combo of warm and cool, as waters thin and hot steam rises over hard stone and board. to lay face down in that water, floating in murky white.

i remember the sulphur pools in bulgaria, but that was a dry heat, yellow and golds and greens. bathing in sunflower fields, the grasses folding and swaying, i'm looking up at the sky now. the water rushed from the pipes, i held my body underneath until my skin burned from the heat. and that night i slept better than i ever had before.

succulents aplenty

tiny guys, all over the south coast.

i said aloud, i'm not quite sure why i love them so much but i do.
he said, muted colours and perfect geometric edges, of course you love them.

a hard place

newfoundland, design on the edge

photos by rené synnevåg, architect todd saunders

hand crafted furniture, homemade quilts, rocky oceanviews and quiddi vidi beers, this hotel+ art gallery seems to be calling me.

few memories of sunshine, really, but crisp skies and salt air were fine by me, having one of my first beers on the grandmother's back porch. her soft papery hands passing the bowls of chips, always giving, always smoking. doesn't look like this summer though, maybe next i will go back to newfoundland.