OK, I hate my kitchen...

Maybe hate is too strong a word.


Though, up until this week, I would've just said hate, yeah, hate, without reservations. But this past week I started using the kitchen more than I have been previously, and suddenly I realize, I don't hate everything about it, just a few things. This means the impossible renovation I'd previously imagined may not be necessary. Actually, I'm starting to think, hmmm... a little paint, new light fixture, new counter-top, new floor, maybe a new fridge could do it. (You have to bear in mind; up until this past week my thoughts went more along the lines of: "I have to just rip it all out and start from scratch! My living holy hell, it's hideous! Agh, my eyes! Look at that! I want to vomit every time I walk into this room! Et cetera! Et cetera! F*** barking et cetera!!")

So here's how the change happened...

I woke up on my birthday feeling ok, but suddenly the day took a rapid nose-dive. I wasn't where I expected to be (either literally or figuratively), acupuncture (for the first time since I started) didn't invigorate me, I was weepy and feeling sorry for myself and convinced the day was shot.

Then, I went to the co-op.

Lo and behold, garlic scapes! The skies parted and the birthday angels sang: ah ahh AHHHH ahh. I don't know. I just find these things aesthetically perfect. Just their existence in the world cheered me. I bought just enough to make me feel better. Then got up on Saturday and went to the farmer's market and bought enough for the plan I'd concocted. I would make a giant batch of garlic scape pesto and all would be right with the world. So, I made a giant batch, froze most of it in smaller batches, cooked up some angel hair pasta, invited a couple friends over, threw together a fab salad (Remembrance Farm in Danby, NY sells the best Asian Braising Mix; I live off the stuff! Perfect greens. Perfect.), poured myself a glass of wine, offered my friends some beer, and had a lovely dinner on my front porch. A kitchen that made that possible couldn't be all bad, right?

I was thumbing through Apartment Therapy and, oh yeah, they suggested one clean one's kitchen top to bottom. So then I decided to clean the broiler, which was one of the reasons I hated my stove and longed so passionately for that O'Keefe and Merritt. Then I went through some cabinets and took some stuff to the Salvation Army. (May as well give back for all the treasures I find there.) Today, it cooled off enough for me to be outside, so I went after the blasted white morning glories (bindweed) trying to utterly consume my garden. But then I returned to the kitchen to roast some summer veggies.

Look how pretty these vegetables came out, with their lovely little caramelized tips. Do I really need a new oven? Huh. Maybe not.

The Yellow Room

I was in love with my house when I bought it. I had so long wanted to own my own home. It represented for me arrival, the beginning of a new, more settled phase of a beautiful life I would share with the person I loved. Each day of the past year and a half I've learned, a house can do nothing for grief but hold it. Today, I look at these pretty walls I've painted and they bring me all the pleasure they can. But I can't help thinking of Robert Frost's poem:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Disposable Digital

I am one of those people who doesn't have a cell phone. No ipod. No cable tv. What am I doing with a blog?

I blame these peonies.

They came into full bloom day before yesterday, hot pink and stunning. It was one of those wretchedly sticky hot days. Hot like Florida. Hot like, How is this possible? Here? And I'm from Florida. How have I so quickly become someone who writes descriptions like "wretchedly sticky hot?" Anyway, the peonies... they looked so beautiful from the green room window. Then the heat broke and the rain came and beat them to the ground. So, yesterday, I cut them and put them in a vase in the green room, but immediately wanted to share them with everyone I know. (I did give two to friends who happened by when I was out in the garden, but the feeling didn't go away.)

So, today I ran to CVS to grab a disposable digital. (You didn't think I owned a digital camera, did you?) But here's the thing: I'm so in love with my endless project of a house that I did not stop with the peonies. A writing project about my house was already in the works. I've managed, for now, to convince myself to see this blog as an extension (yeah, that's it, an extension) of that project and not the time suck black hole of procrastination I'm afraid it could become.

Writing space: view from my desk, blue daybed

Writing space: detail of blinds I made with my mother-outlaw

Writing space: detail of bookshelf, my beautiful mama