Weekends: Time in Your Nest

Nest at Beadboard UpCountry

Enjoy your nests this weekend! Look around you and find five things you love living with.

Heavy Metal Chic

This circa 1920 lead Belgian football player adds interest to an oak table.

The antique, iron-framed mirror gives additional depth to a bedroom corner.

An old mottled, galvanized sap bucket, originally used to collect maple syrup as it hung from a tree, now functions as a waste basket and provides a rustic touch in a bathroom.

Two small bronze mice hold forth in a bookcase niche.

Metal accessories add another dimension of interest to a room and contrast pleasingly with wood and fabric. All the better if the metal has an antique patina, adding to your environment what the French call the sauvage touch.

Now, if I could just talk tall husband into buying that old Parisian zinc bar for The Bunny Bungalow! Too sauvage?

A Gift from the Past

Who was the little girl who wore this white linen dress so long ago? Who lovingly sewed each precise, tiny stitch by hand? What was the occasion for such a fine dress?

I found this small dress in an antique shop in Historic Houston Heights. I purchased it for The Bunny Bungalow because for me it had that "awww" factor.

Old things fill your head with questions, they set you to wondering. You may never know the answers about their past but they present you with the opportunity to use your imagination to construct magical stories of your own. Perhaps this is better than knowing. Isn't this the greater gift?

Happy Birthday Michael!

Michael at three-weeks old, posing for his first passport photo in Germany.

On this day in history, you (still in utero) and I boarded a U.S. Army medical evacuation chopper for the flight to the Army hospital in Nuremberg, Germany. As previously planned, a team of Army doctors was also flying in to attend what they thought would be a difficult delivery.

The night before the flight, your father, sister and I had gone to see what sort of chopper was on the landing pad in front of the small Army clinic in Hohenfels where we lived. The next day was your estimated date of arrival, so we were especially curious. We knew that any division training at Hohenfels was responsible for providing the medical evac chopper. We also knew that a division of the Bundeswier was training there that week. As we approached the area we saw it looming on the horizon: a small German chopper with external litters! As you know, I'm terrified of heights. Riding inside a chopper would be an act of bravery on my part; but to be transported on the outside of the craft with a tarp strapped over me was unfathomable!

Sure enough, you decided to be on time. In the wee hours of the morning, your father drove me to the small clinic. As we approached the clinic, I averted my eyes. I just couldn't look at that mosquito of a chopper. Your father demanded that I look. There, waiting on the landing pad, instead of the mosquito, was a huge, new U.S. Army helicopter.

You had the good manners to not be born on the chopper, though we were not certain we were going to make Nuremberg before you decided to arrive. The pilot had already radioed to determine your place of birth, should you be born in the air.

There are certain moments in our lives together that are like freeze frames in my head. The first time I saw you is one of those moments. In the delivery room, as I was coming through a fog, I heard, "It's a boy! And what a boy!"

I struggled to focus my eyes and saw that a doctor was holding up very large child with a gloved hand under each arm pit. I laughed, "OK, you guys, where did you get that toddler? You are such jokers!" But it was you; all 9.5 pounds of you, already grown to two feet tall! And you seemed to be giving me the same scrutiny you display in your first passport photo above.

Though we dragged you all over the world and though I wish we had been better parents, you were a wise, realist of a child who turned yourself into a wonderful adult. You have always had a driving curiosity that has given you a passion for life. You have always been thoughtful, moral, ethical, truthful and intellectual in all things. And you have kept me laughing with your intellectual wit and your strange, but realistic take on the world. I am so glad you are in my life.

Happy birthday, Son!

Reflections

Reflected painting, "Howling Hat" by Linda Hickerson-Hofheinz

Metal window frame, cum mirror, from an 1820's-1850's German brick factory.

The reflected bed is a Stickley reproduction of a Harvey Ellis design.

We have been searching for the perfect mirror for our bedroom at The Bunny Bungalow and we finally found it. I saw a mirror on Installations Antiques' website that looked promising but when we walked through their door, Tall Husband saw this one. We both knew immediately that this was "the one." The patina from the elements and age give it just the character we love. It's an old metal window frame from a German brick factory, around 1820's to 1850's, that Jur of Installations Antiques transformed into a mirror. His work is always artistically and functionally exquisite, with just enough edginess to make each piece interesting. The manner in which the mirror fractures images imbues it with an air of mystery.

Pumpkin the Nursery Cat

Pumpkin welcomes Tall Husband and me to Buchanan's Native Plants in the Historic Houston Heights. Buchanan's is Houston's largest garden center devoted to Texas native plants and organic gardening.

"My favorite plant? Let me think about that." (This was a loaded question, since Tall Husband and I had, on a previous visit, seen Pumpkin deliriously silly as she nibbled at the catnip... on the job!)

"I'm still thinking."

"Catnip! Yes, I would have to say that my favorite plant is the nepeta cataria or catnip; it's a great ground cover and is a delicious shade of green."


We know, Pumpkin!

Here is the catnip at Buchanan's. The human staff have to cage the plant to prevent having their profits eaten up by Pumpkin. One staff member confessed that he does occasionally leave a bit of catnip unsecured for Pumpkin's indulgence.

Here's a cat's eye-view of the caged catnip.

After the interview and photo shoot, it's back to work for Pumpkin. "Alright, who disturbed the gravel? This has to be purrrfect. Do I smell the mischievousness of some dog!?"

Rudy: A canine customer at Buchanan's Native Plants; He swears he did not muss up the gravel, "That cat's crazy; I didn't even paws near that gravel! And that's merely water on the gravel to my right!"


This is the third in a series of stories about animals in the retail business. (see the first and second installments.)

Beauty in an Unexpected Place

The real thing.

A flower placed by an unknown person in front of our neighborhood Kroger's

On our way to the park this morning, Tall Husband noticed this odd, wonderful sight and pointed it out to me: Someone had arranged a single, pink flower in a Coca-Cola bottle and placed it on a metal rail. We recalled having seen the same flowers growing wild in a nearby ditch.

Isn't it heartwarming to happen upon an anonymous act of beauty?