Lesley's Orchid

Whereas I blab about every little thing I do or run across, Lesley just very quietly goes along, creating beauty all around her. We were having tea in her greenhouse one afternoon last week and oh by the way, look at this…

Roadkill Snake Art

Found while skateboarding in Pt. Arena (on road down to cove). All I did was trim it, oil skin a bit and — ahem, special effects dept. — add a bit of red to mouth with a red Pentel. It's mounted on a piece of driftwood.

SF At Night #3

SF At Night #2

Nighttime Photos San Francisco Monday

Squirrel Obstacle Course

-From Lew

Wrist Surgery

I'm presently one-handed due to carpal tunnel surgery Tuesday. Had been losing thumb/grip strength due to pinching of median nerve, so San Francisco hand surgeon Dr. Robert Markison (more about this amazing surgeon/musician/inventor/artist later) did the usual carpal tunnel release, which is to cut through the carpal tunnel ligament which pinches on the nerve. This will slow down my blog posts and tweets for just a week or so, I hope.

Mountain Theater on Mt. Tamalpais

This magnificent outdoor theater on Mt. Tam in Mill Valley, Calif., was built in 1936 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Here are some of the seats.

Fresh-Baked Bread

Our 30-year old Retsel grain grinder gave up the ghost, so we got a new Wondermill grinder and this is Lesley's first loaf. We buy organic hard red wheat berries in 50 lb. sacks and grind into flour just before baking. The secret to wonderful food, with any cuisine, anywhere, is F-R-E-S-H!

Phantasmagoric Artist on the Road in Housetruck in UK

Rima Staines is a web-savvy artist immersed in: "…books and stories, puppetry, nature and interesting people, music, superstitions, folklore and fairytales, and most of all the otherness that can be found on the periphery of our lives, the strange and grotesque, the absurd and unnerving ... that topsy turvy in between place where things are not quite what they seem....(Our) days are spent in a house on wheels with Tui, (my) man, best friend and fellow traveller…(we) live in a house on wheels with a creaky mobile broadband connection…depending upon where we have parked our house…"

Rima and Tui live in an old Bedford house truck and travel the British Isles.

"WHEN THE SUN goes down, our evenings are orange. Lit by oil lamps and candles and smoking logs, lugged far and sawn to keep us warm. We squint at our meals cooking and peer into the shadowy sink to find spoons, read books by little circles of orange where the furthest away words on the page fall off the edge into the darkness."

Rima's art is what you might call "phantasmagoric." Her very rich blog: http://intothehermitage.blogspot.com/

Rima's 2003 dissertation on Marginal Medieval Art, on medieval religious texts with margins revealing "…monstrous creatures, devils, men and women and animals…": http://misrulemockerymonstrosity.blogspot.com/

Recycled House in Woods, New Zealand

It looks just like something out of the Northern California woods in the '60s, one of those buildings in Handmade Houses, A Guide to the Woodbutcher's Art — except it's in New Zealand 50 years later. Hey, that's progress, even if slow!

"Simple and un-flashy, the owners moved out into the New Zealand woods to build their house with recycled lumber, windows and doors. An organic vegetable garden and a wood-burning stove are just a few of the ways they intend to live as simply and sustainably as possible..."

There's a great indoor photo of an old wood cookstove.

http://www.re-nest.com/re-nest/green-tours/little-house-in-the-woods-077955