Water & Creativity

 Excellent reading venue, below.  Have recently been bathing with Wendell Berry, Nicky Haslam & a woman who's been living The Dirty Life.

Tub views are a concern.  Behind the draperies, below, the shower.  

More views soon.  Decisions finally made for the large blank wall, alas, men needed for execution.  

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Found a huge vintage Eastlake mirror, huge, $30, it will reflect a garden view.  Timing, it had just arrived into my favorite junk shop.  

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Through the decades, as I've stepped out of the shower, complete visions of the current Garden Design appear in my mind.  As if by Messenger, the Muse.

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A better drug than the $30 score.

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Do you do this too?  Create a garden & home to leverage your thoughts.  Ideas to spur action steps.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics , my bathroom

Draperies at the Door

 In the tropics of Houston, TX light is brutal.  With many ideas back/forth my sister  & I have concluded the solution to her front door furnace is drapery.

More, the builder added windows above windows across the back of her home.  

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When I visit I wear sunglasses inside, even on cloudy days.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic via New York Magazine.

Choose a Theme then Overdose

 Choose a theme, Overdose on your Theme.

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Orchard House, (aka my starter home in a working class neighborhood of cluster homes ca. 1986, today.)

Feng shui has it right about gardens, better than any garden class, 'you must be able to flow easily around your property.'  Like Mrs. Wilcox I adore walking round my garden.  E. M. Forster knew women.  Coop, below,  is mostly rescued materials.  Why not boxwood, roses, itea, hydrangea, camellia, daphne?  The coop is worthy.

View across the drive, below, with front loading garage.  Some jurisdictions have outlawed my type of home.  Too unfriendly.  Garagecentric.  No worries, it is my starter home, here 5 years & off to something more worthy of my magnificence.

It's obvious I had to do more growing than the garden.

I'm particularly pleased with this bit at the side of my garage, above.  Though the white roses lost their graft and only the root stock is left.  Reminds me of an old vicarage wall .
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Did you see the neighbor's houses?  Why would you?  You've entered my world.  An old cottage......  and become lost in my theme.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in my garden last week.

Fireplace Decorating Ideas

Over my fireplace mantel today.

What do you do with your worn out & broken tools?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Yes, screwed to the wall.  And each other.

Hiding Ugly Views

Pleased as the Cheshire Cat.  One of my chief accomplishments.  Do you see why?

A few feet away from my house, above, is a neighbor's house.
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Yet the view is a Woodland Garden: contorted filbert, hydrangea, camellia, azalea, hosta, fern, helleborus, bulbs, meandering path edged with tree limbs.  And the air-conditioner.
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It's a lifestyle choice.  Anything else, for me, is subsistence living.
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I travel farthest in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday, lovely rains all day.  The Woodland Walk is morning sun, with Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden, azalea-camellia-hydrangea, there are blooms EVERYDAY all year.

Acceptable Addiction

 Pharmacology has not discovered a pill to compete with the special endocrinology I was born with.  If they had it would be prescribed, and stolen for a street drug.

I cannot get enough of this, above.

Seriously.

Anticipation, is the best drug.  Oakleaf hydrangea buds, above?  Any bud in my garden, oh my.

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Can you imagine doctors knowing to prescribe an 'anticipation pill' ?

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I'm sure it's the diagnosis for many people, yet 'doctors' have no clue.

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AND, my circle of friends has the same special endocrinology.  When we talk with each other about our gardens, yes, we get high off each others garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO T

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Pics taken this week in my garden.

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Chandelier with a Tin Roof

Reflected lite, even during the day, of chandelier on a tin roof.

In my conservatory.

Doors, windows, tongue/groove all a century old.  Field gathered for over a decade & all free.

Conservatories must be at least 12' x 18' and have doors on 2 walls.  Minimum.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this month in my garden.

Farmhouse Kitchen

A real farmhouse kitchen.  

The island, above, is an old dresser with detailing applied to  the back.

She removed a wall between table & kitchen.

The cafe curtains win a Garden Oscar.  Beyond those curtains, inches, is their driveway, Funeral Home parking lot, and, ta-da, a Funeral Home !
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Sky & tree canopy are all you see.
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Perhaps the solution to your garden eyesore is inside your house.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics at jobsite, same garden as previous post.  Yes, she made lunch, blueberry mini-muffins, pimiento cheese sandwiches, chicken salad, fresh fruit......iced tea mixed with lemonade.  And, I got the story from him of how he met her when they were teens.  They're grandparents now.  The story began when he was a bagboy at Piggly Wiggly.
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You did notice the rug under the island?
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They've asked for a Chicken Coop, Pole Barn, Pond & a few other delicacies.....
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How to Use Heads in Design

Got heads?

They're for

exterior, and

interior.
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Have you noticed a formula for your favorite interiors & exteriors?  Not into formulas?  No worries, formulas are nothing more than Shopping Lists!  Now, I have your attention.
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I've always been drawn to interiors with heads & ......
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In my garden is a decades old collection of broken heads.  Most were a $1.
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Top pic from same home/garden as previous post.  Bottom pics Nicky Haslam, via Cote de Texas article.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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More than heads, bodies too.  And urns with plinths.

Stairs

Did your eye already pick up the salient fact, below?

Risers & steps are not to code.  Now.
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Lovely to walk history, ca. 1900, feel the gait.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken this month, same home/garden as previous post.

Dining Room with Antebellum 'Feel'

The bones of this house 'feel' antebellum.  

Though it's ca. 1900.  

                                               Architect & owner knew what they were doing.

                        Doors, molding, ceiling height, scale & flow redolent of an earlier era.

Dining room, above, flows into the front parlour, and also the central hall and kitchen.
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It's great drama between these rooms with function, paint color, and natural light.  A treat to see a tapestry of color instead of the ubiquitous mono-color shown in most magazines and catalogs.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from same home/garden as previous post.  They've only lived in this home since last August.  It's obvious I'm running all cylinders to balance the interiors with an equally detailed rich-in-history garden.

How to Copy Interiors into your Garden

She will have a stone roundabout with historic French church gargoyle setting atop a plinth of granite, at its center,  in her garden.

Quickly took pics in their home and realized, once I returned home & saw the pics, her Gargoyle Roundabout will be shaped like the central portion of the chinoiserie pattern, below, and outer line of the massed platters, above.

This happens all the time, designing in the garden and seeing validations inside the home.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics same garden as previous posts.  She is also the queen of rugs, picking & placing.