Picture Sundays: Best Van Art Ever

August 7, 2016

...This beautiful couple enjoys the eternal comforts of poetry and philosophy, along with an occasional fruit basket. There are what I think are golden psychic waves traveling between their heads, and the waves have small words floating among them. They are: soul, creativity, poetry, ideas, psyche, inspiration, express, concept, love, mind Photographed on Griffith Park Blvd. in Los Angeles. Save...

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The Fine Art of Determining Peach Ripeness

Mr. Homegrown

June 6, 2016

Fruit Trees, Gardening

4 Comments

How do you know when your peaces are ready to pick? For home growers it’s all about color. According to the University of Georgia, Ground color is the best field indicator of peach maturity. . . The ground color of a peach approaching maturity is light green. A break in color toward yellow is the first definite indication of maturity. Brightening of the red over-color of the skin is another, though less reliable, index of maturity. Red color is t...

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Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up

Mrs. Homegrown

February 26, 2016

Domesticus, Tidying up

2 Comments

I figure by now that there are few of you, at least those of you who have de-cluttering on your radar, who don’t know that Marie Kondo, author of Tidying Up, has a new book: Spark Joy. We’ve been shamelessly selling it in our margins here on the blog for a good while, but I’m just now getting around to reviewing it. Of course, we wrote extensively about our journey with Tidying Up here last year. If you’ve read Tiding Up, your first question woul...

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May Morris: Embroidery as Art

Mr. Homegrown

February 21, 2018

Design

8 Comments

...s probably the best embroiderer the world has ever known. Her work is more like painting than stitching and she raised the craft to levels not seen since the late medieval period. May was a gifted designer and artist and worked in many mediums including fashion and jewelry. You can read her embroidery manual Decorative Needlework online. Are Root Simple readers also avid embroiderers? Leave a comment!...

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Stencils as Garden Art

Mr. Homegrown

August 7, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

10 Comments

...ers alerted me to the far more impressive stencils of San Francisco street artist Jeremy Novy: Photo by Dawn Endico. Green Roof Grower Bruce was inspired by Novy’s work to make his own koi stencils on the sidewalk in front of his house. Now if enough of us adorn these edge spaces (in a neighborly fashion, of course) perhaps we’ll be able to reclaim our streets from the distant bureaucrats who hassle us over our parkway gardens. It’s precisely the...

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