Showing posts with label Desk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Desk. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2016

Need Somewhere to Think?

Gardening is truly like putting this room together, below, by Miles Redd.  Intentions for this room, and a garden are the same.  Beauty, calm, introspection, learning, amusement, stewardship of our interior thoughts, connection to larger realms, focus, and oh my the anticipation of being at this table and knowing that whether 15 minutes or 2 hours, each will pass as the same, it would be easy to forget lunch hasn't been eaten, yes, a room like this is a proscenium, just as a garden is.
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"Every garden needs a desk.", said Susanne Hudson.
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Quick assignment.  Say Susanne's 5 words, above, aloud.  Next, do the Johnny Cash thing, 'Meditate on it. Then you'll understand.'

miles redd.:

Pic, above, here.

Reading an education article almost 2 years ago, one of the experts said reading/learning from a source backlit by light from a computer screen/cell phone goes to a different brain region than reading/learning from a paper page lit by natural light.  Fascinating.

 walls Benjamin Moore Healing Aloe trim Benjamin Moore Bavarian Cream.  As I go along here, pinning, I realize another reason I've always liked Benjamin Moore paint.:

Pic, above, here.
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Epiphanies.  Moments of intuitive enlightenment.  Are the hunt in my garden, and they arrive, unbidden.  Do you partake?  Have you already been this intuitive about your garden?  Perhaps it's better to ask, "Have you been this intuitive about a garden?"
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Oh dear the nattering palaver about a garden's sun/shade, how to dig a hole, mowing properly, and worse, chemicals & etc.
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Nope, a garden is not about any of those things in the previous sentence.  None.
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Focus.  Mental focus.  From playful realms to partaking its energy, & love, to assuaging even the deepest loss.  Need to make a major life choice?  Major.  How will you go about it?  I know to go into my garden, phrase the question mentally, set it aside, in faith to G*d, trust the freedom of letting go-letting G*d for at least an hour, then poof voila, seemingly without thinking, an answer.  Heads-up on the life choices that have fear as a component, I've learned to beat fear by asking, "What would I do tomorrow if I were not afraid?"
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A friend, we were in a circle of like minds in a group Lois put together, casually said, "I do my best thinking while sweating."  Wow, a floodgate opened, 'Me too, me too, so harness it girlfriend', I said to myself.
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Gardens aren't what garden centers sell.  Look at the top pic again, and know it is exactly what gardens are.  Yet more.
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Redemptive beauty.  Abiding.  Places of joy, grace, not a place to work digging holes, shearing lawn, though if those things are done they are the gift of washing-the-servants-feet.  Stewardship.  Focus, mindset, choices.  A garden is long threads of time.  Opposite to tv, internet, cell phone, cacophonies.
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Focus, comes to you in a garden, you don't have to go to it.  More, you get the trinity of focus,
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"Focus matters enormously for success in life and yet we seem to give it little attention.
Daniel Goleman‘s book, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, explores the power of attention. “Attention works much like a muscle,” he writes, “use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows.”
To get the results we want in life, Goleman argues we need three kinds of focus: inner, other, and outer.
Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions. Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives. And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world. A (person) tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.
How we deploy attention shapes what we see. Or as Yoda says, “Your focus is your reality.” , from Farnum Street, here.
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I'm fortunate my gardening began before cell phone/internet.  I know what a garden harnesses.  I know how diminished my garden is with my cell phone/internet.  About 2 years ago, I had a more fabulous than normal afternoon, beyond 4 hrs, they felt like a vacation, in my garden.  Coming inside, discovery why.  Cell phone on the kitchen counter.  Whoa, or woe, that epiphany.  Disclosure, I do carry cell phone into garden.  Self-employed is a great excuse, perhaps Beloved needs me, or my ankle goes, or nefarious mr. timber rattler or, or, or.
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Way back in the 1950s the philosopher Martin Heidegger warned against a looming “tide of technological revolution” that might “so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be … the only way of thinking.” That would come at the loss of “meditative thinking,” a mode of reflection he saw as the essence of our humanity.
I hear Heidegger’s warning in terms of the erosion of an ability at the core of reflection, the capacity to sustain attention to an ongoing narrative. Deep thinking demands sustaining a focused mind. The more distracted we are, the more shallow our reflections; likewise, the shorter our reflections, the more trivial they are likely to be. Heidegger, were he alive today, would be horrified if asked to tweet. ", wrote Goleman.

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Pic, above, here.
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Farnum Street selections, above, from, The Impoverishment of Attention, here.
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I'm impatient to take notes, put upon paper with hand/pen, on the new desk in my garden, from yesterday's Sunday edition of Farnum Street.  Ironically, my new garden desk is currently in Susanne Hudson's garden.  Bought for a harvest table, custom made by a craftsman in Susanne's town, too long for my small van, Susanne will bring it next time she has a client near me.  I know she's smiling each time she sees 'my' desk, knowing how excited I am to get it.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Friday, May 20, 2016

Window View is Your Life View

“The Soul selects her own Society.” 
― Emily DickinsonThe Complete Poems
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Inside/outside narrative.  Vanishing Threshold, below.
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Recognize her window?  Emily Dickinson.  A recreation at New York Botanical Garden.

This is the view from the Homestead, the poet Emily Dickinson's home, recreated as part of an exhibit about her gardens at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. It's a lovely exhibit, interspersing her poetry, much of which was inspired by nature, with flowers and plants.:
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Pic, above, here.
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A salesman called, about 15 years ago, selling vinyl double paned windows.  "How could Emily Dickinson have written her poetry with those windows?", I asked.
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Now, the science & math are available for keeping historic windows vs. replacing with new double paned windows.  Adding storm windows to historic windows creates less energy loss.  Greater money savings.
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Alas, the divide of souls knowing this inherently in their DNA vs. those who will never get it, is well beyond to the moon & back.
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Young man selling the vinyl double paned windows?  He did pause.  Then resumed his scripted sales pitch.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Monday, October 6, 2014

Homeschooling: Beautiful Easy Landscape Design with Layers of Learning

Well educated herself, she's probably surprised this, below, is her job now.  The best job she'll ever have, homeschooling her sons.
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Her chair faces the front yard.  My job is to take an adequate landscape and turn it into a multi-layered narrative more deeply entwined with stewardship than amusement.  Though amusement will still play a role.  A role we give to it, deeper/richer than assigned by society 'norms'.



What I will add to this landscape?
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Engagement.  I want to deeply engage 'her', more than her sons.  Everyday, wanting her to see something stunning, she glances, and thinks, 'wow'.  With blooms, berries, fruits, burgeoning of spring, perceptions of senescence, humus of fall, colors, paths, focal points, textures, repetitions, historical ties, fragrance, birds, possums, coons, squirrels, deer, insects, sounds of wind through foliage, intricacies of good soil and its productions for our survival, outdoor classrooms serendipitously appearing, outdoor classrooms created as destinations, unstudied playgrounds imagined by her and the boys at a whim, playground areas created for myriad games, beautiful landscape areas demanding an impromptu picnic, landscaped area created for a harvest table & dining or studying classwork, a pizza oven, a Peter Pan Express created from the indoor kitchen to their outdoor kitchen downstairs (ropes/pulley/wire basket), a cluster of bushes with an interior secret place for the boys to have a hobbit hole, strands of Italian piazza lights in a couple of places, a place for her to read/absorb the philosophy/poetry/essays of Wendell Berry, when it snows I want her to feel like her indoor classroom is a magical snow globe, a garden of epiphanies, a garden of stewardship more than amusement, a garden that needs her boys, a garden that provides more stewardship to her than she does to it, and so very much more.
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Many of the plants will have a large river stone, about 3 pounds, at their base, with Latin and common names written in grease pencil.  Instead of mulch the garden will have groundcovers, no nitrogen-phosphorous-potassium fertilizers will be used to poison the groundwater, amongst her dense shade a sunny enough spot must be found for a pear tree, new plantings will be added for the landscape to have something coming into bloom/color/berry every 2 weeks, a compost pile will be created, potager in pots on the deck where it is sunny and the boys learn agricultural yields are increased by the ornamental landscape surrounding it, and etc.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic shot at jobsite last week.  Will draw their landscape this week.
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Help, what else does her garden need?
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.
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NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 
Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.
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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.
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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow
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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?
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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.
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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 

 I  welcome your input.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Desk & End Table on the Porch

Perfect place to get a few things done on the laptop, a quick lunch, perhaps a grandchild coloring?


Maybe it's only an extra chair.


A magic table:  end table AND desk.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday at jobsite.  Did you notice the garden view in the top pic?  Decades of experience, studies in historic gardens across Europe, college, seminars, knowing  simplicity is the 'skill'. .

Monday, June 17, 2013

The Table You Want on Your Porch

Rescued: door, windows, stool.  


Love the sexy lines of this stool, we chose it first so more galvanized accouterments placed for balance.  
    



 Dinner table, floral arranging table, potting table, styled table.  Whatever, they're FREE.




During the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival we caught many pairs of friends sitting, visiting, enjoying the breeze, loving the views.
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Susanne Hudson & I sat in the chairs admiring our work.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.  The porch got bigger with the furniture added.  Why?  More function added along with the beautiful forms.   How did Susanne & I get the porch done, we schlepped everything you see into place.  
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No magic minions.
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Passion is the magic.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Office Renovation

My real office is your garden.  When you hire me it's to turn your hopes & dreams of a garden into plants-hardscape-house, a Vanishing Threshold, that ephemeral bonding of joy letting you hold onto faith, expand your spirit & gather grace.


 This zone, designing gardens, is intoxicating, Joseph Campbell speaks of it as experiencing eternity here & now.


My office must let me leave ties of place to become a Mental Traveler.


Letting the Muse of writing, lecturing, powerpoints, & Garden Design 'dance'.
 



In homage to Bunny Mellon, my basket table.  Each client for the day goes into their own basket, a lecture in the evening has its own basket too.  Adore multiple basket days.


Long-distance Garden Design is done, above.


Administrative tasks here.


Overlooking the garden, below.  Best place to blog, surf, read.






No rugs or art yet.  Enjoying the simplicity.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Laskett, left above, devoted to me no friends like him!  He pays them zero attention.  If there is a loud crash or something 'wrong', daily occurrences, it's Laura, right above.
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Love walking into my office every morning.  Decades of joy.
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I adore looking at offices, thought it fair to show mine.

Friday, April 29, 2011

How To Copy A Design


Before her bedroom, below, I fell for the garden & parking court in the movie, Something's Gotta Give.Hunting/gathering last week, $20, gotta love it
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"Every garden needs a desk.", Susanne Hudson said. Crazy idea, yes?
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Life is good. Bedroom & garden will BOTH get a desk/chair.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Zero idea how to reconfigure the bedroom for a desk/chair & zero idea where to put a desk/chair in the garden. This challenge is pure catnip.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Hepcat

Finally, met a HEPCAT, below.
My right hand on his dropleaf table at Scott Antique Market this month, he anticipated my intent, before I finished my sentence, he had grabbed my right hand & lowered to his knees. Firmly guiding my hand (me clueless) to a screw. They were loose on purpose.
Bought the Hungarian chest & too cute watering can, above, before I met my HEPCAT.
HEPCAT knew loose screws would make it quicker to get the legs off the table.
HEPCAT wanted $175 for the table, (me- intense eye contact), then he said $145? I said, "You think about that price while I wander the booths & come back." "$100?" "Sold, will you keep the table while I wander?" He grabbed my hand, "Let's shake."
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There was something intensely USA-of-my-childhood, real, true, honest, earnest, delightful, a light behind his eyes, spiritual, joyful, peaceful, warm, intelligent, been thru the fire & came out a phoenix within HEPCAT.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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HEPCAT, George, was at the location inside the perimeter & selling his wares outside on the sidewalk at the end of the building. Poppets, you do realize what these acquisitions are for? My new conservatory!!!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Where You Need A Desk

Susanne Hudson says, "Every garden needs a desk."Her little thought is a great truth. Until then I didn't KNOW my garden was missing its desk.
When my Conservatory, made of rescued materials, is completed, yes, it will have a garden desk.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics of Susanne's garden desk taken earlier this year. Of course they are real hydrangeas.
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(Remember Penny McHenry's Garden Desk in her garage? Yes, inspired by Susanne Hudson.)

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

VLADIMIR NABOKOV & DESKS IN THE GARDEN

Colum McCann, in the NY Times yesterday, wrote "the purpose of storytelling is", "to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade." Vladimir Nabokov
Landscapes have always been stories to me.

In a garden there is no waiting for the "exquisite and festive". And that "elegant masquerade"? It's there for the taking in a garden.
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Those who have found it know the key is in the 'taking' and that is the exact point where grace enters. Oh, that grace. It's a ball of energy, creativity, joy, wit, wealth, beauty, acceptance, forgiveness.
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More desks, above, in Susanne Hudson's garden. Aren't her desks exquisite, festive, elegant masquerades? She takes the fragrant tenderness of objects around her and spins gossamer magic.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Friday, June 12, 2009

A DESK IN THE LANDSCAPE

Can you imagine a desk outside? Susanne Hudson has several desks throughout her garden.

This one is my favorite.
Do you hear wheels with clunking gears? It's my brain. Trying to figure out where to put a desk in my garden. Oh, the lamp is a real turn on too.
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Susanne Hudson, of Douglasville, GA, you are a genius.
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The first rule of landscape design is to copy & I hope you take my crush on your idea as a compliment!!
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For the truly observant, the gravel is granite #89.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara