suziebeezieland

wooster speaking

"I don't know if you know that sort of feeling you get on these days round about the end of April and the beginning of May, when the sky's a light blue with cotton-wool clouds and there's a bit of a breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifted feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean. I'm not much of a ladies' man, but on this particular morning it seemed to me that what I really wanted was some charming girl to buzz up and ask me to save her from assassins or something." (P.G. Wodehouse in Jeeves in the Springtime)

pincushion flower

I wanted to tell you about one of my favorite cottage garden flowers, in case you don't know about it. If you do know about it, please let me know if you are also a fan!

It's lovely, and has a very ugly name. It's "scabiosa." I think this sounds like a Harry Potter spell to kill traitorous rats. (Scabiosa kedavra!)

It's also known more prettily as "pincushion flower."

I just love this flower. It's a perennial, which means it comes back each year. If you leave it be, it will spread out two or three feet wide.  Here is one I planted last year:

If you don't want it to get big and spread, you just divide it up (pull up part of the plant at the roots) and plant what you pull up somewhere else.  As long as you keep deadheading it (cutting off the dead flowers), it will keep blooming for the length of your growing season.

I have them tucked all over the place out front, in the beds and in containers.  They peek through the railings.

And they are really pretty as cut flowers, and last a long time.

They are pinky-purple, lavender, or off white, and butterflies love them. There are lots of different types. :)

I've bought a few at local nurseries (they are common here, and I assume they are elsewhere) and this year ordered a couple through Annie's Annuals & Perennials.  If you think you'd like to try one, check out Scabiosa artropurpurea,  Scabiosa anthemifolia or Scabiosa caucasica.

roses

We got home from vacation last week, and were greeted by our roses, which had opened up. Every single April, I continue to be amazed that they do this. :D

I'm working on the beds in front and back, tucking plants in here and there, mulching and composting a bit, and excited to see what things will look like in June.

new sheets

{image from crate&barrel}

I'm excited because we're getting new sheets on our bed.  The last time we got new sheets was just after Claire was born, over six years ago! I think they were 200 count percale (not anything super duper fancy), but they were that smooth, nice cotton from Lands' End, and they've lasted forever.

But the fitted sheet got a big hole in it this week, and the corners of the pillowcases have worn through, so they finally needed to be replaced.  (The top sheet is still in great condition!)

I didn't find anything at Lands' End this time that I got excited to own for another six years :) but I did find these at Crate and Barrel. Our Susanna in Finland, of course I always think of you whenever I see Marimekko! 

Hey, here's a trick I didn't know about until today. The sheets were backordered online in the size I needed, so I called the local store in Pasadena. They didn't have them in stock but could get them from the warehouse for me, and the shipping to our house was free! That's for regular UPS ground. Then I could have paid an additional $10 for overnight, or $5 for two-day delivery. Those options are all cheaper than regular shipping from the catalog/website.

There is a little blurb about the designer, Maija Isola, here and here.  I bet you will recognize her Unikko pattern!  My mom had Marimekko when I was growing up, and it makes me so happy to see it again. :)

{image from crate&barrel}

the friday news

What have you all been up to this week?

we all loved ham-ham

Claire (sobbing): Why did God let Ham-Ham die? Why didn't He stop it?

Mama: God doesn't like death, Claire.  But death is part of the world right now.  God loved Ham-Ham.

Claire: Is Ham-Ham in heaven?

Mama: Yes.

Claire: Is he in hamster heaven or regular heaven?

Mama: Regular heaven.

Claire: But how do we know if animals love God?

Mama: I guess God knows. 

Claire: I just don't like that word DIE.

Mama: Neither do I, Claire. Neither does anybody.

lompoc

On the way back from Cambria, we stayed overnight in Lompoc, to break up the drive. Lompoc has a nice Embassy Suites with a good pool.  Lompoc is not necessarily a tourist destination (pleasedon'tbemadatmelompocchamberofcommerce, butthereisnothingtodo), although my brother-in-law said it has a great golf course. And during the summer there is a flower festival, because the Lompoc Valley is a flower-growing valley. We were there a month or so too early to get the full effect of an entire valley full of flowers (it looks like a beautiful patchwork quilt when it's in bloom), but we did find a few fields of early bloomers. (We also saw a TON of artichokes.) 

We did manage to catch a viewing of Monsters v. Aliens, however. :) So that pretty much wraps up our little vacation up the coast. 

more cambria

After lunch at Indigo Moon the first full day we were in Cambria, we all went to check out Cambria Nursery and Florist. I got so excited when I saw it, I kind of skipped, which is doubtless unbecoming a traditionally built woman my age. But sometimes you just have to get excited and show it, I think. :)

Claire announced she is saving up all her money for the rest of her life to buy all of these mushrooms. She really wants a ceramic mushroom garden.

It's the most beautiful nursery I've ever been to.

Here Bob is holding Claire up to see the flower thatching on the roof of this little playhouse.

I love friendly signage.

I can tell you that I am going to daydream about this place until the next time we go back.

Close by the Cambria Nursery and Florist is the Cambria Pines Lodge, which was built in the twenties, I think, and is very charming. The grounds are really lovely. Again, a very good place to live if you're one of the wee folk. Here is a fairy dwelling for you if you are.

Here is The Flower Bed. :)

And here is the gate to the butterfly garden. Did you ever?

I would love a sundial in our garden, but I haven't the slightest idea how to read one or set it up. Does it face North? Towards the sun? Antarctica? Towards Mecca? What? Also, I'm more of an Arabic numerals kind of gal.

I always love pretty gates and fences.

And they also had good firm yet pleasant signage. I think this is a good way to communicate in general . . . say what you mean clearly, but be nice about it, and keep it pretty.

So that wraps up my photos from Cambria. We had another night and half day there, and there were more yummy meals, some swimming in the pool, more trips to the beach, and more looking at cute shops. We all love this town.

Tomorrow I'll show you a couple photos from Lompoc on the way home, and then that is the end of our vacation. :)

narcissism epidemic

One of my friends had this article linked up on her Facebook page, and I just loved it. Amen!

Are We in a Narcissism Epidemic?

cambria

After our day in Santa Barbara, we drove up the coast to Cambria. Oh, Cambria, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. We stayed at the Pelican Cove Inn this time, on Moonstone Beach. (We've stayed at the Fogcatcher Inn before, which is also great.) Our view was fabu!

Sadly, Bob was still having to resolve a problem at work, so in the late afternoon Claire and I left him on his laptop and headed into town to get a bit of time in a couple shops before they closed.

I think I've mentioned before that my favorite store in the entire universe is in Cambria. It's called Birds of a Feather, and a very kind woman with an absolutely super eye for finding great stuff owns it. Her name is Bonnie Crawford. I was excited to find out that she has started a blog, here.  We got there just before closing, so we bought a few goodies and then went next door to my next favorite shop, The Garden Shed, which is right next door to Birds of a Feather.  Claire loves The Garden Shed because Abner the Cat lives there. It is good that he is longsuffering, because she is in love with him.

I love The Garden Shed because the shop inside is beautiful and very fun to explore, and the garden area outside is equally delightful. I must interject here to let you know that Cambria would be an excellent place to live if you were a wee fairy or elf. It is also a very fun place to be if you love gardening!

After the shops closed, we were able to go have a fun dinner and evening with Bob. The next morning he had some more work to do, so Claire and I headed down to the beach. I told her there wouldn't be as much seaglass as there was at Santa Barbara, because Cambria has a cleaner beach, but we did find a few pieces so smooth that they looked like tiny pebbles, in cloudily opaque colors that pebbles don't come in.

She tried hard to get a barnacle off the rock.

When we hit the beach it was about 10 a.m., and we had until noon when Bob would be free of work obligations for the rest of vacation, and could just play. So we headed back into town to have more time in the shops.

Heart's Ease has long been one of my favorites. It needs some TLC these days, which makes me sad, but there are still things to enjoy.

These are some California poppies at Heart's Ease. They're our state flower. They are everywhere this time of year, wild on the side of the road, and all over the gardens in Cambria. (I'm still using my little camera because my big good one is broken. Sorry about that.)

Claire always loves the Fairy Garden for children.

So after our morning at the beach and in the shops, we went and got Bob and went to lunch. We celebrated that he was done with work and could now just fully enjoy the vacation. Our favorite restaurant in Cambria is Indigo Moon, which has a lovely eating area in the back. There are big wooden picnic tables on the deck off the back, which then steps down to this patio area. It's very charming.

Tomorrow I will show you photos from the gardens at the Cambria Pine Lodge, and also the Cambria Nursery and Florist, which was a new and lovely discovery for us.

on the road with bob, suzie, & claire

I thought you might like to see a bit of the California coastline going up to Cambria from Santa Barbara, and to hear some of the worst singing (me, not Karen Carpenter) you have ever heard in your entire life. Bob is so lucky to have my special gift of song in the car with him for hours and hours on end! :D

ps If you are unable to watch this video for some reason, let me know. I don't really know if embedding them here works for everyone, so tell me if you can't see it. Although you may be better off not seeing it. Ha!

santa barbara

We got back today from a little vacation up the coast. We spent our first night in Santa Barbara. We like to stay at the Franciscan Inn, which is walking distance to the beach, and is clean and neat. And they have good chocolate chip cookies in the lobby. :)

We walk down to the beach past the Hotel Oceana, which has the most beautiful geraniums I've ever seen. I stayed there a couple years ago and talked to the head gardener.  I asked him if he could give me any geranium-growing tips. He said to pinch them a lot, and fertilize them regularly. "Yes, but what is your magic potion?" I asked him.  He said that he thinks the coolish coastal air is perfect for them.  The beach is the magic potion for geraniums. :)

Claire is hiding her face in this picture because the wind was really blowing.  She said, "I don't want to get sandblasted." Between the gusts, we played and skipped smooth, flat stones into the ocean.

The next morning, Claire and I snuck down to the beach ourselves again when Bob was working on his laptop (he didn't want to, but he had to), and looked for sea glass. Somehow, I had never told her about sea glass before, and she was completely enchanted with the idea.  We found seven or eight smallish pieces, rubbed smooth enough to pass my "is this sea glass or still-too-sharp-to-be-sea-glass?" inspection.  They were all green or clear (the color of beer and soda bottles), but Claire found a small red piece, which I thought was unusual. She said when she grows up, she wants to be a treasure-finding girl. Wouldn't that be a fun job?

I love Santa Barbara because it has a lovely European air to it. This is the courtyard by the Casa de la Guerra and the Wine Cask restaurant, which I think has closed (alas). I like to stroll through this area because it's very pleasant, so we did, and bumped into a film crew. I think they were filming a new Meryl Streep movie, that will also have Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin in it. So if such a movie comes out this December or thereabouts, look for this plaza in it. This is the Casa de la Guerra itself.

This is in the same courtyard area. Isn't it pretty? If you are unfamiliar with Santa Barbara, I should mention that (a) it is north of Los Angeles on a piece of the California coastline that goes east-west (which means I can never orient myself when I'm there, because I get so confused that I'm not facing west when I'm facing the ocean), and (b) the first European settlers who stayed there were Spanish missionaries and soldiers, many of whom brought their families with them.  The architecture is distinctly Spanish, and the climate is mediterranean.

Here is a building number painted on the wall that I thought was pretty.

We ate dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, called Pascucci.  We sat outside even though Wednesday was cold and windy, and I had to laugh as I looked around, because I realized our view was stereotypically southern Californian. There is almost a formula to it: (1) blue sky, (2) palm trees, (3) outdoor space heaters, and (4) red clay tile roofs.

The next morning, we went to Coffee Cat, which is our favorite coffee joint in Santa Barbara.  I think you could get coffee on every block, if you wanted to, but this is our favorite.

Then Bob and Claire took off to ride a surrey bike, and dropped me off on State Street to look around the shops. I had been disappointed the day before to find my favorite two-story Anthropologie boarded up. "What happened to Anthropologie?" I asked the guy in Sur La Table. "Oh, it's moved up the street to a smaller place," he said.

Like in Persuasion, when Anne Elliot is trying to convince her father, the vain and foolish Sir Walter Elliot, who has squandered their finances, to downsize.  But he doesn't want to downsize, he just wants to move somewhere else that costs less, and still live it up. I'm so glad that Anthropologie downsized, because things really didn't go all that well for Sir Walter Elliot.

The new, smaller Anthropologie is very lovely. We have one in Pasadena, too, but of course you have to go into each one, because each is staged differently. It's now okay to take photos inside Anthropologie, so I did.

I had trouble getting a good shot of the front window, which was bee-themed. There were Mason jars of honey screwed to baton boards by their lids, and Sue Bee honey bear jars.  The reflection shows a nice ivy-covered building across the street.

I would love a job designing these little vignettes all over the store. Not that I would know where to start, but it seems like it would be fun to do.

These dresses all remind me of Sophia Loren. I kept singing "Never on Sunday" as I walked around, until I remembered that was a Melina Mecouri film, not Sophia Loren. But I could see Melina Mecouri wearing these, too.

If you don't actually have certain items around your home, like floor lamps, don't worry. You can just paint them where you want them. I love this idea. And some more dresses for Sophia and Melina as they zoom around Italy and Greece looking breezy and beautiful.

Do you prefer mannequins without heads, or with? I guess they're more like old statues without heads.

I had some more of these latte bowls in my hands until I reminded myself that I do not have a single inch of my house to devote to another latte bowl. I have them everywhere. They are inexpensive and addictive.

This display made me think it would be fun to have a big cubbyholed bookcase on a wall of the kitchen to keep everything in, like an old General Store. And it made me think how funny it would be to paint that strip of wall under the ceiling and above the cabinets with chalkboard paint, and draw the accessories up there. All this drawing and painting of household items, mixing up a 2-D cartoon world with a 3-D real world, reminds me again of My World and Welcome to It.

I really liked the idea of having herbs for nametags at a spring lunch.

If staging and decorating were the same thing, it would be so funny. I'd have bread all over my house. :)

If you go out the back of this armoire, you end up in French Narnia. :)

I am always happy that Anthropologie loves birds, because I do, too.  These first ones hanging from the ceiling were made of tissue paper wrapped with plastic wrap.

So that's about it for Santa Barbara. Next stop, Cambria! :)

claire's room

The issue in Claire's room has always been that to give her enough floor space to play, I have to push the bed against the wall, which makes it very difficult to make. Alternately, if I place the bed so that I can access both sides, it eats up the floor space.  There have been several different furniture arrangements over the years. :)

A couple days ago I realized that if I put her bed over by the window, it works. There's just enough room by the window for me to skooch in to make it.  She is excited to be able to look out the window when she's in bed. :) (We never open the shade on the bigger window behind the bed, anyway, because it looks directly at the neighbor's house and driveway.) 

Hey, I'm sorry for the bad pictures. My good camera is broken, so until I get it fixed, I'm using the little camera.

The hydrangeas outside the window will bloom this summer, so there will be something pretty to look at.

And there's a good patch of floor space to play on now.

And room for dancing.  The FLOR rug got disassembled and reassembled for the rearrangement, and I need to order some more FLORdots to stick it back together properly.

I never move this bookrack, because it tucks in behind the closet door just right.  Besides, it's bolted to the wall. :)

Ham-Ham's cage is in the kitchen right now because I'm getting ready to clean it, but it sits on top of this bookcase. It's covering up the Kim Parker ladybug picture now that it's on this wall, so I'll have to move the picture to another wall. (Moving the furniture around always starts a chain reaction of art-moving-around, too.)

I'll probably move it over here above this little bookcase.

So that's about it for the furniture moving. :)  Here are two random details, however.  There is a Disneyland silhouette on the front of the door.

And here are some clothespin ladies that our Lisa D. made for her a few years ago. We love them. :) And a little porcelain lady, which belonged to Bob's mom's mom.  And I got the bunny and mouse tea party when I was little. :)

happy easter, suziebeezieland

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom

by Stuart Townsend
Copyright 1995, Kingsway’s Thankyou Music

coloring eggs

I like the purple one with the hamster drawn on it.

Nine dishes of dye. Twelve eggs. Four ears.

life! be in it!

If you feel yourself continually longing for something in life, I would suggest that what you are longing for is real life. :) C.S. Lewis put it this way in his novel "Till We Have Faces":

Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me.

In his prose, he put it more directly like this:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity)

We had four caterpillars at our house a couple weeks ago, and then they built their chrysalises, and then a couple days ago they emerged as butterflies, and we let them go. We've done this with Claire for three or four years, and I'm never tired of the spiritual analogy. 

A follower of Christ and missionary named Jim Elliott once said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

And Jesus said, "Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it." (Luke 17:33)

So today on Good Friday I'm going to talk about dying, but then I'm going to talk about living. :)

The Death Part

Almost 64 years ago to the day, on April 9 1945, the Nazis hung a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer because he had been involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.  There weren't enough gallows to hang everyone involved in the plot, so Hitler and Goebbels improvised at the concentration camp in Buechenwald. Bonhoeffer was hung with a noose made of piano wire.

Bonhoeffer was a follower of Christ, and wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship.  He is best known for his attacks on what he called "Cheap Grace."  Here is how Bonhoeffer described "Cheap Grace":

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (p. 47)

This cheapened understanding of Christ's work for us on the cross which Bonhoeffer describes was rampant in the Lutheran church in Germany when Bonhoeffer was alive.  It's also rampant in the church in the United States today.  Some people profess to love Jesus with their mouth, but do not live lives in obedience to God.  They can't really be distinguished from anyone else in the world.  Their lives don't bear fruit.

Here is what Bonhoeffer said about the Cross:

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call. (p. 99)

Of course, it doesn't really matter what Bonhoeffer says if the Bible doesn't say it, too. But it does:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:8-11)

The Bible tells us that our old self dies when we accept Jesus' work for us on the cross.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  (2 Corinthians 5:17)

And Galatians 2:20 says this:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

And Colossians 3:9-10:

. . . you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

So when we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that His work on the cross reconciles us to God, we die to our old selves. We turn around from our old sin, and we start running a race toward the finish line. 

Here are some words that get thrown around sometimes, and here is what they mean.  "Justification" is that time when we start our race: we come to believe that Jesus is, indeed, the Son of God, and that only His work on the cross can reconcile us to God.  We accept His work on our behalf, and turn to Him as our Lord.  "Sanctification" is that process of living our lives in Christ, headed toward the prize. "Glorification" is when we get to heaven and stand before God holy and perfect because (and only because) of Christ's work on our behalf, which we accepted.

The Life Part

So there is death . . . Christ's death on the cross, and our death to our old selves.  And it can be very painful. But then there is LIFE.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. (John 6:47)

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:12)

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:28)

. . . but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17)

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)

There are many, many more of these verses about this new life that Jesus offers. If you can this Easter weekend, ponder Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.  You could read the gospel of John.  Life! Be in it! :)

little baby bunnies

easter decorations

Why does it crack me up so much that the dog and cat are posed in the background? I don't know, but every time I look at this photo, I almost fall off my chair with the giggles. It's like American Gothic, but with pets.

מֹשִׁיַּח

The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
{John 4:25, 26}

ladybug picnic

Claire and I bought a cup of ladybugs to let out in the garden this week. The idea is that the ladybugs will colonize, and eat the bad bugs like aphids.  Frankly, we do this every year and I have absolutely no idea if it makes a difference or not. I mostly do it because Claire gets so excited, and comes up with names for all 200 or so ladybugs, and just loves the whole thing. Here is an actual photo of ladybug-letting-go-induced happiness.

You're supposed to put let them out at dawn or dusk or when it's overcast, because they're more likely to stay and make the garden their home. But we always buy them in the afternoon after school and then can't wait, so they get let out at four or five. I have never noticed that our garden is particularly full of ladybugs in the months to come, so they may be moving elsewhere. I'm not sure.

Sally Cat watches us from inside.

I'm so late getting things planted this year because of jury duty. I did buy some plants locally last week, and have ordered others online. Right now there are some pansies leftover from winter (they'll die once it gets and stays warm).  I also put in some violas and nemesia for spring color, but they don't usually make it all the way through summer here.  I also put a few herbs in, for smell and pretty green color: feverfew, chamomile, and lemon balm. (The feverfew and chamomile will be covered in little flowers come summer.) And then a few different varieties of one of my favorite perennial flowers: scabiosa. (It's also called pincushion flower.)  Scabiosa is tough, and will bloom here into autumn, in pretty shades of purple and blue.

I haven't mulched yet, so it still looks pretty rough.

To be honest, cocoa mulch doesn't do a great job at weed abatement (it's just not heavy enough to deter them from breaking up through), so in the backyard I use regular old heavy bark mulch.  But cocoa mulch is just so easy to work with (the bags are light and it's easy to scatter) and smells so good and looks so pretty that I continue to use it out front. (I mentioned last year you don't want to use cocoa mulch if your dogs can get to it or want to eat it, because it can kill them.)

  

I have some more interesting plants coming in the mail. :)