old playground equipment, i just love the stuff. it reminds me of being free and having long hair and being made fun of for always being dirty in the summer. it’s not plastic, it’s wood and metal and you can get burns and splinters. the walls on the slides aren’t high. the swings are hung with chains that make your hands smell like oiled metal. this is a barrel that you stand in with your friends and walk in the same direction together and scream for awhile as you whirl the thing about. kids carve bad words and love promises in the planks of it. it was a shady place to sit in a U while you caught your breath and let the sunny place on the top of your head cool off for a minute until you ran off again.

i started a flickr set of my own to remember these things but i also found this old playground furniture pool. what a great elephant slide!

white butterflies, small and fast, in the garden, on the lantana in the front. jude tries to catch them with a shout and a pinching finger like ernie does but hasn’t gotten any yet. we can pin them like butterflies and beetles in a museum, he says and i see the hallway walls lined with white butterflies, ceiling to floor, their wings unfolded forever under the glass.

later in the day, after the early dinner, after we’ve decided that it looks like rain so we’d better eat inside instead of across the grass and under the trees, after my hands smell of limes and the kids drink chocolate milk, after these it does rain, the sky is black and lola runs into the house for the thunder. the dog comes in, they all come in and pull the wet grass from their legs. rain, thunder, a puddle in the grass, water in streams like mercy from the sky.

i got these amazing strings from liane’s shop (who also has this amazing post of photos of perfectly messy interiors on the blog today) i love basically everything in her shop and have been looking for an opportunity to buy something. happily i ended up buying these at just the right moment because she sent a host of extra lovelies to me for being her 1000 sale. i can’t wait to make some new garlands with these.

today seems like a good day to tell you all about the indie craft parade in greenville. if you’re local you must at least go to the fair and buy something, but you may want to consider submitting your own work, too. the site just launched, check it!

something about february, gray and colorless, a month of endless rain and more cold than one would think such a puny little month could produce. today i saw flour pots, new rakes in shining lines and rows at the store. seeds in packages as long as a row can go. i was tempted, tried, (but did not fail as i sometimes do), for i will order from catalogs and plant in cups i’ve made myself. no over-priced big-box store seeds for me this year. i felt a sort of hope that i don’t usually find in february today, clay pots in rows organized by size, trowels, flowered gardening gloves, stakes for plants, garden hoses in stacks of yellow, black, green coils. hope that remained even when it snowed a bit of slush this afternoon, even when the forecast called for a cold, cold rain all day tomorrow, winter in droplets and gray for miles far, even then.

ernie and i are working on a new project together. a photo a week taken without discussing the content or showing the photo to each other until we bring them together into one lovely pairing. they’re technically called diptychs, of course, but we’re calling ours duets.

my photo is on the right, ernie’s is on the left. you can read the rules we’ve set for ourselves here. a new duet every wednesday, there will be. and the project is almost as nice as if we were playing our instruments together every wednesday, lit by lamps, music in piles all around. this is much tidier and can be done late at night when everyone small is snoozing.

chris sent this to us and the kids think it’s hilarious. what is that tire-necklace for? framing the face? i really don’t know.

it’s kind of mind blowing that people have been having that kind of competition for  800 some years, in and out of centuries, humanity connected always by the simple and every day, even the making of faces just for a laugh.

for a long time now, since his hair got darker and lost almost all hope of curl (good grief, he looks like lola there), we, being curly heads, have had trouble with cutting his hair ourselves. enough was enough, and jude danced his dancing pants into the chair and got a haircut by someone who knew what to do, who coincidentally does a fantastic job cutting my hair, and ernie’s hair, and, this isn’t a commercial or anything, but wilson himself of wilson’s on washington is a whiz of a hair stylist.

and now jude thinks he’s all that, as he probably should. i just want to kiss his forehead constantly. it’s a very good forehead. he is very much against anyone touching the hair, but he will have to get over that.

we were inspired by the cookie spread on good kid hair cuts, but when we went back to take a gander, we realized that we were merely inspired to get this poor kid a good haircut, and not necessarily inspired to give him a haircut as pictured in the mag. i do like that cute little bobbed hair with bangs. lola could rock that, and maybe she will. i just don’t know if i can give up having her in pigtails. and then we were totally glad that david beckham kicks and runs around with good hair and has his picture taken, because that made the whole explanation of what we were thinking that much easier: david beckham’s faux-hawk. or is it fohawk? more pics of jude loving his haircut can be seen here.

henry is a bit envious, he being a curl hater, having curls that everyone gushes over. any seven year old boy would want to cut his curls off after all of the hair tousling he’s put up with. we don’t blame him. but i really feel sad about that, as deeply and motherly sad as i was when jude’s hair went smooth and darker than the white gold blonde ringlets he had from the first. can i have two boys with rad hair that isn’t long and free and curling? oh, these boys: they grow in blinks and blurs and in the most terribly frightening lightning flashes.

the show last night went well, especially for a holiday and for being the only gallery open last night. ernie posted to his blog some great photos early on in the evening. the kids got to be a little too rambunctious to stay much longer, so we scooted on out about half way through, but it was great all the same.

annie brought me some good chocolate from chicago and when i was eating some of it last night i was wishing i was a chocolatier, or just living the movie chocolat.

also, at the show, i met kent ambler, who was very humble about his amazing work in person and then when i went to his website i was blown far and away. he does some incredible things, those woodcuts: i die.

this weekend we’re setting up bunk beds in the boys room, the bunks that ernie and his brother slept in, that their dad and his brother slept in, newly painted and otherwise spruced. i do fear collapse, but i also have, on occasion, a very morbid imagination.

i’ve spent the last few days looking back, looking forward, and there are beautiful things and ugly things in both places. isn’t that what we all resolve, simply: more beauty in the year to come, less ugliness than the year before? so this year i’m not making a long list of resolutions that will, of course, be broken. i’ve only got a few, and they’re more reminders than resolutions, but, all the same:

• slow down and take it all in (breathing deeply and biting the tongue when necessary)
• love more, especially the people in my house (which means letting other things go, for love)
• be there, here, right in the midst of all that is all around me (and maybe, hopefully, take some pictures of it)

year that is new, hello, you. the years are soaring past in a thunder and sound that comes a split second later. the days are in a hurry, shooting upwards like a holiday firecracker, golden and gone. the newness of a year, a very year, is upon us. where will we go? what will we see? who will we be in the end? let’s go!

But you, newest song of the lot, 

 You are not old enough to have done much mischief. 

 I will get you a green coat out of China 

With dragons worked upon it.

I will get you the scarlet silk trousers 

From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella. 

- Ezra Pound, part of Further Instructions

rainy, cold. we actually close the windows again. we’ve no yellow trees, yet, not entirely, specks of gold, winking cats eyes, in the trees of green. halloween is coming and i’m hoping for leaves underfoot to crunch as we head down the street in anticipation, bags for candy hoisted over their shoulders, masks askew, the clomp of boots, the billowing wave of a cape. yellow, red, orange leaves for halloween. this is not too much to ask, is it?

saturday. the unceasing rain sent ernie home (with coffee) from the shoot. saturdays are dismal when he’s not here, rain or not.

do you have the iphone app for the best camera? if you don’t, you should. it really is the best little thing on my phone.

three places to visit on the interwebs: dos family (love these realistic homes!), the impossible cool (smoking is impossibly cool, or so it would seem), daydream lily (beautiful places and photos and things).