It’s the creative month of September.🍂 Perfect for us, the most wonderful time of year to be wrapped up in the Art of the Home every day. It would be that way for me no matter where I lived! I’m a home girl from way back! But this year it’s mandatory! Yay! MUSICA! (My mom used to sing this around the house!)

It’s my same old song, a song of home, being sung in a brand new place!💘

Home, where everything is different except our attitudes! It is another world out here! Guess what we plant here in California in September? Did you say Dahlias? Yes! Can you believe that? Me, either. Guess if you have to dig them up to winter-over! Yes, you’re right! You don’t! What fun. I ordered them for Joe for last Christmas, before we knew we were coming to California … and here we are at the perfect planting place. Google actually says we’ll see blooms this Christmas!

Willard-Time and I hardly know where to begin. The world is filled with ups and downs, worrisome chaotic things that keep us awake at night, but after moving across country, dealing with months of that kind stress, I’m lucky now to be unpacked!!!, and constantly busy with all the ordinary little details of home.💖 My Studio is finally set up, so I’ve been working on the covers for the 2026 calendars  (one-down, 3-to-go!)! I’ve been organizing my books, hanging sheets on the line, putting flowers in my little vases, figuring out which lampshades to use on the lamps in the guest room, Getting the house ready for my sister’s visit. For me, making a home has always been the most creative job there is, part of my dream of what life is all about, goodness and safety, trust, and wholesomeness and being happy. As I’ve said many times, we can’t control what goes on in the outside world, but as long as there are yard sales, most of us do have the power to make our own little part of it exactly how we want it to be.🌺And home is definitely the garden metaphorically speaking! Planting seeds and watching them grow. So let’s talk about all the good stuff! We had a spectacular August here where we live, 5 miles up the road from the Pacific Ocean. Early fog disappears by around 10 am, leaving us with breezy, cool mornings, cool nights in the 50ºs ~ lovely sleeping weather under the cozy covers with all the windows open ~ and soft sun the rest of the day, the kind of sunshine I remember, growing up here as a child, when I would wake from my nap and go out and lay on the warm sidewalk in front of our house, enjoying the caress of the sun with the intermittant sound of roller skates hitting the cracks in the pavement. There’s local Mexican food galore, new bakeries to explore, watching the sun fall into the blue Pacific, free concerts under the trees in the local park every Sunday ~ and Farmer’s Market on Saturday. We even have a mystery… we were in Morro Bay for dinner the other night, and look at the photo I took, above, and now this below and tell me what you think.😱

What is that? All I did is enlarge the first photo because I saw this thing sticking up in the middle and wondered what it was. Joe didn’t know, I sure don’t know. Has the Loch Ness Monster come to Morro Bay?😳  

I’d rather sit on shore and drink our newest Trader Joe’s discovery ~ grapefruit wine (mix of grapefruit juice and white wine) … tastes like carbonated grapefruit with only half the alcohol content of wine. Only $6 a bottle! You drink it just like wine. Gorgeous color and delicious ice cold. Beautiful in champagne glasses! And it’s PINK! I’ll wait while you write that down! Twist-off cap, Girlfriends!

Moving is so inspiring! Never boring, because if you get sick of unpacking boxes and trying to decide what to do with everything (for weeks, EVERY SINGLE DANG DAY), there’s all new places to go to procrastinate in a still-getting-things-done kind of way!! And you don’t have to take a ferry boat to get there!!! Very spur-of-the-moment-procrastination is possible! (Sitting in the sun at a concert, although very good for you, really doesn’t count as getting things done!) We’re still in the “All the flowers…” mode of our move! ‘Cause if we plant the dahlia bulbs today, tomorrow will be filled with flowers! Get it? The seeds of today!

Yeah! We have lots of projects! We practically live at the hardware store, mostly because they also have a nursery, not to mention the free, fresh-popped, help-yourself, popcorn on Saturdays and Sundays. Not quite the tea rooms they have at garden centers in England, but pretty good! And they have paint! We’ve been choosing new colors for a couple of rooms . . .(those little apples stacked the background ⬆️ come from trees we planted years ago … Christmas apple trees … the apples never grow up, just stay small and cute like that.)🍎

And look! I found four vintage needlepointed seat covers for our bar stools on Etsy!! Exactly what I was looking for. Almost new, like they were waiting for me! Green! Perfect for this house. They go with everything!

We have antiqued all the way from Los Alamos to Cayucos so far . . . (stress-free, the perfect get-away-with-purpose because we needed dressers or hutches ~ storage ~ for all the stuff we still have to find places for!) and there are still many more shops to see! Haven’t even made it to Cambria yet! Look at that little goat ~ It’s not like me to fall in love with a little rusty goat ~ it was $89 which, in my view, for a goat, is not cheap. So I didn’t buy it! It was at an antique store up in Morro Bay and now I can’t quit thinking how cute it would look on top of our goat barn! I think I have to go back. I’m going to be able to give you Central Coast tour from soup to nuts by the time we’re done here. Get a map of California! You should start a file in case you ever decide to go on a road trip! Because there’s some good stuff and sweet small towns in this neck of the world, although PLEASE DON’T TELL ANYONE how wonderful it is!! Just between us.💞

 

Here’s what I take pictures of when we’re out and about ~ roses! The thing that’s constantly on my mind these days! Gardens. I came right home and ordered this white rose we saw in Los Alamos ~ it’s called Sally Holmes! I already have the picket fence! I also got two other “five-star” roses: Just Joey AND April Love. Peach colored, and another climber much like the one above only deep rose. 💃🏼

Look how cute the packaging is they came in! I ordered them from Heirloom Roses, my first time to order roses through the mail. Now they might be my new best friend, they have a huge selection … they arrived pots in good condition …

So happy! Don’t get me wrong. It’s still hard to be away from our old neighborhood on Martha’s Vineyard. We loved our beautiful ferry rides. And I miss my girlfriends beyond words. But it is what it is, and we’re lucky, we do have friends and family here. And with change staring us in the face from the moment we wake up, my natural inclination is to sweep the porch, feed Jack, fold clothes, hear the birds, and think, “Oh what a beautiful day!” Go crazy with happiness that there is no humidity. Walk out to the garden, feed and love the barn kitties, breathe in the fresh air. Make Joe tea with lemons and oranges from our trees, and not climb stairs to take it to him . . . and then, get busy with the day. Plant roses! See what I mean?

XXX

We came from one garden on Martha’s Vineyard, took a ten-day, cross-country, road trip through the looking glass, and out the other side, arriving in California, and another garden! Another world. I have a story for you…Let’s go get tea. I’ll meet you back here in a minute! Okay, here we go… Once upon a time, way back in 2004, Joe and I did our first garden tours of England and of course, having never seen anything like those gardens before, we fell madly in love. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean. We’ve gone back for revisits to some of our favorites, like the one in the video at Barnsley House, designed by the famous English garden designer, Rosemary Verey.💝

We learned the wonderfulness of hedges, and the magic and mystery of small paths that disappear around a bend.

Note the long view … and paths made from all kinds of materials, paths that whisper “follow me.” I thought at the time, “A few bricks and some bushes? How hard could it be? Couldn’t we do that?”

Some paths were made just by mowing the grass . . . and that opening between the hedges called my name. This is the garden of the famous turn-of-the-century British stage actress, Ellen Terry  . . .

This was her house . . . you can go there and tour both house and garden! I always loved the very personal small houses best, better than the castles, and this one is so charming, with crooked floors, where we learned all about Ellen Terry, someone I’d never heard of, and stood in her wonderful bedroom and got to know her. Living history.👏

At Hidcote and at many other English gardens, we discovered “the long walk.” A swath of green, lined in hedges . .  . they said “for after-dinner strolls and winter carriage rides.”🤩

Likely I’m never happier than I am in a garden . .  this one is Sissinghurst where I looked up and there was Joe on the other side of the hedge! Sissinghurst is famous for the white garden, herb garden, pleached trees, and garden rooms.

Ellen Terry’s garden again ~ can you smell the green? Feel the breeze? Hear the birds? .. It’s in the small village of Smallhythe outside of Tenderden. Her garden runs naturally into the garden of the churchyard next door . . . One of my favorite gardens, it felt natural and wild, unconstructed, as if it just happened ~ even in the “nuttery,” her orchard of nut trees!

Smallhythe again, probably the most structured part of the garden. Paths surrounded in forget-me-nots.💘

Rosemary Verey’s Barnsley House again. Best small garden EVER! Four acres of perfection!

Look at that, almost no flowers, and it’s gorgeous! Who knew?

On that 2004 trip, besides my regular diary (above, that’s me and Rachel, Joe took the picture at our very first picnic in Stourhead gardens), which was a watercolored, hand-written diary, and the inspiration for the 3rd book of my autobiographical trilogy, A Fine Romance, Falling in LOVE with the English Countryside ~ so besides this “big” diary where each evening I wrote about and painted our day ~ I kept this narrow little “garden diary” in my purse . . .

So when we were walking around and discovered something new, I could write it down. Sometimes I added pictures I cut out when reading British garden magazines …

In the actual gardens, I would take notes . . . write down ideas, plants that look good together, and their names, and names of hedges, trees, bushes, wildflowers, and roses . . .

 . . . we learned about wild gardens, topiaries, garden rooms, herb gardens, white gardens, knot gardens, potager gardens, hedges, textures, lime walks, walls, allies, statuary, dovecotes, every imaginable thing, and every one of those gorgeous gardens had a gift shop that sold books ~ inspiration to feed our growing passion ~ somewhere along the way a seed was planted, and we decided that when we got home, we would try to build our own English Garden.🪴

We’re so lucky NOW, all these years later, because, surprisingly, we decided to put that garden in California, at what was my “California Studio,” this house, where Kellee used to work, where we live now. It didn’t really make sense at the time because we lived on Martha’s Vineyard, but, then again, it made perfect sense because, as we discovered, our California property is in an ANCIENT river bed, and the soil is what is called “alluvial” ~ very fertile. In addition, there is always water from a creek out back that runs year-round, and then of course, the coastal weather, sunny but cool, which was way closer to English weather than the weather in New England.👏 Which is why now we can even TALK about gardens this time of year!💃🏼

This is our California house when I first saw it in 2001! Doesn’t LOOK that fertile … it was an old doublewide plopped down in the dirt; it had a metal garage with no garage door, and an open-sided barn ~ the previous owners raised goats, so they called that open structure “the goat barn.” (This was actually the goat next door. I loved him!) Obviously, it wasn’t about the house which was nothing special, no romantic whaling captains were involved, no history,   no old fireplaces, no fancy counter-tops, or old wood floors … but it was okay, fine, big enough, lots of windows, in the country, but not too far away. For me, it was all about the 8 flat acres, the quick-running creek out back, a little orchard of fruit trees ~ all surrounded with acres and acres of farm land. It was like a blank canvas. I bought it 23 years ago while Joe was back east and when he got out here and saw it, he thought I’d lost my mind . . I had been driving around with a realtor, saw the “for sale” sign, drove down the driveway to the back, walked down to the creek, heard the gurgling water, the singing birds, the wind through the cottonwood trees … marveled over the openness of it all, the quiet, and said, with hairs on my arms standing up, “this is for me!” A teeny little piece of California (relatively speaking), all mine. It’s probably the Irish in me. You know how Scarlett felt about the land!💘

And, in time, Joe came to love it too. It had so many possibilities, but like everything, it was one day at a time . . . Joe began to contemplate the placement of our new picket-fence garden. . . and we bought a tractor.

Which he still LOVES!

I’ve loved gardens forever, a gift from my dad. Joe and I had always been garden minded; we already had a picket-fence garden on Martha’s Vineyard. I think I’ve written about every garden of my life in my books, I’ve always loved picking flowers for my little vases, fresh veggies and herbs for salads. Makes me feel self-sufficient, part of nature, even part of history.

Because of our 8 acres filled with voracious gophers (which don’t exist on Martha’s Vineyard), Joe lined the entire California picket-fence garden in hardware cloth … wire with small holes, not big enough for gophers to get through.

Me, so happy . . .

So we planted a lawn, painted the house, Alfredo painted the outside, and me, Joe, my sister Shelly, and Diane painted the inside … I wrote my Autumn book in this house, and then, in ’04, we went to England …

When we got home, all excited from what we’d seen and learned, I drew this plan, only one garden room, NOT Rosemary Verey’s garden! (Yet) . . . you can see the picket-fence garden on the right of the house, with the goat barn behind it, and the garage to the left. None of the rest of it was there, this was just an idea. We weren’t even sure it would work.The first thing we did was put in a hedge down the driveway, on the right side of the house, all the way to the back of the property, almost to the creek. It had never dawned on me to make a hedge before we went to England. Buy 60 plants of the same thing? Why? Alfredo, who helped out at the Studio, also had a fledgling gardening business (we’re grateful to be his guinea pigs!). He planted one gallon pots 4′ apart all the way down, and he and Joe brought a watering system from the creek. And look at it now! And all the years we were on Martha’s Vineyard, Alfredo lived in our CA house and took care of everything . . .

So, before we left to go back to the Vineyard, we started planting the lawn . . .

. . . We laid out the plan, with tiny bushes (hedges) enclosing the  lawns and pathways as shown in our drawing, and a garden room (on the right, not in the picture), we planted a jacaranda tree, a Baileys acacia tree, and Christmas apples . . . My brother Chuck came and put walls with windows on the goat barn so we could use it as a warehouse for our Studio (see it above?), a place to store and ship my books and cups and all our other goodies . . .Basically, my literary heroes (like Beryl Markham) knew what had to be done!💝and behind it all, next to the fence, we started our mini version of the long walk . . . lined on both sides with a mixed hedge of California lilac (ceanothus), arborvitae, and boxwood, things to attract bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies, with openings left for paths surrounded in new hedges (we call the the hedges “bird motels”) … Then we went back to the island, Kellee moved the business from a space in town into the house and worked there from 8 – 5, M-F, Alfredo moved in, lived there, and made sure our garden grew … he’d take pictures and send them to us…and each time we visited, we added a bit more, and all the while it was growing-growing, years of growing, and now, all this time later…

We’re back!

And look how pretty it is! It all grew up! And if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is! The best time to plant a garden is 20 years ago.💞 The next best time is NOW!!😘 And for the most part, just by following our hearts, we now have this happy accident in our lives. We hadn’t been planning to move back to California . . . but during a visit last January . . .

. . . knowing (for waaaay too long) we really needed to downsize, we took a long look at the California weather and our garden, the one-floor-living of the double-wide, and found it all made sense. We HAD to sell something, and we decided instead of selling the California House where it’s like 3 seasons of fall weather (in the 60s today!😄), and one season of rain, we would choose the garden, we would sell our much bigger (and feeling bigger all the time) dreamhouse in Martha’s Vineyard and do everything in our power to get rid of two-thirds of our stuff. Not an easy decision, but, like so many in our generation, it’s what you do. Personally I’ve always been for cloning so I could live everywhere at once. But no. Not yet. See that corner closest to us above, in the picket fence garden? That inside corner is where the Sally Holmes will be planted, that fluffy white rose will look gorgeous over the fence. And here’s a quick little video of the garden room.

XXX 

Still lots to do! I’m glad it’s not finished! Over the years, when I wasn’t here to attend to it, our picket fence garden has filled itself with whatever it liked best, and those things reseeded over and over, so mostly it’s wildflowers, but it needs to be replanted with veggies and a new rose tree and sweet peas around the fence. (See why I really do need that goat? Put him on top of the goat barn, and voila!)💝

Alfredo has been doing a beautiful job trimming the bushes . . . he’s good at it! On one of our trips, we planted a long border of spurge (yellow flowers), and Agapantha (large purple/blue flowers). 

I aways thought this was a Mimosa tree in our backyard, but now I think it’s an Albizia. They look so much alike, I could be wrong! We had an Albizia at our house on the Vineyard. Mrs Bowditch, the previous owner, planted it, and described it for us with this warning, “Looks dead until late June, but do not be deceived.” I always laughed at that … as if I might run out and chop it down!

I’m going to save the decorating for our next visit. This house has nowhere near the elegance of our old house, I don’t want to disappoint you, that old house of ours, all that New England charm, maybe it spoiled us . . . it’s much more casual out here. But it’s cozy ~ kind of like those New York lofts in Soho we read about in the 70s. I never saw one in person, so I just imagined a big open space with a bedroom in one corner, workspace in another, a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, an office … all visible at once. That’s this, only smaller! See my Basket of Geraniums painting? Up there?… I still have that basket, it’s up on top of the kitchen shelves! See it? This house is full of memories! We brought them all with us! And we’re ready to make more! We already started!💞

My youngest sister Shelly and her twin men (that doesn’t sound right at all!) and their dachshund came up to celebrate her birthday with us this weekend!💞 Good reason to clean the house … not just any sister, a Virgo sister! I used to love doing things to Shelly’s hair when she was little and I was giving her a bath! This was her “fish tail” look.❌⭕️

We had our first lunch of their visit next to the water in Pismo Beach. The kids turned 21 in April, so they really are twin-men now!💞 

But actually, they are the three amigos and have been since the beginning! They were in it together! Shelly has been in AWE of her creations forever, and the BEST mom to her boys.💝💝 They ARE great. I not only LOVE them, I LIKE them!!!😍

AND her dogs!

Uncle Joe had a great time too!😘

We all drove to Cayucos for Shelly’s birthday breakfast in the garden at Lunala . . . her friend Jill was playing music! It was heavenly. If they had beds we’d probably still be there. It was so relaxing and delicious.🥰 

And yup, on the way up, we stopped and got my goat!👏👏👏 Worth every dime! Wait till you see him on the roof! (Loving him so much on the deck, may not even make it to the roof!)

Shelly has tried on every hat in every antique store we’ve visited, and has looked great in all of them. This lampshade is one of her birthday gifts, and she even looked good in it! What better hat than a lampshade on your birthday?! I like the way she holds the cord!💖

Last night was her ACTUAL birthday dinner! Another wonderful evening. Our first time seeing each other since we got back. We’d been saving it all for this weekend! 💃🏼 Joe made her boys a delicious steak dinner, Shelly made us an amazing salad with farm-stand strawberries and spinach in it, Paden tore the stems off the spinach leaves, I buttered and salted the skin of baked potatoes and put them in the oven . . . while Mason got all our streaming services onto our TV!

Shelly is showing off her new ring. I’m not sure what the rest of these people are doing!😆 We sang happy birthday and made wishes on her candle 🥳… had many hugs and kisses. And we’ll be meeting for MORE FOOD today!Then it will be back to work on the new calendar covers  … hard to believe I’m working on 2026 when we haven’t even had 2025! But no matter, I don’t need to see into the future to do them, my calendars are always about the little things at home, where nothing has to change unless we want it to! (Except that babies do grow up.🥲) Makes perfect sense that his month, the September page, is all about Creativity and the Homearts!
   Okay y’all . . . Have a wonderful day and a happy, creative, grapefruit-wine-sipping September week! This glorious month!💞