I actually hate to move past the last post. It’s so beautiful in the garden, especially with the bees buzzing and the birds singing! ♥ But I thought today I would show you some of the art I did for Country Living Magazine.
Just after my first book came out, I gathered all my courage together (it always takes courage, even today!) and wrote a letter to the editor of Country Living Magazine, who, at that time, was Rachel Newman (she quit her job a few years later to become a wonderful oil painter; go look at her amazing art! She definitely did the right thing; so wonderful to see people follow their dreams!).
I sent her a copy of Heart of the Home with a letter asking her to please let me do something in their wonderful magazine, paint, write, cook (work in subscriptions, sell ads, sweep) anything would have been OK with me! That magazine was my bible, my best friend! We went out to lunch together every month!
There were no computers in those days; I couldn’t email it; my letter had a stamp on it and it went snail mail. I wrote it in my best handwriting, and put little watercolors of rolling pins and measuring cups between the words to try to make her like me.
I waited, thinking every day, I wonder if she got my letter. I wonder what she thinks. I wonder if she’ll write me back. Probably just be a form letter with the words “no thank you” on it. Maybe I’ll never hear anything at all. Waaaaa.
And then one day, I opened my mail box and found a letter with the Country Living logo and return address on it. My heart skipped a beat; please God, don’t let this be my subscription renewal notice.
And it wasn’t! I jumped and leapt out of the PO back to the car when I read that Rachel had already seen my book! And wanted to get in touch with me! To figure out how we could work together!
It was such a surprise! One of my dreams! It taught me that at least you have to ask (I know we have lots of artists reading this, and I just wanted to say that “No” is a very popular word, but asking is free).
The Country Living staff decided that what they wanted was for me to illustrate recipes; a page every other month. Which I was thrilled to do as I think you can tell! After I’d done quite a few, they asked if they could make some of the designs into prints. So four designs were chosen, we called them “Kitchen Art” since that’s where we figured most of them would go, on the walls of someone’s kitchen . . . and they were sold through the magazine. A few of you have written to tell me you still have them!
That’s what made me think to show these today. I really don’t think most of you ever saw them, so I thought I might share them, now that we are in the new world of computers and blogs and can show anything we want! Hope you enjoyed them!
Also had to show you this photo I just took; the blur at the bottom left is Jack, doing what he does, but look at the light, at 6:15 am! Streaming in! Hooray! I’m going to work in the 
garden today! It’s not pretty out there, all brown leafy and dead, but it’s going to smell good when I rake and prune, and I’m going to love it!
Do you realize that the average person today lives better than most of the kings and queens of England did? That’s what I was thinking this morning when I turned on the furnace. We can fill the kettle from our faucet right there in our own kitchen! And turn on the lights with a flick of a switch as we walk through the dark house to our art studio! Carrying our tea in our favorite cup. ♥
It’s a wonderful world! Enjoy your day girlfriends! XOXO
It wasn’t very long after learning I had a passion for cooking that I planted my first kitchen garden. It might have even happened at the same time. Cooking and gardening go together; gathering herbs and vegetables at their peak of flavor, putting them in a basket, bringing them to the kitchen, fresh-picked and unsprayed from our own small garden has been a giant plus for our “cottage of content.” 
I had always dreamed of having a garden with a gate, surrounded by a picket fence. So one day Joe dug a spot out of our lawn, and I went shopping for plants! I didn’t want or need a garden any bigger than I could take care of myself. I just wanted a fragrant path; a place I could go to listen to the bees while digging in the dirt.
I was so excited while Joe was building this, I had it all planted before the gate was on. Lined in marigolds to help keep pests away (not to mention looking good), I planted mostly things for salad: lettuces, tomatoes, radishes, basil, garlic, chives, mint, lemon thyme, sage, rosemary, camomile, nasturtiums, peppers, lemon cucumbers and lavender. Oh, and strawberries! So I can gather a few for our breakfast! These things are always in our garden. But sometimes I plant purple potatoes too, and sometimes we plant watermelon or pumpkins, for fun.
The next year, Joe put in raised beds with a path that goes all the way around. I added lots of flowers! Many flowers, all the roses and berries, and some of the herbs, like the chives and thyme, are perennials and come back every year. This is how our garden would look today if this was June!
These are flowers from our garden I dried last year, between the pages of a huge dictionary. I put them in my diaries and in letters.
plant the lawn, we realized we had to have another kitchen garden. So Joe took his shovel out to contemplate the spot we’d chosen for it.
Oh yes, he can dig it.
Only this time he did it with a tractor. Men building gardens is a well-known aphrodisiac, don’t you think? Need I even say that my favorite Village Person was the guy wearing the tool belt? Probably not.
He practically had to dig a swimming pool to get the hole deep enough — so that he could line it in hardware cloth to keep the gophers out, and then refill it with dirt. He is my hero.
And who is the happiest girl? Me.
And in a very short time, with a little sunshine, fresh air, and water, it looked like this. A garden is about as close to heaven as you can get on earth. It’s like church. Breezes blowing, birds singing, sun shining, bee’s buzzing, butterflies fluttering, hummingbirds humming, tomatoes ripening, roses emitting, all done in perfect quiet.
The fence hides the mess inside, because sometimes it’s a wreck in there; there have also been years when we’ve been traveling that I haven’t planted at all. But the perennials keep it looking nice no matter what.
March is when I like to start planning. I get out my old garden books and my diary, to see what I did last year. I look at old photos. I call my garden “My Toy” because it’s like a toy. I play with it, redecorate with different flowers every year, try out new things.
This is last year’s basket of bulbs and seeds to plant. I love gladiolus against a picket fence; I put them in every year. When I was younger, I lived in second floor apartment 
that had no garden. I hung a window box outside the window in the kitchen eating area, and filled it with garden soil. With a tiny kid’s trowel; I planted a little salad garden that included nasturtiums, lemon thyme, three heads of leaf lettuce (I picked one leaf at a time and left the rest growing); and pansies for the little vase on the table. That’s all there was room for but it was just enough; I could open my window, and voila! There was my garden, practically in the kitchen!
Picket fences also look very nice in the snow.
We don’t cut everything back on purpose, because even stick-dead things look pretty with snow on them!
You can find this drawing on page ten of the Summer Book, if you need it. And one last little tidbit of information: Paint your fence with white stain rather than using oil based paint. Your paint job will last much longer; when it gets old, it will fade rather than chip and you’ll be able to repaint a lot easier.
From my art table, this is the view I have of the garden. I was just looking out there, through the storm windows, past trees with no leaves, and I can picture it just like this, soon, rhododendrons in bloom and May breezes fluttering the curtains. My toy is gearing up for the season! OK girls, have a wonderful day! 
