Our African Halloween

My latest photo collage

Halloween Costume

..Bolivian Tin "Wolf Mask"

The better to eat you with my dear!!

Happy Halloween from all of us at Passionflower.

I've Been Busy Keeping MY

and reading about the beat poets in India and perfecting a spoonbread recipe and burning lots of candles and listening to Madeline Peyroux and somehow the blog has gotten away from me the last week or two. But mostly been putting lots of energy in making the store beautiful for the holidays and putting together our online sale site (super exciting!!)

We Love Becky!

Becky, Becky, Becky -- look what we just learned to do!

Now I can make collage photos on Picasa - this free Google App.

And when did I ever think technology was not my friend?

Some Gifts for Nature Lovers

For gardeners, foodies, and those generally smitten with charming books here's one we wish we'd written .....

This charming little tome features life size photos of 47 different apples that the author collected last summer in California. Each duo of pages shows the apple whole and the same apple cut in half. Text is only used to name the varieties. It's simple, it's minimal, and it's hopeful. Give this as a holiday gift with a jar of your homemade applesauce....or with a small apple tree to plant.

But the book I want everyone to have is English author Daniel Butler's How to Plant a Tree -


This pretty, oh so pretty, hardbound book is chock full of information alongside beautiful engravings that suggest all kinds of wonderful trees to plant to mark the special occassions in our lives - births, new homes, marriages, deaths and other meaningful times. I LOvE ThIS BooK
!! I like how it feels in the hand, I like how it makes me stop at every page, I like how it teaches me lots of things I never knew, I like that the ink is blue. I like how it makes me want to gather with others and plant a tree. So that's what we're sayin' here at Passionflower....eat some apples and plant a tree.
Find both these books for your inspired gift giving when you visit us at Passionflower.

Potter Mary Briggs at Passionflower this October

Her work invokes old world European pastoral landscapes.....bucolic images of sheep and cows and goats and deer in field and meadow....that seem curiously relevant, like something we are trying to remember today..

Mary transformed the upstairs space at Passionflower with her beautiful pottery -

There's a very rustic and peaceful vibe.

Modern folk art at it's best.........

Pottery for the people.

And meditations upon the natural world.......

The show will be up through the 21st of October....

To see more about our field trip to Mary's studio click here.....

Our thanks to Mary

Who also gets the prize for coolest outfit on First Friday......

An Autumn Love Note

For reading this blog....:)

Card from Lark Press available at Passionflower Design.

Some days I feel like this: ready to face the world in my cute pink socks.

Other days I feel like this:

I think I need to seriously reframe this point of view.

And just so you know, these photos came from the blog of The Fabulous Garlands (aka Sophie Cuvelier), who, when she is not making beautiful, site specific paper mobiles that I am smitten with, seems to have a penchant for watching bullfights.

A Real Live Octopus

I have never seen anything move quite the way the octopus slithered across his (or her) tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. It was a beautiful dance.

Everything undulating and shifting size and shape all the time.

And Mr. Octopus could look at you

looking at him.

They say they're as smart as cats

And their eyesight is good.

Plus, they're really, really strong..

It is such an amazing world out there.

But what if he's pleading with me, "Get me out of here", and I'm just happily snapping away photos with my camera?

Studio Choo & Flora Grubb

FYI , we have very much been grooving on the floral designs coming out of the San Francisco Bay Area lately......(well not just lately I have always loved San Francisco designers for their whimsy and the interesting mix of materials that comes from their climate and their sense of abandon). A couple of our favorites:

The most charming and understated Studio Choo. Here's a vignette they did using brown tincture bottles of varying sizes. Doesn't it just scream fall without screaming?

And here's an unusual bridal bouquet by the design studio called flora grubb. These are the folks taking tillandsias to new heights. And they're into vertical gardening too!

Succulents and tillandsias with privet berry, maroon scabiosa, and that fabulous string of pearls hanging down. Thanks to both places for the gracious use of their photos. Perhaps a field trip to the SF area is in order. :)