you say tomato and I say delicious.

a few weeks ago we planted our very first vegtable garden with eggplant, zuccini, squash, corn, beets, and green peppers (about the same size as the one below). everything but the peppers came from seeds...  let me tell you....i've been just like a new mother to my little bitty plants, babying them and handwringing about the sun and their little roots.

I hadn't realized how proud i'd feel about our little garden and how excited i'd get when i saw that little plants were actually growing out there! with actual leaves and stems! and they look healthy! or how much fun i'd have getting my hands all dirty. crazy. maybe i have something in common with our founding fathers.;)

around the same time we planted the other vegetables, we planted some tomato seeds inside the house in little containters... i've been EXTRA-nurturey of those little guys. probably because they're not your run-of-the-mill lowe's or walmart tomatoes. no sir....we planted heirloom tomatoes. (find more out here.)

 After last summer's oxford and taylor farmers' market experiences i wanted more, but i was pretty sure the delta wouldn't be an easy place to find more...purple, bumpy, bright yellow or striped, the novelty wasn't lost on me. then i read about buying seeds in martha, found some locally, and the rest is history.

so far they're only teeny little green plants with two leaves at the top, but soon they'll be big enough to plant in the garden and we'll have extra special, homegrown tomatoes all summer long. i can hardly stand it, so i started looking up pictures of my future fruit...

if you come visit i'll share them with you!

photos from thekitchn, tomatofest, and slowfoodreno.

backyard inspiration...

now that we have an honest-to-goodness yard boone and i have been talking about how to make it a good looking, really fun place to be. to do this, we've done some backwards planning and identified some next steps to get there. Here they are:

Step 1: get ready to entertain
how fabulous would this look in my backyard filled with ice and beer? i'll tell you---- so fabulous. should it really be step 1? maybe not, but i can dream.

 

Step 2: get a dog and a place to keep said dog

so, (don't tell my dad) there are four stray dogs that are living near the preK classrooms at a school i visit. these dogs are PERFECT...so sweet, just the right size, good looking AND they need a home really badly. boone and i are thinking about bringing one or two of them home to live with us in the backyard..which means we need a goodlooking dog pen/dog house.

Step 3: set up the hammocks.
do you need more information about this?

Step 4: Decorate

um..we've actually already accomplished step 4. maybe that's backwards, but michelle and michael gave us this WONDERFUL birdhouse when we got married and I'd been dying to hang it up. PLUS we had a bottle tree stand we 

 needed to utilize and some deep windchimes.

images from AT, google and a random blog(our birdhouse and bottletree and the dog we're going to get LOOK like these, but these aren't ACTUALLY ours)

garden club material?

love. this.


this week i (really..ME! biz!) was invited to our new little town's garden club. of course i can't go because i've planned meetings ALL day on Wednesday...but just to be asked is pretty fun. honestly, i'm probably not the delta garden club material...but my mama is a 1st place winner at the garden club of america's flower show (she did the MOST FANTASTIC dolly parton arrangements with cantelopes), so maybe arranging flowers and cultivating bulbs is in my blood, after all. ;)

either way, i'd love to have these pretty things by one of our windows... if i could pull it off i bet i'd be garden club material. thoughts?



















image here.

want. these. so. bad.

my favorite colors and textures...our new place would look SO good with these two nestled in the living room...too bad they're out of my price range.

that is all. ;)

images from anthropologie

leaving on a jetplane

we've had a busy week back in singapore! lots and lots of playing with the nieces, going on family outings to the INCREDIBLE singapore zoo and the bukit timah nature reserve, and dealing with a little case of td. it's been wonderful!

unfortunately we leave in a few hours for the US... one stop in tokyo, another in chicago, and then a third in atl where we'll spend the night with friends (i hope i hope i hope) before we drive to the delta. it'll be hard to leave the girls and end out adventure, but will feel SO GOOD to have a home that's ours (at least until we find something more permanent in august. :) wish us traveling mercies!

seeing the sights...

our second full day took us on a tour of bali... i think almost everyone who hires a driver and doesn't give explicit directions goes on this trip. not only did we see all of the temples, but we also visited some rice terraces (since the region isn't flat, they've got to grow rice in stairsteps. eat your heart out, mississippi delta)




we visited a peak where we could see the volcanoes...


and had lunch there. ;)


we drove through coffee and fruit farms next to teeny villages and visited a fruitstand to try fresh balinese oranges (see below) which actually tastes like a giant lime, mangosteens, and something else that tasted like a giant grape but looked like a porcupine.


and we visited a lovely waterfall and made some adorable friends.



it was a great day... and the next day, we went to the beach! i still can't get over that all of this was on the same island.

holy moly...

the first morning in ubud we wandered into a temple to check out the architecture. no one was around and it felt sort of strange to walk into a holy place without being invited. but later that night we went back to the same temple to see a traditional kecak dance and fire trance ceremony, which were both incredible.





i ended up sitting next to the most adorable couple from malaysia on their honeymoon.. in fact, as BEAUTIFUL, gorgeous, idyllic as bali was, i almost enjoyed all the travelers we met more. earlier in our hotel we met a couple from new zealand who were on their way to india to visit their daughter who had founded an organization there like this one. he was also an energy healer and had imported organic vegetables to NZ before his retirement. after we hashed out the oil spill and economic crisis with them, the topic turned to aliens and having children.

we also had three taxi drivers named norman and met this guy when we went down to the beach... apparently he's a pretty big deal in the world of tropical architecture. he was 32 sheets to the wind when we met him sitting in a local bar in sanur. he told us stories of bob dylan, the eagles, surfing in hawaii, and his multiple indonesian wives. we thought about inviting him to dinner since we were enjoying his stories so much, but he seemed pretty content to sit and drink with the locals in the place (who he said were in the balinese mob). The day before we met him we'd traveled around the island with one of the normans. first we visited pura titra empul, a holy spring where local people bathe.




then we came across the temple at gua gajah, or the elephant cave... not only is it a hindu temple dedicated to ganesha, but also is the site of a destroyed 11th century buddist temple.


inside this cave where little crevices for meditation.

our "guide" who slept above the cave and also claimed to be a guardian of the site led us to the site of the Buddhist temple. it had been destroyed and covered by a rice field until the 1950s when it was rediscovered. gua gajah was my favorite spot on the island... the combination of the green moss, lush trees, bodhi tree, and flowing water really gave me the feeling we were in a holy place.

bali hai...

if you've read the book "Eat, Pray, Love" by elizabeth gilbert, then you've heard of our first stop in bali.... ubud. it's a small artist community/village filled the the brim with galleries, hindu temples, tourist villas, and beautiful vistas. in fact, THIS was the view we had out of the front door of our cottage.




gorgeous, right? i couldn't get over how green and cool everything was around the village. then just up the path to the lobby you came across this small place to make offerings (small spots to make offerings are EVERYWHERE in ubud)

see? one of these was outside of every single shop door, and you had to sidestep them if you didn't want to crush them.

more on the temples and offering places later... ;) stay tuned!

finished!!!

i can't believe it... it's been three years but last night i turned in my last graduate paper... which means

i'm finished!!

taking a break for a few days until graduation. :) hope you get to relax enjoy the springtime too!

photo by jena ardell

wide open

this is how spring feels to my soul....



images from dress design decor, & imgspark