little pink chair

When the world gives you piles of pink 2x4's you make chairs.

Nathan and Kelly's patio dining set

Nathan and Kelly contacted me about furniture for their new back porch. They wanted a dining table and benches for one side and some chairs for a sitting area. Here is the dining table and benches. The wood has been sanded smooth and painted and polyurethaned.

I am delivering these tonight and picking up a couch frame of theirs to refinish and will begin work on some chairs to compliment the couch.

sweet.

delicious deliciousness

you cannot handle the deliciousness.

Nancy's table

Nancy contacted me about building a small cabinet or table to fill in the narrow gap between her stove and the wall. I built this litte table and added a flip up top instead of a slide out drawer to conserve space.

delicious!!

The sun comes through the peephole in the back door and creates a circular rainbow on the front door. I have been tracing the spot at intervals in the morning and now there's a line of circles on the door.

drying basil

I have a patch of basil in the yard that is beginning to have huge edible leaves and i can tell that i am going to have a lot as the summer rolls on, probably more than i can or would want to eat all at once. I did a little reasearch and found an interesting storage solution: basil ice cubes...
from this page:
"Leaves can also be combined with olive oil in a food processor or mortar/pestle and frozen in ice cube trays... Frozen basil can then be added to soups, sauces or pesto..."

huh, awesome.

sonoran style enchiladas

I grew up eating enchiladas but had never had them Sonoran style until I ate at El Cholo in LA. I loved the flat tortillas instead of rolled and I began making my own version. I also think the egg on top is awesome. I have been snapping camphone pics as I go. Delicious!!

a rainstorm for every plant

In my front flower beds are 9 oleanders I started from cuttings, 3 mountins laurels grown from seed, basil grown from seed and columbine in several places. In a big pot are some cosmos. Out back i have two fig trees grown from cuttings, a fence soon to be taken over by a variety of morning glories, and up on the back porch is a whole smattering of potted plants. I even have a couple of mexican buckeye trees started from seeds. inside i have little cuttings from various plants rooting in bottles and jars in the window and little ziplock bags filled with wet papertowels and mesquite tree sprouts and esperanza and some other crazy flowering tree.
every morning i get up and water them all saying to myself "a rainstorm for every plant". i tell the oleanders their job is to grow big and tall to shade the house and to grow as many flowers as they can. I tell the trumpet flowers in the pots out back to grow big and make lots of flowers so the house smells nice.
I know it all sounds funny but the weather here in Austin has been around 100 degrees daily for over a month now with no rain. i HAD 11 oleanders. i HAD 6 mountains laurels. i planted not only columbines but also lupines and sweetpeas and nasturtiums and four o'clocks and delphiniums but only the columbines came up.
hot as shit.
so i tell the plants they have a job to do and encourage them and tell them i'm proud of them and gosh, they just look so pretty. and then i give them each a little rainstorm.