Not now. Later. So please maintain loose posture until then. And don’t make any rash judgements, because it’s a work in progress. Thanks! Sincerely, Patsy Ann
A Bloomsday Celebration
The Reading Room will present a Bloomsday celebration on Thursday, June 16 from 6 until 10 pm, with readings from James Joyce’s Ulysses, music and related visual material.
Confession: I have never read Ulysses. Question: Should I go and pretend to know something about something? What Karen has lined up for the evening sounds like it would be fun and interesting, but I’m terribly afraid of saying something stupid. I wonder if Half Price Books will have an old collection of Cliff Notes. Woohoo! I just found an online version of Cliffs Notes. If you’re like me, study up here before attending and also go here for an NPR article by Frank Delaney.
Agenda: Festivities will begin at 6 pm with a screening of Harrell Fletcher’s Blot Out the Sun in which a very condensed version of major themes of Ulysses is staged in a service station. Readings by Jeff Whittington of KERA, Charles Dee Mitchell, and Diane Orr will follow. And to conclude the evening, there will be a bit of Irish music.
Thanks to Conduit Gallery, Jennie Otttinger’s book portrait Ulysses will be on view. It is part of her larger library project which was recently shown at the Volta Art Fair (NYC). Ottinger received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland and lives and works in San Francisco.
The Reading Room is a project space dedicated to the intersection of visual and literary culture and is located at 3715 Parry Avenue. For further information: Karen Weiner, www.thereadingroom-dallas.blogspot.com.
Done Except for One
Except for the caladiums, all summer annuals have been planted. I wanted to wait another week before planting the bulbs, because they have a much shorter life span than the other annuals. I take photos at the beginning and at the end of each season to keep as a record of the placement, size, and quantity of my seasonal choices. So keep in mind while viewing the photos in this post, that you are looking at plants that have yet to grow to their full potential, and those unsightly bare spots will soon fill in.
High Maintenance Takes Its Toll
Ughh! I’m a victim of my own demands. My home’s restoration work started back up a month ago and my paying work load increased threefold. And then there was the urgent need to get all the summer annuals planted ASAP as soon as they became available for purchase and before the first week of June, which required me to spend the last three weekends including the holiday to amend the soil and plant. I will post photos soon. Even though there is progress, I feel disoriented, and after three weekends of outdoor labor, two days of oil-based paint fumes, glue for the VCT flooring, bleach for the newly grouted tile, and scorched eyeballs from long hours at the computer, all my intelligent brain cells have been fried. This is my excuse for not posting lately. Please accept this homeless creature as a stopgap.
Fancy New Garage Accessory
A pig with attitude has finally found his permanent home after three years of collecting dust on my work table within the garage. He had to wait until my general contractor returned to finish up my home’s final phase of restoration. Of all the fun weathervane options, he was by far my favorite. The website that I purchased him from is no longer up and running, but I did manage to find another site with the exact same pig and many other well-crafted options. Eventually I will take a photo from the front of my garage. Today the doors were dismantled and hauled off to be repaired causing the front view to look rather pitiful.
Plan and Plant
The backyard garden’s construction documents are complete and my landscape architect, Michael Parkey, will now send them out to bid. Perhaps in two weeks the construction will begin and my poor neighbors will no longer have to deal with the view of my trailer-park-of-a backyard.
I have also ordered the fancy lace chain link fence that I wrote about in a previous post. It’s due to ship from India next week. Trying to find someone to deal with all the paperwork involved with getting this chain link fabric cleared through customs has been one giant pain in the derrière. This product has been designed in the Netherlands, fabricated in India, and will be shipped by sea. The Dutch design firm informed me that I would be responsible for locating the nearest deep sea port and arranging for its unloading, customs clearance, and shipping to Dallas. Three weeks later I now have the knowledge and skills to import anything from anywhere. Skills that I could add to my résumé, but won’t, because I never want to do this again. Ever.
I will be posting the different phases of my backyard’s transformation throughout this summer. So stay tuned. If you can’t remember what the hardscape plan looks like, refer to my past post found here.
What’s on the Menu?
Summer annuals for the front shade garden. Most of what’s on my list are now available at the local nurseries, and I wasted no time in snapping them up. Waiting for absolutely every thing to be available before buying is a big mistake in my opinion. The longer plants sit around the nursery crammed in their original shipping flats, the more scraggy and picked over they become. For the most part I buy complete flats, because there’s usually a discount once you exceed a minimum quantity. And I don’t search out the cheapest deal in order to save a few dollars. Those deals may or may not exist in nurseries that take considerable time and gas to get to. That’s crazy and just not worth it. So most of my annuals are found at Nicholson-Hardie, and a few are found at Jackson Home & Garden. I prefer to buy from nurseries who stock plants produced by local growers. When a plant has been cultivated in your hometown’s soil and climate, there’s a better chance of success.
What’s Hanging (part 2)
A grouping of antique silhouettes. I have a weakness for odd antique art and recently purchased six silhouettes. How to hang them turned out to be a real mind bender. Usually the silhouette frames come with an ornate top ring, and hammering a brass nail into the wall to hang them from would have been the typical way to go. Except two of the frames had problems and required special treatment. Leigh Ann Williams of 24FPS suggested I call Russell Sublette, a preparator and mount maker who has worked at the Dallas Museum of Art for over thirty years. In his free time, Russell makes these ingenious captures for pieces of art that would fare better without the traditional mounting and framing techniques. There’s a little video on the DMA’s website that highlights one of Russell’s behind-the-scenes masterpieces.
Follow the link below to see the captures before, during, and after the install.
Handmade Spring Bash
shop + party + art + craft = Etsy Dallas’ Third Annual Spring Bash
This year’s Bash takes on a colorful “Homecoming/Prom” theme and will offer shoppers the very best in handmade, bags, jewelry, home décor along with a full day of art, music, charity, booze, free stuff, and gobs of crafty fun. It’s this coming Saturday, April 30 at South Side on Lamar. Go here for more info.
Wife versus Secretary (1936)
Starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Jean Harlow. I have recently subscribed to Netflix just so I could get my hands on classic film dvds. With my extensive and ever increasing list of old films that have interior sets that I wish to capture, purchasing them would be a waste of money. Especially since my subscription allows me to view any of them at any time with on-demand streaming. Hopefully, Netflix won’t reach out and reprimand me for this hobby of mine. Click the link below for the captured interiors of this wonderful old black and white film.