In her  Where Organic Gardening and Meditation Meet, Alameda Garden's Claire Splan point to this NYT Article, Dharma in the Dirt, by Patricia Lee Brown.  The article profiles Wendy Johnson who is part of the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Northern California.

My daughter's bedroom is a source of wry laughter for most visitors to our home. When we moved into Chateau Travolta last summer, we knew we had to pull up the carpet and repaint. Why? Mostly because it was a bank foreclosure that had been unoccupied for eight months, and we found both a dead bird and a dead bat in the house before we moved in. Every surface had to be touched.

Do you remember your first crafted Mother's Day gift? Either made or received? I was about 6 when I painted and collaged the frame from a free stand-up insurance company calendar, then ripped the calendar out and replaced it with a "happy mother's day" note.  We shall ignore that the paint was the inexpensive water color found in tin boxes, the colored paper from her new magazines, and that nothing totally obliterated the insurance company advertising.  I think it was still wet when I gave it to her.

I am finding myself in DIY limbo lately. I have too many decisions to make and that makes deciding on even one of them overwhelming. I need to pick out a floor for a bathroom, as well as a tile for inside the shower, and perhaps some accent tile. I am somewhat set on subway tile for the shower, until I enter the showroom and see other choices in person. I also need to decide on a paint color.

Saturday, I left my house at dawn and headed down to San Mateo for a day at Maker Faire. It was my first experience with this extravanganza, but it won't be my last.  As the sign says: the day emphasized the permission to play.

Because it's so much fun ...


One Pearl Button wrote a wonderful tutorial on refashioning a sweater. In five quick steps she turned a stained pullover into a cute, embellished cardigan.