If it’s cold outside where you are (or rainy like here), imagine yourself on this wonderful Louisiana porch surrounded by a flower garden.
And then click here to listen to this classic by Etta James. Everything’s great now, right?
Something to read
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve enjoyed a lot of posts on the blog Studio G, but especially those about Brazil, here and here. I really liked looking at her six sets of “before and after” pictures from a Brazilian home makeover show on Thursday. My favorite is here. I also enjoyed her post on a different kind of roller coaster in Germany here.
Grounded Design’s post, “Why We Plant,” here, was inspiring. “Designers don’t create beauty. To believe otherwise makes us guilty of forgery and blasphemy. But what we can do is create the conditions where people can have an experience of beauty.”
Phyllis Odessey at her eponymous blog wrote here about the Hudson Valley Seed Library and its seed packets with original artwork. Also, if you have an interest in school gardens, take a look at an older post here, about a rice garden in New York.
If you’ve been outside since Tuesday, pulling up your lawn (and here), as per Garden Rant’s anti-valentine to the lawn, here are some funny things to do with the now superfluous sod, thanks to Black Walnut Dispatch. (BWD also has a very funny visual here about how landscape designers are perceived by different groups.)
The New York Times has an article on artist Cindy Sherman this morning. Interestingly, this 2010 article in Smithsonian magazine makes a brief connection between Sherman’s work and Frances Benjamin Johnston’s self portraits.
From Pinterest, I just discovered this odd, but rather lovely, blog. See what you think here.
What are the best blog and website posts that you’ve read this month?
enclos*ure 
This would be one! I loved the photos and the accompaning Etta James tunes were perfect!
Loved the Studio G photo of the snake plant house. I love this plant. Last fall in Oxford, we were arriving on the bus and spied a corner store window lined in sanke plants. It was Nando’s! Also, thanks for the Etta James song.