I  love paint chips and the names of colors. I have lived in Cameo, Clementine, Venetian Glass, September Leaf, Cobalt, Aria Ivory, Spice Trader, Rain Mist, and Princess Passion rooms. My husband, John T, and I sleep in a Hickory bedroom trimmed with Sensitive White, and we prepare our family meals within our kitchen’s Walking Path and Butter walls.

For Father’s Day, I surprised John T by painting his study. The room used to be my art room, but we built a beautiful tin-sided studio outside, and that is where I paint now. Finally, John T has his own space in the house, but he was not fond of the feminine Lavender Lane I had painted my old art room.

Jess, our seven-year old son, showed no interest in helping me with the “new room” project, even though the transformation was supposed to be from him. He and I wanted a nice shade of green, but nothing too Golf Course or too Hunter. For a while we settled on Tree House, but we decided that Nature’s Abundance had more to offer.

The golden green walls match what we see from our summer windows—Camellia and Pecan leaves, ferns, ivy, and sunlit grass. John T is happy with his room, and he is filling the bookshelves.

Jess was happy to present his daddy with another gift, a woven rug that’s almost large enough to cover the paint-splattered floor that I couldn’t move out with my art table.

–Blair Hobbs

Bless Blair for sending this email just when I thought that there would be no reprieve in my week. We have a potted gardenia in our front garden bed and I have been struggling for one year to decide on its permanent spot. Blair’s post has inspired me to plant it right down by the road that everyone who passes our house on a June morning can revel in its glory.

From Blair:

Hooray for Gardening week! As I was answering my morning email, I heard a mother stroll her jabbering baby down the street. The woman said, “Smell those gardenias! They’re amazing!” So, I had to write this little something for the lady who planted them:

Mrs. Knight, the original owner of our 1940’s home, was known for her bread baking, bridge parties, chain smoking, and Gardenias. What remains of her, along the south side of the house, are her fragrant bushes. The sweet, thick aroma of the twirled-open buds is so dense that every walker, stroller, or jogger who crosses our block is bound to comment on the sugary breeze.

I especially love to watch the gardenias though our evening window. At night, in the dim streetlight’s cast beams, the blossoms look like paper stars clustered across the windowpanes.

I take no credit for these Gardenias. I do give them a little food, and after each bloom, I do cut them back so they won’t grow taller than the house. These flowers belong to Mrs. Knight, and every June, I clutch my breath until they gloriously return.

Illustration of gardenia thunbergia via Wikipedia by Edith Struben (1868-1936)

We had more than one request for Blair’s pea-themed love poem to her husband. She willingly plays along and makes me smile that big kind of smile that makes your ears hurt.

Falling For My Husband
by Blair Hobbs
Beanstalk skinny, I cared more about not eating
than stirring my dormant tastebuds.
Most flavors left me cold,
but peas, cooked to an institutional drab,
downright offended my fallow tongue.
In heaps, peas showed up on school cafeteria trays
and in my great aunt’s “Crowder Pleaser Salad,” a water-logged
mayonnaise and relish mishap she concocted
for her nursing home’s special occasions.

Alone, uncooked,
a pea was a stone
or the period at the end of a boring sentence.

My thin smile appealed to a man whose tongue was a meadow.
For courtship, I wore size zero silk dresses, high heels
and peony-pink lipstick. He took me
dancing and we twirled and shook.
We laughed and baptized ourselves with spilled Zinfandel.

He dined me and tried seducing my love-dumb senses
into surrendering to field pea risotto with white truffles,
Texas caviar, and blackberry-glazed quail
on a bed of pink-eyed pea salad.
Although I dismissed his razzle-dazzled legumes with a “yuck,”
he kissed me anyway. Little did I know
that those night-time words he whispered into the hull of my ear–
Whippoorwill, glory, snow, butterfly, sweet, and (later) zipper–
were all names of peas!

One noon, full of buttery sunlight,
this man offered me lunch, sage leaves and lady peas.
Perhaps brainwashed, I took the warm bowl.
Before I knew it, my mouth eased open
above the question mark of steam. I lifted the spoon,
chewed and felt the tender pearls dissolve
across my peppered tongue. First lips and throat,
then the whole rest of my body sighed awake.

Here is what Blair says today about her wedding picture:

This photo is of a LONG time ago. I think I’d gone up to a size 2 by the time of our wedding. My, how things have changed!