Garden Potting Benches, Sinks and Tools

Well, the weekend has come to an end and sadly, it was a rainy one!... No gardening at all, just lethargic rainy day laziness.  Although, I went to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes with my sister and my boyfriend and it was awesome!  I definitely rooted for Caesar and the rest of the Apes and let me tell ya, I really sympathized with those CGI primates - I winced and let out an exclamation every time they were mistreated!  Hehe... :)

So, I'm doing a gardening post in the name of garden fantasizing - you know, when it's raining and you long for the sun so you can go outside and garden?  Hehe....  As the title states, this post is about garden benches!  I have SO many images of inspiring garden benches that I couldn't possibly bombard you with them all at once, or could I?  I'm sure you wouldn't mind, but I'm saving half of the images for a Part II so you'll have some more eye candy another day.  Anyway, lately I've been obsessed with the thought of a potting/gardening bench!  What can I say, I reallllllly really need one!  Am I the only one with oodles of un-potted plants (mostly succulents) and empty planters littering my patio?  I hope not!   I wish I could have it all in one place: my tools, my pots, my plants, my dirt, my rocks, etc etc!  Soon... very soon!  I am designing a potting bench and my boyfriend is going to build it for me (more on that one day - haha).  I can say one thing for sure, my potting bench will definitely be a chaotic eclectic beautiful mess of pots and plants - that's how I like it!!  In preparation for that design I have been doing a lot of inspiration research and boy have a found a boatload of it!  Get ready people, so many ideas and only one potting bench to be made, whatever will I do?  Hmmm.... get creative! 

What about you, do you have a potting bench?  Have you built your own?  Are you planning one just like me?  I'd love to see/hear all about it, let's brainstorm!  Shoot me an e-mail at InspireBohemia@gmail.com.  I hope you all enjoy these amazing potting benches...

(All images in this post were sourced via Pinterest, I do not claim ownership/credit for these photographs.)

Hi!

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."
- Kahlil Gibran

Hey there everyone!  It's Friday woooooha!  It has been long and busy and stressful so I wasn't able to finish my post for today, but I plan to post it later when I get home and have some time.  In the meantime I wanted to share this beautiful quote by the Lebanese American artist, writer and poet Kahlil Gibran.  This quote puts into words the beauty of what love should be, I relate it to my personal life and I relate it to my hopes for Inspire Bohemia to be an endless moving sea of love and inspiration between me and my readers!  Haha... corny but true!

Also, guess what!?  Inspire Bohemia turns two years old this coming Monday, August 8th AND just reached 600 followers today!!  I can't believe it has been two years and I can't believe I have 600 readers!  Thank you so much to all of my readers for making it possible!  I will have a special Happy Birthday post on Monday, yay!

Stay tuned later for an awesome gardening post!

(Image via Pinterest, artwork by unknown artist, quote by Kahlil Gibran)

Artist Feature: Carin Vaughn

Abstract Succulents
16"x20" - acrylic on canvas

Hello everyone!  Having a good week so far?  I hope so!  I have another feature post for you today and something tells me you're going to absolutely LOVE this artist! 

These magnificent works of art are original oil and acrylic paintings by Carin Vaughn!  Carin is a self taught artist living in South Carolina and experimenting with different painting techniques, mediums and subjects so as to discover the extent of her talent - and it's quite obvious she has lots of it!  Not only is she an artist, Carin is also a traveler, surfer, longtime lover of succulents and above all, a loving mother.  I must say, her vivid and detailed paintings certainly reflect her love of nature!

I have selected my favorite paintings for this post, but in truth they're all gorgeous so please pass by Carin's Etsy store and take a look at the rest of her artwork for sale!  Also, NBC has just purchased two of her paintings for the set of their show Parenthood, isn't that awesome - I can only imagine her excitement, congratulations Carin!  So stay tuned to the upcoming season of Parenthood to catch a glimpse of her paintings on set - I'm sure you'll know'em when you see'em because her style is quite unique but you can also check them out below (first two paintings below).  A big thank you to Carin for allowing me to use the images of her artwork for this post, I really can't say enough about them...  Oh, and need I mention how I'm madly in love with her succulent paintings?!  It should go without saying, but I couldn't help myself!  Have a wonderful afternoon! ;)

Carin Vaughn Original Fine Art
E-mail Carin Vaughn
Girl With A Surfboard (Carin's blog)

These two paintings were just bought by NBC for the set of their returning show Parenthood!  Stay tuned this fall to see them in action on set, making everything else shine brighter no doubt!  :)

 

So Succulent
18"x24" - oil on canvas

Succulent In the Spotlight
24"x40"x1.5" - acrylic on wood

Abstract Onion Blooms
16"x20" - oil on canvas

Pineapple Chevron
16"x20" - acrylic on canvas

Bunch of Blues
11"x14" - oil on canvas

Panamanian Boat
8"x10" - oil on canvas

Heron
24"x40" - painted on a raised birch panel

Panga
36"x48" - oil on canvas

Bevy of Barnacles
16"x20" - oil on canvas

Tarpon
16"x20" - oil on canvas

(All images in this post are property of Carin Vaughn and should not be used without her written permission.  Please contact Carin Vaughn by visiting her Etsy profile page or store.)

On Hills and Pedal Steel Guitars and Rose Gardens and Forgotten Treadmills

Centro-matic--"Only In My Double Mind" (mp3)

I have a neighbor. He has a hill. The hill, really it's more of an embankment, rises on the back corner of his property, facing the street. It has a stone wall running beneath it. But the hill itself, at times, has been a bit of an eyesore, or probably feels that way if you are the one who owns the hill. It's a sunny spot and weeds take to it, and even if you clear those weeds away and smile at your hill in satisfaction, they will return quickly.

My neighbor has tried planting the hill with various ornamental shrubbery. He has built various small rock gardens on it as a way of helping to tame the space. Most of all, he and his wife can be seen bent over on the hill on many summer evenings, trying to get control of the hill with pairs of gloves and a lot of pulling and piling of weeds into a wheelbarrow. This year, they have installed a wrought iron fence to run behind it, perhaps for contrast, perhaps to try to further contain the hill.

So far, nothing has really worked, at least not as a long-term solution. I watch from my window, and I want to walk out and let them know that they are wasting their time, that no amount of back-breaking labor is going to give them the hill. But I don't. I keep it to myself. When my neighbor points out an area of progress or a bush that is flowering on the hill, I respond with compliments.

I have a friend who wants to learn the pedal steel guitar. He has purchased one. He has been taking lessons. I have been to see his pedal steel guitar. It sits set up in his music room and I have been invited more than once to sit behind it and to have a go at it. I have done so.

But it is an unwieldy thing, with more guitar strings than I'm used to, tuned differently than a normal guitar. It does indeed have a couple of pedals that influence the sound, and, beyond that, a number of levers that you have to control with your knees to bend strings, shift keys, get a vibrato sound.

All in all, it is way too much for me. I know the amount of time that I would have to put into such a thing in order to gain even minimal competence with it is time that I don't have, or at least don't have the inspiration or initiative to take even one note, one step, down that path. I realize fully that my friend will never learn to play the pedal steel. Though learning never ends, by the time you hit your fifties like me, the ways that you can learn, the speed with which you can pick things up, the ability to train your muscle memory--all of those things are diminished. My friend is considerably older than I am.

But I never tell him that he should give up the pedal steel, never tell him that I think that his time would be better spent doing x. And I know that he must look across the street more often than not at the happenings and projects going on at my house and shake his head. He is baffled, I know, at my inability to maintain a lawnmower. He has to notice the overgrown rose garden or the various attempts I've made to sneak in a vegetable garden here or there with a lot of watering and pretty meager results.

If I tell him that I've started running or that we've joined a health club or that we've bought a treadmill, he seems pleased and offers words of encouragement, but when it becomes clear, through lack of discussion, if nothing else, that those endeavors have been shut down or pushed aside, he never says anything.

And that's the thing. To navigate our daily lives, the last thing that we want to do is to point out another's folly. Well, okay, the second to last thing. The last thing that we want to do is to have our folly pointed out to us. This is generally a good thing. It allows us to enjoy comfortable, companionable relationships and to be supportive of each other with issues large or small.

But it does make it very difficult to be straightforward and truthful if the circumstances call for it. As we all know, suddenly telling someone what you really think, finally asking the question you've wanted to ask for years, letting your friend know that you think he's pretty much a conspiracy nut, these are all mines in the minefield of friendship which, if exploded, can do great damage to same.

It make me wonder: which life should we be constantly preparing for? The comfortable daily life with its gentle jabs and easy alliances, the slights healed with a beer or a quick compromise, the shared disappointments of jobs and ambitions? Or, should we be preparing for the difficult times when we have to make hard choices and to say or do things that we never thought that we would have to say or do, put friendships on the line and take risks with a future we previously saw smoothly mapped out?

I would argue that it is impossible to prepare for both simultaneously. The latter requires a daily intensity that makes it tough for other people to be around you. You want to debate moral choices and confront situations while your friends want to talk S.E.C. football. The former will make you popular, but will likely leave you floundering in superficial waters when a real commitment of values is called for. What happens in those times when someone wants to know what you really think, not just what you carefully avoid saying?

All I know is that, the older I get, the more hills and pedal steel guitars and rose gardens and forgotten treadmills are gathering in my mind, those, of course, being only minor examples of what's really important and unspoken and growing. The mind is infinite in many ways, but not in its ability to hold back truth. I realized this from spending time with the elderly in Florida the past two weeks. Sometimes to a fault and sometimes quite humorously, the elderly often say whatever they think, with little editing. They can't help doing so. By that time, there's simply too much there.

The Voluntary Virus

Fire and Rain - James Taylor (mp3)
Ghosts - Fanfarlo (mp3)

Most of the time, when we talk of the Internet and things “going viral,” there’s this sense that those of us who get sucked in are somehow victims. As if we unwittingly or unknowingly caught this contagion that’s out there in the open, like germs floating through our shared cyber-oxygen.

This week, however, I have witnessed the singularly biggest voluntary virus of my techno-life. A fellow high school alum, two years my junior, started a Facebook Group (newly redesigned to show up in your stream) with the title of “If you went to (our school), you remember when...”

He started this group last Saturday night. July 30. As of Monday morning, it had over 300 members. As of Tuesday afternoon, it was quickly approaching 500.

This isn’t a public page. It has a moderator. The only way you can get in is to be invited or to request, and he’s only accepting members who attended one of two local high schools.

This one group is the single most explosive and dangerous and amazing and successful social media outreach campaign our school could never have ever devised on its own because we are, as an entity, afraid that exactly what is happening might happen.

Which is to say, at least ⅔ of the memories and stories and commentaries which populate the group are grossly unflattering. They talk of drinking, smoking, partying. They talk of bad teachers, awful teachers, incompetent teachers. They brag of illegal activities, immoral activities, merely wild and crazy activities.

And we’re not talking a few pages. On Monday, I expanded all comments and opened all posts so that every comment to every entry from the start of the group onward was exposed, and it became an 86-page PDF. By Tuesday night, it was closer to 130 pages. Members are adding comments and “starter memories” to the site at the rate of 10-20 each hour.

A vast majority of the group’s members are graduates between 1986-1996, although as the group grows, so does the age range, little bit by little bit.

It’s become this huge, instant, online, multigenerational campfire.

We’re all sitting around it telling stories and naming names from our memories, and everyone else is reacting to them. It’s bigger than the biggest church camp campfire I’ve ever seen. Firewood keeps piling on, and the flames keep generating plenty of heat and sparks, and the marshallows keep roasting, and the cheesy Kumbaya songs keep playing (sometimes in rounds!).

Best of all, there’s no counselors. It’s just campers, free to say whatever the f*#k they feel like without giving a flip what the stupid adults say.
Unfortunately, I’m one of the adults. I’m like that camper who had to grow up and become one of the camp’s leaders, and I’m squatting behind one of the trees on the fringes of the crowd, hiding from the heat and the light, but enjoying the ecstatic communal nature of the event as best I can from my secret vantage point.

If I reveal myself, I’m required to represent the school rather than my former student self and my former student memories.

The longest single thread, by far, had reached 110 comments by Tuesday night and focused on the surreal suicide of a student some 20 years ago, an event that was simultaneously very public yet also shrouded in mystery and rumor and myth. I’ve read every comment, many of them twice. Some are grossly inaccurate. Others come in and try to correct, to offer their versions, their memories. The collective, amazingly, gets close to the truth of things once you read them all together, even if some of them prove to be either naive or insensitive or just excruciatingly idiotic.

Several guys confessed that they got very emotional just reading through the comments, as did I. I knew the boy, and I remembered hearing about it as a freshman in college, and I remember reading the detailed confidential investigative reports when I started my job. I wanted so badly to tell some guys they were full of crap and others that they had most of it right, but instead, I had to just read, and take quick, gaspy breaths, and stay hidden behind that tree.

I don’t know how long this campfire will last, when the kindling will disappear, when the campers will yawn and dissipate, making their ways back to their cabin beds before their parents come to pick them up in the morning.

I only know that, no matter how long it goes, it’s been the single most amazing cyber-campfire I’ve ever seen ignite on my computer screen, and it’s been absolutely, perfectly imperfectly beautiful.

Man, Instinct, Risk, Stupidity

Fables - The Dodos (mp3)
Dark Turn of Mind - Gillian Welch (mp3)

“It’s definitely too rough out here for your brother.”

One of the bigger indicators of gender is the inability to heed one’s own better wisdom. The better half has things called “mother’s instinct” or “women’s intuition,” and we act like this is because men don’t have the ability to foresee dangers or portend calamity.

But it’s not true. Men have tremendous intuition; they just ignore it.

Last week, after three days of overcast skies, three days of an oceanfront experience as if we were vacationing inside the caves of The Lost Sea, we were all desperate to squeeze out some cloudy time in the sand and sea. With my 3-year-old son on the shore building sand castles merely for the chance to stomp them, my daughters and I braved the testy tides. The choppy waves and strong undertow, tugging us northward, were great fun because they were just a bit risky.

My younger daughter, not quite yet 10, is the more cautious soul, and trepidation always accompanied her into the ocean. She’s a little too short and scrawny to fight the ocean pull, and she was having to work twice as hard to keep from drifting further away from us.

“I bet Turner will want to come out here,” she said. On our first day down, we had beaten the rain to the beach for a desperate hour of celebratory arrival swimming, and he had stayed glued to my shoulders or waist as we jumped waves. He'd loved it and been wigged out by it at the same time.

My response to her -- it's too rough for him -- was the right one. And it was obvious.

Hardly had the words drifted away from my mouth in the word balloon than I heard him at the water’s edge, calling out to me. “Come get me, Daddy! I wanna go!”

Twenty minutes later, as I stumbled and wobbled back to shore, Turner screaming and fighting to spit out all that salty nastiness from his mouth, my daughters both laughed at how quickly I had ignored my own observations, and I could only shrug in resignation.

Something in dads, in men, in boys, is desperate to downplay risk. And it doesn’t even have to be a “risk/reward” calculation. The reward for taking Turner out into the torrents was low at best. I would receive no medals. My son wouldn’t “cherish this moment for the rest of his life.” My in-laws and wife wouldn’t look out on the waves, crashing in above our heads, and then tilt their heads adoringly at each other with that “Isn’t that the greatest dad alive?” look on their faces.

Yet there I was, picking up my small child, pulling him into my waist and chest, and trudging out into the foamy tuggy waters.

I could have said no. He might have pouted or objected briefly, but I’m not the kind of dad who worries about that stuff. I render my children painfully disappointed and pouty all the time and never think twice about it.

But I wanted us out there, together, doing something a little risky and stupid and fun. No defense attorney, no psychologist in the world could rightly defend me.

We hadn’t gone 20 yards into the water when my decision paid off. A wave hit us so intensely that it buckled my knees, and I barely managed to prevent our mouths from taking in ocean. Turner thought it was hilarious, which made me proud and giddy. This was all the reward I was to receive. Soon after, a wave that seemed to curve at least three feet above my noble leap slammed into us, and it took intense focus to keep any kind of balance while keeping hold of my son.

As I recovered, and as I tried tending to his drenched face and screaming panic, I'd barely even cleared the water from my own eyes when another wave hit us full force, knocking me to my knees and Turner briefly under the water. This second attack did us in, and he was (understandably) inconsolable.

The reward for ignoring my instincts? A son it would take two days to coax and coddle back into the ocean.

Oh yeah, and that first wave knocked the glasses off my face. Didn't even know it until I got back to shore. I spent the rest of my vacation with only a pair of prescription sunglasses. Until I can get an eye appointment, I either wear my sunglasses at night, or I view the world in a strange blur.

Yay me and my instincts.

Why Mediocre Is Worse Than Bad

The Who--"Naked Eye" (mp3)

Let's say you're in Florida, on vacation, you don't feel like cooking, the kids want Italian, so you think about this little place you've driven or walked past numerous times, always intrigued because the menu offers some things different from the standard Italian fare. So, you check it out on the Internet, read some reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp and what have you, just to reassure yourself about this new place, because you do have stand-bys and old favorites, but the kids don't want to go there.

So, off you go, drive downtown. You walk in on a Thursday night. It isn't too crowded, but there's energy, a vibe. You are seated. Your waitress has an intriguing accent. You are charmed. You like the vibe.

The menu prices are probably 1 1/2 times what you expect to pay at an Italian place, but you shrug that off, expecting a special meal and pleased that you have pleased your girls. You look for something mid-range and find something intriguing: Chicken Scallopini with Tomatoes and Smoked Mozzarella. The girls order a variation of their usual pasta. You attempt to confirm the waitress' Russian accent, only to find out that she is Brazilian, with a German father. Not what you expected.

You and the girls work through a small loaf of homemade bread while you wait.

When the food comes, you don't think it's for your table, because one of the entrees is a stacked tower and you know that no one ordered that. But, it is placed down in front of you, layers of cheese, and tomatoes, and chicken, skewered by a sprig of rosemary and surrounding by julienned vegetables and a light sauce. Wow, you think.

Your first reaction is to take a picture of it. This, you think, is going to be something. And you pick up your knife and fork with pride.

But that's where it ends. As you cut into it, you discover that it is cheese, layer of tomato, another layer of tomato, smallish piece of chicken, layer of tomato, slightly larger piece of chicken, layer of tomato, julienned vegetables. Ah, you figure, so maybe they should have named it Tomatoes and Smoked Mozzarella with Scallops of Chicken. Or scallop-sized. But, what the heck, you like tomatoes, it will be fine. The girls are enjoying their pasta. But when you finally put the tomato in your mouth, you think, wait a second, this tomato is barely ripe. In fact, as you deconstruct your tower, you realize that all of the tomatoes are no better than a washed-out pink. In the middle of the summer in the Sunshine State, a state where you bragged about the tomatoes just days before.

And, at that point, you are stuck with a mediocre meal. See, the problem is that if it were truly bad, you would be motivated to do something about it. If the chicken wasn't cooked through, if the taste was off, you'd call the waitress over and send it back. But not as much chicken as you'd expect, tomatoes not as ripe as what you are used to, what are you going to do? The restaurants of America are full of unripe tomatoes. We take them for granted.

You think, hey, if you're making to make tomatoes the star of your dish, they better be damn good tomatoes! Right? Well, maybe not. That's your vision. You know that great chefs search out the best ingredients they can find. But you are in Venice, Florida, where the thinking may be to get the biggest tomatoes they can find so that they can build their tower.

Because here's the problem: mediocre is somebody's vision of good or good enough or acceptable.

Believe it. I saw the owner or chef out in the room chatting with other customers that he knew, relaxed, comfortable about his place. There's no way he originally set up shop thinking 'I'm going start a mediocre upscale Italian restaurant.' It just ended up that way. The girls' pasta--perfectly fine, but uninspired. Maybe the best the place or the current chef can conceive. Maybe it's what the "locals" like to eat. Maybe because he's a local himself, he gets enough compliments about his food that he believes it.

If you find yourself sitting in the middle of it, you begin to question yourself. Am I a snob? Everyone around me seems perfectly satisfied with their food. Even though you know, just from the decisions made about the food at your table that it's decent at best. But you do question yourself.

And that's why mediocre is worse than bad. Bad demands action; mediocre inspires complacency. Maybe no one acts on the bad, but at least they know it exists. The mediocre, though, well, they just blend in. Here's my theory: if you ever want to bring down an empire, a country, an institution, a team, or even a restaurant, get its loyal people to accept mediocrity. They will lose their standards. They will lose their way. They will pay and leave and forget about it.