allium (AKA, keeping it real on a Tuesday night)

Hey, it’s Doug.  Tonight’s an exciting night at my house…writing some contracts and drawing some elevations.  I work in my kitchen a lot when I am trying to get stuff done at home…those of you who’ve been following the blog for a while know that my house is exceptionally small, so the big stainless steel table in my kitchen is really the only place big enough to spread out with my laptop anyway.

So, I’m sitting here looking at these allium peeking over the edge of my laptop…leftovers from a photoshoot from last week (you’ll see those pics soon, promise!).  I don’t know if y’all are familiar with these flowers, but I love them.  Grown from bulbs, they’re actually a member of the same plant family as onions, scallions, and garlic.  I love how fun the round purple clusters of flowers are.  I think I was first introduced to these flowers through photos of Martha Stewart’s garden in Westport.

Martha Stewart's allium border...I just buy mine at the wholesale florist, but this image is inspiring me to plant some bulbs for next spring!

 

Allium were the perfect addition to the lakeside home we had photographed last week.  And they’re casual enough to work well on my kitchen table too.  I found the fun “measured” pitcher I have them arranged in at Star Provisions in Atlanta recently (but I noticed the same item at At Home in Homewood recently, Bham friends…).  The numerous bottles of Pellegrino on my table are also leftover photoshoot props…no sparkling water being consumed at my house, just SmartWater.  Well okay, and that glass of Malbec just inside the frame of the photo

 

Hope y’all are having a great Tuesday night!

 

 

[Martha photos from here]

Autumn in Central Illinois

Hey, it’s Doug.  I took a little vacation back to my parents’ farm last week to enjoy a few days off before things get really crazy back here in Birmingham with our new shop opening.  Though it’s just starting to look like fall (and hopefully the temperature will catch up soon and things will cool off!) in Alabama, back in Central Illinois where I grew up, fall has definitely arrived.

No matter what time of year, there’s a simple beauty to Illinois.   If you aren’t from the Midwest, or haven’t been there before, the first thing that strikes you is how FLAT it is. In the summer, especially out in the country, everything seems to be a shade of green.  My parents’ house is surrounded by acres and acres of fields.  In the fall, when the corn and soy bean crops dry and are harvested the fields all turn golden brown.  Eventually the trees and grasses catch up and turn warm autumnal colors as well.  One of my favorite things about Illinois is how incredibly BLUE the sky is — these pictures aren’t photoshopped, it really is that beautiful and because everything is so flat the sky feels really BIG above you too.  Standing out in the middle of an open field with that huge blue sky above you is a very peaceful feeling.

I spent one afternoon while I was in Illinois driving around taking some photos, exploring some obscure country roads I’d not traveled down in a long time!

 

 

My parents' Shih Tzu, Marshall, was my assistant during my photography excursion. You can see him co-piloting my car here.

 

 

 

Just down the road from my parents’ house is a perfect little country church — it’s the one and only surviving building from the never realized village of Elwood (there used to be a small school across the road but it was torn down when I was little) — a small Quaker gathering has met in this building every Sunday since 1895 when it was built.

 

About a mile away, there’s a country school house that has survived.  Though it’s not in the best of shape these days, I think the Yankee Branch School is still pretty perfect.  I wish it was on my family’s land–I’d love to fix it up!

 

 

The house I grew up in was originally a 4 room 1929 farmhouse that’s grown over time, room by room.  The earliest portion of the house is a Sears & Roebuck kit home–which means the entire house was ordered from the Sears catalog and it arrived in a huge pile of numbered boards with an instruction manual!  There are still part numbers stamped on the rafters up in the attic!

 

Autumn frost has just started nipping at the perennial beds around my parents' house

 

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little tour of Central Illinois.  Is it feeling/looking like fall in your part of the world yet?