First day of summer...

On this first day of summer, I treated myself to a trip to the flea market where it started to get a little too hot a little too early, but then the clouds came in off the coast and cooled things down enough for me to keep poking around a while. I saw Robin there, and we chatted for a few minutes while we clutched dusty little handfuls of treasures from one booth and waited to find out how much trouble we were in....

Afterward, I came home and pulled out my tubs of shells and sea fans and dusted off my matte white pottery, including this lovely piece that came from the old Prairie Sampler store, one of Wanda's finds, no doubt. She was a present to me from Dorothy Gail and Jeanne, and is a wonderful centerpiece on the mantle in these warmer months. I haven't glammed her up too much yet, but the shells gradually creep up her dress and nestle around her, until she looks like she's rising up out of them.
Our lavender is taking over the front yard, so I cut big swathes of it and jammed it in the other pieces of pottery, loving a little greenery but even more so its restrained grayish green color. At the end of the mantle is a little Victorian carved wood box studded with old shells, probably someone's vacation project, and behind the lady rests a beautiful piece of stippled brass, a little tray that Theresa just gave me last week (she is, as she says, shedding fiercely). The rest of it is just shells and sea fans, and little bits of sea glass strewn around.

There's something about a sea fan that I find irresistable. It's beautiful but prickly, and the contrast against the shells is so striking...