Recently I found out some super crazy amazing awesome news- my photos from Astral Boutique were featured on Italian Style.com, in a fashion spread about caftans!
I got so excited when I heard the news, I spent the next three hours Facebooking, Tweeting, and e-mailing anyone and everyone about it.... but I realized that I totally forgot to write a blog. So (roll the drums) here is the link.... (give it a full minute to load, then click "start" to play the slideshow). You will see some amaaaaazing vintage shots of 60s/70s caftans, modern runway caftan looks, and little ol' me!
Grazie to Elisa at Style.com... I have no idea how I got so lucky!
It is high summer in the garden, and everything is in full bloom. We are at the point where we are mostly sitting back, watering, weeding, and watching it all unfurl into food and beauty, but the bees-- oh man are they busy!
On the poppies...
The gladiolas...
The nasturtiums...
The sunflowers...
The squash...
The heirloom sweet peas (these have the very best scent in the whole world)....
People don't always get why Chris and I love Reno so much.
To most Californians, Reno is a trashy little city that you pass through on your way to all points East (it is on the Highway 80), maybe stopping to eat bad food at a casino buffet and watch people gamble away their social security checks.
I used to feel that way, too, but things changed after I lived in Grass Valley for a few years. Suddenly I saw Reno in a whole new light, and now I am an ambassador for The Biggest Little City On Earth.
So here is my official rundown on Why I Love Reno. Let me make a convert of you!
1. It really IS the biggest little city, if not on earth, certainly within driving distance of my house. The other closest major city, San Francisco, is also one of the most expensive cities in the U.S., and you will never, ever get a hotel there for under $100 a night. In Reno, you can have the grit and glamor of a big city (live music, shows, people on benders, people on vacations, conventions and bachelor parties and cowboys and showgirls) and stay right in the middle of it all for as low as $20 a night. We have even gotten free hotel rooms during the off season.
2. Reno is not pretentious. As a Reno resident put it, "this is the only place where you will see a cowboy, a hipster, a gangster, and a homeless person standing side by side on the street- and they are talking to each other." If Reno was ever cool, that era is long past, and these days it pretends to be nothing that it isn't. Once we played a show in Reno and afterwards we walked to a sports bar with a friend to get a drink at 3am, and I was wearing a red dress and I had a huge beehive (for the record, Amy Winehouse, RIP, totally ripped off my stage 'do), and Sports Bars have never been welcoming to me in the best of circumstances. Chris and our other friend looked like total Indie Rockers.... in any other place, this would have been a Very Bad Idea. Instead we walked in and no one in the entire place batted an eye. Reno has seen it all. Reno is not moved by your exterior.
3. Reno has no Last Call. The party can go for 24 hours. Even if you are not up for it, there is a certain air of excitement just being in a city where the fun doesn't have to stop. This also means that the annual Santa Pub Crawl is the largest and the craziest in the West. People actually fly in to witness the spectacle.
4. Reno actually has a lovely River Walk (see photo below), and the river has been set up so that people can learn kayaking and rafting on it. Right in the middle of town!
5. Reno has the biggest Whole Foods I have ever seen. We have a great Co-op in Grass Valley, but come on- vegan donuts. Enough said.
6. Reno has the best vintage clothing store in the world, Junkees on South Virginia.
7. Reno has the best guitar store on the West Coast, Bizarre Guitar on Odie Boulevard (right next to Bizarre Gun). The key is to talk your way into the basement, where they have every rare and amazing guitar that you have only heard about or seen in a guitar magazine centerfold.
8. Reno has almost no ambient humidity at all, so if you have curly hair (like Chris) you will look like you have just ironed it straight and it's grown four inches. I think this is considered a fashion advantage.
9. Things are legal in Nevada that are illegal almost everywhere else in the U.S., namely, gambling and prostitution. This gives it an edgy, lawless feeling that is unmatched by any other city on the West Coast. That's why we call it the New Orleans of the West!
10. New discovery: Reno has these amazing murals along the River Walk.
I hope I have won the heart of at least one of you out there... Reno is just waiting for you to fall for it. It won't let you down, brave voyagers!
On our most recent Reno weekend getaway, we made a Horoscopes video for the demo of our song "Triphopscotch" (we are working on our EP right now in a real studio! Hooray!.) This is filmed in the window of The Sands hotel in the heart of downtown (our favorite place to stay).
The other day, I did a photo shoot with my friend and neighbor Leonna Sapphire. She needed a promo shot for her upcoming show (tonight, Wednesday August 17th, at The Tin House in Grass Valley, with the fabulous Helene Renaut!) and I was so happy to be behind the camera instead of in front of it. Leonna was an amazing model, and the chickens did a fabulous job, too.
If you are in Nevada County, come on out tonight and see Leonna Sapphire live tonight!
It is hard to pick a favorite flower, but I have a very special place in my heart for California Poppies. They are the State Flower, and they always had an aura of excitement around them since we were taught in grade school that if we picked them, we would get arrested! (That was the rumor, anyway.) It is illegal to pick wild poppies, but of course you are free to do what you want with the ones in your own garden.
I love how poppies are so delicate, with their velvety, paper-thin petals that close in cold, windy, or wet weather, and their soft green-grey leaves; yet they are tough citizens of the sometimes harsh Mediterranean climate of California, preferring disturbed, dry soils where other plants could never survive. These babies are in our garden, but they are not being over-coddled, and they do best growing over the edge of the bed where the afternoon sun bakes down on them relentlessly.
California Poppies also make great medicine: they are a nervine, aka, a calming, slightly sedating herb, good for kids that have wound themselves into a tizzy by running around beyond their usual bedtime, or adults who are overstimulated and having a hard time taking the edge off. All ariel parts are used (flowers and leaves)... I don't recommend using the ripened seed pods, as I find them too strong.
I am putting up some poppy tincture here. The "folk" on the label refers to my method, meaning that I didn't take precise measurements, but rather eyeballed the percentage of alcohol. "Etoh" is alcohol, and I added some astrological info just to sort of keep track of everything (there are much more intentional methods of putting up herbs in ways that align the spirit of the plants with the movements of the stars, but I was working primarily with the time that the poppies were at their most potent and ready to be harvested!) I used high quality organic grape alcohol mixed with water (you have to special order it), but you can use vodka just as well- it's about 40% alcohol, which is what you need to break down the medicinal components. Fill a jar with plant material first and then add your alcohol; top off the next day as it tends to soak in, and you don't want any part of the plant sticking above the level of the liquid. I use a stone to help hold the plant down inside the jar as it macerates.
In 2-4 weeks I will press out the liquid from the plant matter (with as much force as possible- you really want to wring the plant dry) and bottle up my medicine.
For those of you who are just getting to know me, I should mention that several years ago I used to write an herbal blog called Kitchen Witch. I put stuff in there from my non-herbal life, too, but if you look through the posts you will find a lot of good herbal info and photos. In an ideal world I would still be writing that blog, but there are only so many hours in the day! I will try to post herbal stuff in this blog more often, since I know a lot of you are interested in it. Enjoy!
Chris and I just returned from a little road trip into the Wild West (aka Nevada)- and I filled the car with amazing vintage! Here it is, waiting to go into the shop in the next few days.... the haul includes a spectacular Gunne Sax, a Christian Dior lacy bed jacket, a kimono jacket, a kimono print caftan, gorgeous rayon sundresses (including the one in front, which I have hand-dyed), a high-waisted prairie skirt, an uber-mod floral trench coat, and of course the beautiful rainbow dress by Miss Elliette of California!
