How does your garden grow?

Meine Oma.

Anna von Birnbeck Knodlseder and my great uncle Otto Knodlseder in Munich early in the war. This is the only surviving picture of my Oma that we have. My mother always proudly comments on how her mother washed the clothes with her jewelry and nice dress. She had to scrub the clothes on the old pine table and hang it up to dry in their cramped court yard in the city, as did billions of other women all around the world, all through time. My mother studied, stared at and cherished this photo. It has become part of our family folk lore, a piece of the story, the saga of strong women, surviving, flourishing, living and dying...

honored, loved and not forgotten.

A snippet of the little garden I am growing in my room. It is the one room in the house that we have never touched. Always too busy working on the rest of the house. Leaving it to indecision. There is still soot on the walls from the old wood stove, no new paint, no new trim, but it has been slowly evolving over the last few weeks.

I made the two little picture frames inspired by an old MSL magazine. My girlfriend and I have been collecting old photos of women for many years now, it is fun to finally display them... lives lived, names unknown but still wonderfully alive to me.

So, I have rearranged my treasures...

Our old medicine cabinet from the farm house we used to live in. A doctor's family lived there before us and left a lot of his old stuff... We inherited the cabinet.

Hat pins from Jenny Hoyt, my baby shoes, old Christmas houses, flower pins, a leather change purse from 1897 marked Exposition de Bruxelles soft as a kid glove, and my latest treasure... a hand beaded, mid-1800's reticule (corded hand pouch)

My girlfriend Linda

http://www.lindathiltgen.com

in Minnesota gifted me the beautiful, hand-dyed lace doilie...

did I spell that right?

Peaceful beauty... I wish you joy.

Namaste.