The Week in Bloom

Hachiya persimmon are ripening early this year The raccoons have commenced their furtive nighttime raids on the persimmon tree, whose fruits are prematurely ripe by a few weeks. We’re still trying to figure out how best to use the hundreds of Hachiya persimmon produced by our single tree each winter, and have been picking and […]

Wowhaus Interview

photo by Jenny Elia Pfeiffer for the December ’09 issue of San Francisco Magazine I’m already fielding inquiries for dining tables after the publication of an interview with Ene and me in the December issue of San Francisco Magazine, written by Joanne Furio. The interview is called ‘We Gather Together’ and it unpacks our approach […]

Back to the Studio

a satisfying pile of offcuts accumulate as I make chairs for Becoming Independent Getting back to the studio this week makes me grateful that my work as an artisan requires such a range of activity. After a couple of weeks of project-related proposal-making, site visits, speaking engagements and interviews with the press, I’m delighted to […]

Bottling the Cider

the Golden Orb Weaver (Argiope aurantia) sets her net in the breezy autumn garden Like all the other creatures marking this time of year- spiders weaving webs around the garden, hungry deer grazing roadside, the long-billed Dowitcher foraging the beach or geese flying Southeast in their familiar, honking ‘V’- we’ve been busy making provisions for […]

Entropy Schmentropy

I doubt the rancher who owns this tiny roadside outbuilding shares my enthusiasm for the patterns of blistered paint on its corrugated walls. He’d probably agree that it needs repainting and was a poorly executed job to begin with, or that the galvanized steel was best left exposed to the elements without any paint at […]

In Praise of the Bead Plane

Around the autumn equinox is typically our hottest, driest time of year, with golden brown fields and chalk dry dust under the orchard trees, now barren after harvest. The tips of the redwood branches have turned an orange-y yellow, and happily soak up the sea fog of a rare night. I can feel the rains […]