Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

recent posts

Category: Making it home

Cozy, friendly, orderly, fun, inspiring. That’s what I want when I walk in the door.

  • Seasons change

    The rains have begun in Oregon, and soon the last of the flowers will wrap up their show and bed down until spring. I didn’t want to say goodbye for that long and so have been cutting and pressing a few blooms, mementos of all this year’s sunny garden pleasures. It’s surprising and fun to…

  • Pressed flowers

    The practice of preserving plants by pressing them goes back hundreds of years. I began playing with pressing this spring and am now making cards with the results, which come from our garden. It’s a sweet little hobby. Learning that American poet Emily Dickinson also preserved plants this way and retained them in an herbarium,…

  • Focus and intent

    For heck’s sake. What a mess. My play table. I mean, I could call it a work table but everything on it is about play: making art from dried flowers, midway through an embroidery project, editing a manuscript, sending cards to distant friends. It’s like leaving the kitchen a mess after baking bread and then…