New home shop corrals wild horse art exhibit
As you might know, many of America’s wild horses have been amazing partners of our ancestors. They helped settle our country and changed, for the better, so many lives in the process.
Today, you can find them serving in national parks, in stables and show rings across the country, serving — and dying — with our troops in Afghanistan, and languishing in federal holding pens.
Of course, you can still see a few of them living wild and free in some of the world’s most secluded places.
On Sunday, you are invited to see hauntingly beautiful, large-scale images of these majestic creatures as depicted by Northern California artist Isabelle Truchon, whose work centers on mixed-media, or oil paintings of nature-scapes with a focus on equestrian subjects.
An artist reception takes place at Outpost Home, a new store opened by real estate broker and attorney Tracy McCulloch, of Mill Valley, and designer Karin Young, of West Marin, creator of the now-closed Corte Madera children’s store Goodnite Moon.
Outpost Home is a home décor store, and design and property consultancy with a mission to “rethink home design through upcycling and conscious shopping” with a global aesthetic influenced by travel and architecture, according to the store’s press release.
Outpost Home will also partner with clients to design, remodel, stage and sell properties.
It’s an opportunity, McCulloch says, to “encourage those around us to rethink what home means to them and create the space relevant to them.”
Young echoes that. Their store was “created to inspire dialogue about conscious design and home interior choices and changing our buying habits to spend with wisdom.”
• If you go: Artist reception for Isabelle Truchon is from
2 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Outpost Home at 1828 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in Fairfax. Outpost Home is open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, noon to 3 p.m. Sundays, and by appointment.
Spring is just around the corner, and when we experience the warmth of sunny afternoons, it’s hard not to go outside and poke around in the garden.
I have been asking Marin residents to show off their homes and gardens, so I will share with you what’s happening around my house.
Indoors, the narcissi that I planted in waves of succession are in full bloom and scent the air with pungency when I walk into each room, while the branches of the repotted calamondins are in wait for their signal to blossom out into beautiful little fragrant oranges that hang like ornaments.
Gorgeous antique linen trousseau sheets, embroidered with lace and the monograms of long-ago engaged brides, have filled my linen closet in the last few months, tucked in with sachets of Provençal lavender to make them feel at home.
A large vintage copper skillet, another arrival from France, went to a capable silversmith in Berkeley to be re-tinned.
It arrived in a wonderful flurry of packages that also included a massive copper pot, large enough to steam at least eight jumbo artichokes and a heavy, but elegant, roaster for vegetables to be tossed in luscious olive oil. They were both part of a cherished copper cookware collection assembled over the years by a Normandy chef who had just retired.
Thank goodness his pots won’t notice the difference between their former owner and their new one, a less talented cook who is just a slightly better baker.
In the garden, the tulip magnolia has bloomed out and is just starting to lose some of its beautiful blossoms, carpeting, in the most beautiful way possible, the ground below it.
Freesia bulbs, purchased on a whim just after the holidays and casually tossed into some garden planters, have miraculously found their way to the surface, popping up their bright green dewy stems to glisten in the morning sun.
How that mysterious duo of daffodils showed up in a garden bed without my help, I have no idea, but I do like their cheerful, friendly surprise.
This weekend, I’ll plant the herbs, blueberries bushes and a grapevine purchased on impulse a few weeks ago and consider a solution for my hybrid version of a Hugelkultur bed.
The recent heavy rains taught me a good lesson.
Bound by six bales of inexpensive hay, layered with mounds of branches cut from trees onsite that were then topped with kitchen compost and store-bought soil, I planted a small strawberry patch.
It was wonderful until the rains settled down the soil further into the lower branches and created an unplanned sunken garden.
The plan is to top it off with more soil and wait for more winter rains to figure out the next step. Never give up, right?
Show off
Since so many of the popular home and garden tours are off the calendar this year, please consider this your invitation to share with fellow readers the images and description of your Marin garden or newly designed or remodeled home.
Please send an email describing either one, what you love most about it, and a photograph or two. I will post the very best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.