Welcome back the ninth edition of We’ve Never Been Wrong; a new and exciting explosion of opinion in which two 20-something women attempt to convince their small community of readers that they’ve never been wrong!
After “working it out on the remix” Julia and Bernadette return as a united front, no longer separated by the Cape traffic, but rather a clean 10 minute drive down the road.
Upon Bernadette’s homecoming Julia picked up Bernadette as usual and drove to the train station in Mansfield, (because the Franklin line sucks now!) to ride into Back Bay. After buying the same book at the bookstore, Bernie turned to Julia and popped the question she’d only dreamed of hearing,
“Do you wanna get a coffee and read our books on a bench at the esplanade?” asked a hopeful Bernadette
“Do I ever!?” replied Julia through tears of gladness.
Sitting on a bench along the Esplanade, the pair worked through their attachment issues. After much discussion the duo realized they agree on literally every subject and thus, to the detriment of others and the betterment of themselves, it once again clear that they have never been wrong about anything ever… so, they topped off the day with some al fresco, aperol spritz friendly dining on Newbury Street and headed home. A day well spent.
Side note: Toot and Puddle if they were girls. Julia and I give major Woodcock Pocket vibes.
THIS MONTH! Julia takes readers through her artistic landscape, talking process and turning technique into emotion. Bernadette takes readers on a tour of her garden, exploring growth and the harvest.
Small Seeds and Big Greens
By Bernadette Harding
I began gardening as a pupil to the Master Gardener, my dad, when I was young, maybe 4 years old. In my youth, I would dig holes and drop seeds in them at the direction of the master gardener. I accompanied manure runs, always very fragrant and watered the crops. I excelled in the snacking department, crunching away at sugar snaps and cherry tomatoes as they ripened on the vine. I would trick neighborhood friends, telling them I enjoyed eating grass as I chomped away on handfuls of fresh chives. I was fascinated by edible nature. How perfect that I can eat a plant that grows from the ground!
This summer was my third season as a gardener of my own raised bed. I constructed it myself.
“How to construct/vibe out a raised bed?”
Forage 4 long fallen pine trees (or buy wood at the store but it’s less fun)
Cut away the whorls, leaving the trunk
Cut the trunk using a hand saw (you should feel very cool while you do this)
Lay out the logs in the space you’ve selected for the raised bed. I stacked them like Lincoln logs.
Hammer in a nail at the corners where the logs intersect. (Once again you should feel very badass while using handheld tools)
Tie twine around the logs to ensure a secure intersection of the logs
Fill the structure with soil! Bonus points for compost.
And thus, the student becomes the master of her own plot. My garden is simple and it lends simple delights. What was once a mass of dirt and buried treasure evolves, revealing the bounty of the seedlings beneath. As I get older, my enjoyment and fascination for watching things grow has deepened. A reminder of my own life cycle and the four seasons.
This year I attempted a new crop, garlic. I started the process in Fall of 2023. I was working at Tangerini’s Farm; this late in the fall the shifts lasted all day, open to close with one employee running the farm stand. It was lonely and very quiet. Only a few regulars. I was cold and drank too many lattes while listening to The Cranberries, Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? on repeat. Most of my time was spent shucking seed garlic and finding new ways to tidy up produce that was already tidy and organized. I was contemplating how I could arrange the bread in a way that was inviting but didn’t pull focus from the corn when a woman ran into the farm stand.
` “Do you have seed garlic?” She seemed desperate.
“Yes, it’s just there next to the apples.” I replied.
“Thank God! I’m so glad you have it. I’ve been looking everywhere for it.” She grabbed two handfuls of the seeds, paid, and left the store.
After shucking pounds of seed garlic and seeing the woman’s elation at its presence in the store, I decided to grow garlic. And after a successful crop, I share her enthusiasm. Growing garlic is a long process beginning in the fall of the previous year. In November, I planted my crop, dropping the small seeds into their respective holes and covering them with a blanket of leaves for the long winter. There they sat through the long winter; the trees lost their leaves, animals hibernated and took shelter. I admit, I wasn’t certain my garlic would make it. It was a weather heavy winter and felt at times eternal. But the sun rose and set each day and soon it was spring and I watched my garlic burst from the covers. Baby green shoots, blasting across the brown landscape. They grew tall and strong with roots that stayed even as the surrounding soil washed away with the rain. In July, the rest of my garden was flush green with life and my garlic was turning brown, almost ready for harvest. I harvested my last garlic this past week and it was the cream of the crop! It now sits out on top of the compost drying out before it will be added to some, no doubt delicious meal. I am proud of my garlic!
My final point of excitement comes from my volunteer butternut squash! Every season I fill my garden with compost and the result is a few volunteer plants. Both this season and last, has brought forth volunteer butternut squash. I never plant the seeds but rather the seeds have volunteered themselves for my garden via the compost. Last year it was a real surprise that resulted in a crop of butternut squash that lasted us through the winter and into the early spring. This year when I saw the sprouts germinating, I was enthused! The crop so far is progressing wonderfully and I expect a similar bounty that will last us into the winter.
This summer I am savoring my food a little more, knowing the effort and time it takes to get to my table. Reminded of the simple pleasure of cycles within and outside of myself, my wonder for the bounty only grows.
No Rushing in Heaven
By Julia Dwinell
I have discussed this painting before, but I am going to discuss it again because it continues to be relevant in my life (and this is my newsletter so I can do what I want). I hope to go into more detail on my process of making a painting. First, I want to share some quick details you should know before I start this story. I went to Italy for study abroad in 2020 for 28 days before being sent home due to a pandemic, if you remember that whole ordeal. Two years later in 2022 I spent the month of August in Italy with a friend of mine and for a week of that time we worked on a farm in Tuscany. The house on that farm is what the painting No Rushing in Heaven is depicting.
This painting is my biggest piece to date; it is 30”x40”. I had bought the canvas at least a year before I did this painting. I had not even gone on the trip to Italy where the painting is from at the time I bought the canvas. I was saving the canvas for when I felt inspired. I think artists talk about feeling inspired a lot and it may be hard to connect with that concept. For me it is less about waking up in the middle of the night with an idea that I simply must paint (that has literally never happened to me), but more of a long drawn out process. On study abroad in 2020 we went to the Vatican and I took a really stunning photo of a window that was open and through the glass you could see a lovely mural on the wall. Wherever I am I am constantly taking photos of things that capture my eye and that I think are beautiful. Often there is really nice lighting involved. My strongest skill in my art making is composition and I feel I have a knack for knowing when something might make a great painting. I had that in mind when I took that photo in the Vatican and for some time I considered making that photo a painting on that big canvas, but I never did. That is where the inspiration part comes in. As beautiful as that photo in the Vatican was, it had no meaning to me. Two years later when I was on the farm in Tuscany I was taking photos of everything. It was so serene on that quiet farm in the mountains. My friend and I expected to be working from sun up to sun down and cooking meals and being busy, but instead we worked a couple hours in the morning and a couple in the evening as it was too hot during the day to be in the sun. The man who owned the farm had a friend staying with him who happened to be a professional chef from London, who was preparing to open a restaurant in Germany. The whole week all our meals were cooked for us and it was some of the best food I had ever had in my life. I should also point out that nearly everyone in my life completely doubted my ability to work on a farm for a week and I was deeply offended by this and fully intended to go prove them wrong. Turns out three hours of work a day and a professional chef cooking all my meals did nothing to prove them wrong.
During the day my friend and I would sit outside under the shade of the cyprus trees and draw or embroider. One afternoon the chef came out to ask us to pick blackberries for a tart he was making for dessert and we immediately jumped up and gathered our things to go do this. He waved us off and said there was no rush and that he just needed them before dinner. As he walked back into the house he said “There's no rushing in heaven” and so I finished the watercolor painting I had been doing in my sketchbook and wrote that quote on the page. After a week of slowing down and relaxing in the mountains with one of the best views of my life, I had learned more about myself than I had in a long time. I had not realized that I was changing until I had left and could reflect back on that time. When I took that photo of my room in the farmhouse I did not take it with the intention of turning it into a painting. If I remember correctly I just saw how beautiful the lighting was and I asked my friend to wait before she walked into the room so I could snap the picture. I am certainly drawn to interiors more than something like a landscape because of the meaning and character they hold. That farm house had so much character to it with the blue and orange paint on the walls and the handmade shelves holding origami and other trinkets. Even with the bare mattress on the metal frame and the stiff wood and wicker chair there is something so inviting about that space.
I took the photo of the room in the farmhouse and the window in the Vatican because I saw something beautiful that caught my eye. It is that simple. I am constantly doing this and 99% of the time nothing comes of those photos, but it is worth it for that 1% that do. That trip in 2022 was the first time I had traveled on my own, had taken a plane by myself and the first time I stepped out of my comfort zone and did something for myself. In painting that room I captured the moment in time that I was growing as a person. The stars on the window and the little figurine hanging from the shelf are whimsical and childish and yet my friend and I were traveling in a different country on our own for the first time staying with two strangers we had never met. We were practically watching ourselves grow up in real time. This painting, as a happy accident, represents that gradual shift from childhood to adulthood that I think is our 20’s. An art professor might love the idea of the blue and orange paint melting off the walls as a representation of a loss of innocence, but this is only the type of analysis you can do after a painting is finished. The title No Rushing in Heaven of course comes from the quote by the chef and it really does encapsulate the meaning of my time on the farm. It is important to me, though, that the title of my artwork adds to or is an extension of the art itself. I want my paintings to capture the viewer just by looking at them, but I also want the title to grab your attention as well. I really think No Rushing in Heaven says so much more than Tuscany Interior would.
Ever since my grandmother first saw this painting she has been asking me what it means to me. She thinks there is a spiritual element to this painting. One of my favorite parts about making art are all the layers to unfold after the painting is made. All the meaning placed onto the painting by different viewers and everyone having a different reaction to the painting. Before art school I did not understand the question of “what does the painting mean to you” because I start all my paintings the same: I saw something beautiful and I wanted to paint it. However, that is not really true because if it were I would have painted that photo from the Vatican, but instead I hesitated. When I went back and saw this photo of the farmhouse in my camera roll there was no hesitation, I knew this was going on the big canvas. This newsletter was my attempt at finally answering my grandmothers question. I hope I was able to do so.
I am going to include the original photo of the farm as well as my painting. I threw around the word whimsy to describe my painting and a lot of people who have seen it have said that too. So keep that in mind when you see them side by side because like I told my dad, I am glad my lack of painting ability is reading as intentional whimsy rather than a general lack of skill. (Actually I just remembered that I did a digital drawing of this photo on my iPad and created the painting based off of that rather than ever referencing the photo so that probably also contributed to the sense of whimsy, or at least this is what I will tell myself).
This was very wordy so if you made it to the end, thank you. You should probably never enter a conversation with me because I will not shut up.
Bernadette’s Library
I’m reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It’s not sad, its devastating and deeply upsetting…and I’m only halfway through. The writing is beautiful. The kind of writing that makes me wonder how a mind constructed perfection in a sentence. I’m only recommending this to people who want to suffer.
Julia’s Library
Sadly I have not read too many books that have captured me so far this year. The one that has, however, is Educated by Tara Westover. This is a brilliantly told memoir of a girl raised in a survivalist Mormon family in Idaho. She had never gone to school and had no formal education and yet was able to get herself into college where she learned nearly everything from washing your hands after you go to the bathroom to the Holocaust for the first time at 17. I highly recommend this book.
Bernadette’s Playlist
After successfully predicting the summer of pop: brat summer and Chappell’s catapult to fame, I hope you’ll all be taking my recommendations less as a grain of salt and more of as a loaf of bread; sustaining and a staple for your palate. This month, I am recommending Mesmerize by Hey Cowboy! The perfect song to float away to at the end of the summer. Their new album Off the Cob is a fun and warm listen that fits right into an evening in mid August.
Julia’s Playlist
I am in a teensy bit of a music rut at the moment, but a body of work I really cannot recommend enough is “The Feeling of Falling Upwards” by Five Seconds of Summer. I swear to you this live album played with an orchestra at Royal Albert Hall is my favorite piece of live music ever. It takes all their hit songs and makes them bigger and better than before you will never want to go back to the originals. (Also please do not knock this just because 5sos is a boy band. I am of course a big fan of the Jonas Brothers, but musically and lyrically they are not on the same level as 5sos. I swear I know what I am talking about; I’ve never been wrong)
You both make me look at the simple things in my life with fresh eyes. Thank you 20 something women who are wise beyond your years!
In every issue, you two make me take stock of the endless beauty around us all. I am constantly refreshed by your perspective on life.