Tweetle Dee Design Co.

Wednesday

The Old Pine and the Wild Strawberry

Last spring, I was walking near the water at the cottage when something caught my eye. Growing from the top of an old pine stump was a wild strawberry plant. Its leaves were bright green. Tiny white blossoms opened toward the sun. It looked completely at home there, as though it had always belonged.

I stopped and stood for a moment, surprised not by the strawberry, but by where it was growing. The stump was all that remained of one of the old pines that once stood along the path to the pond. When I was a little girl, those trees felt enormous.

I would run barefoot beneath them on summer mornings, racing toward the water without a thought in the world. The ground was soft with pine needles. The air smelled of sap and warm earth. The trees stood like quiet guardians along the shore, watching over generations of summers.

As children, we imagine that the places we love will always remain exactly as they are. But time has other plans. Storms come. Trees fall. Families change. People grow older. The landscape shifts in ways both large and small. The pine tree that once towered above me is gone now. And yet, there on its weathered stump, something new had taken root.

A wild strawberry. It felt like a lesson from the land itself. Not everything that appears finished is gone. Sometimes life continues in forms we do not expect.

The old pine had become nourishment for something new. What once provided shade now provided a place for roots. What looked like an ending had quietly become the beginning of another story. I have thought often about that strawberry plant since then.

The wild strawberry has long been associated with sweetness, abundance, and the rewards that come from patient tending. It grows close to the earth. It does not seek attention. It simply flowers when the season is right and offers its fruit to those willing to notice.

Perhaps that is why it felt so meaningful to find it there. Not because it was rare. But because it was ordinary. A small act of renewal taking place without announcement. The older I become, the more I see that life works this way.

We inherit more than houses and photographs. We inherit stories. Values. Traditions. Ways of seeing the world. We carry pieces of those who came before us, often without realizing it. The places that shape us continue to shape us long after we leave them. And sometimes, if we are paying attention, they offer reminders.

A blossom growing from a stump.

A memory returning on a spring morning.

A quiet reassurance that roots remember.

As I stitched the Wilde Strawberry embroidery design, I found myself thinking about that old pine and all the summers it witnessed. The laughter. The fishing poles. The family gatherings. The barefoot paths worn into the grass by children running toward the water.

The tree is gone.

The childhood summers are gone too. But the story continues. Perhaps that is what the strawberry came to teach me. That life is always renewing itself. That beauty often appears in unexpected places. And that what once nourished us continues to nourish us still.

The old pine is gone.

But from its roots, sweetness remains.

I'm sharing the Wilde Strawberry Embroidery Kit and Pattern in our shop for you to slow stitch your own vintage inspired wild berries. Each of our kits include everything you need to stitch and enjoy.

Celebrate, Dream & Create.

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Tuesday

A Sandwich and A Chair

There is a phrase I’ve found myself returning to lately.

A sandwich and a chair.

Simple things.

Not grand gestures. Not complicated plans. Not fixing every problem or finding every answer. Just a sandwich and a chair.

A place at the table. A place to rest.

A reminder that someone thought to leave the light on for you.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to suspect that much of what we call love looks a lot like this. Not fireworks, just simple hospitality.

A comfortable place to land when the road has been long.

This spring has been full of family.

We’ve been working on the cottage in New York - clearing rooms, making plans, dreaming about paint colors and wood floors, deciding what stays and what goes. There is still much to do, preparing rooms not lived in. But I’ve begun to wonder if much of life is exactly that.

Preparing rooms before we know who will walk through the door. Planting gardens before we see blossoms. Making beds before guests arrive. Creating a space for something we cannot yet see.

This past week, I had a dream about a woman I had never met.

She appeared as naturally as an old friend, she introduced herself by name. A first name I had not heard before, attached to a last name that was distantly familiar.

She looked like someone from the 1950’s…Her dark hair pinned back. Her paisley dress. The feeling of familiarity she carried. I asked my father if he knew someone by her name, and he did.

She had been a close friend of my grandmother many years ago. A woman who had shared meals, stories, and community with our family long before I arrived.

I spent days thinking about that and why she appeared in my dream to introduce herself, shake my hand and join a gathering at the lake.

I’ve wondered how many people helped prepare the rooms we now know?

How many hands planted trees whose shade they would never sit beneath?

How many women set tables, stitched quilts, hosted chicken dinners, built communities, carried stories, and held hope for futures they would never personally see?

Perhaps that is what ancestors do.

They prepare rooms.

And perhaps our job is not so different.

At Tweetle Dee, our motto has always been:

Celebrate. Dream. Create.

For years I thought of those as separate steps. Now I wonder if they are really one continuous circle.

Celebrate where you are.

Dream about what could be.

Create space for it to arrive.

Then begin again.

Celebrate.

Dream.

Create.

The cottage is teaching me this. Every board we repair. Every room we clear.

Every plan we make for a future visit. It is an act of faith.

Not because we know exactly what comes next. But because hope itself is a form of creation.

Life asks for patience.

It asks us to trust the work happening beneath the surface. To believe that clearing a room matters even when we don’t know who will occupy it. To trust that making a place welcoming has value even when we are still waiting.

In my dream my Dad was sitting in a chair, not speaking. Just smiling watching the activity with children at a bonfire, some on the dock watching the water and children coloring on the porch.

I told him that there would always be a sandwich and a comfortable chair waiting for him at the cottage.