As a devotee of retail therapy, I usually check out the local shopping opportunities wherever I am.  This is Gardner Village, a favorite shopping haunt in the Salt Lake City area. If you like vintage wares and furniture, country french, farmhouse chic, and country-style furnishings and decor, I recommend a visit.  You can also find a quilting supply store, kids' clothing stores, a spa and salon, a bakery, and (this caught my eye immediately) the Chocolate Covered Wagon.

The Gardner Mill, now a furniture store (CF Home Furniture and Design) and restaurant, started out as a flour mill that was established in the West Jordan area in the mid-nineteenth century by a Scottish immigrant named Archibald Gardner. The present owner restored the old mill and moved other historic buildings onto the property starting in the 1980s to create a village of shops. If you like looking at old historic buildings and structures, including things built by the pioneering settlers of the Salt Lake Valley area back in the 1900s, this is a great place to visit.

Old flour mill

This is just a few hours after my sunny, summer-day visit to Red Butte Garden (previous post), but as you can see, the next storm has arrived.  It started to rain just as we finished up and pulled out of the parking lot.

Here is an example of the ubiquitous red sandstone pavers that can be seen everywhere in this part of the world.  We have plenty of this red rock down in the little canyon below where the cabin will be-- or we can drive on to BLM land and load up the pickup. It's remarkably easy to get rock for building and landscaping near our property.  As I pointed out in an earlier post, we have rocks of every size coming out of our ears on our property.  Which is both a curse (we still have heaps of large boulders to move) and a blessing-- we have more than enough rock material to use in landscaping, building, etc..  Unlike at home in California, where you can spend a small fortune just for one large boulder.  

All these beautiful greens contrast so nicely with the red...




One of many water features.....





More ideas for all the red rock that can be found near our property.






One of my favorite combinations in the garden-- blue-gray with bright lime green and chartreuse.  You can never miss with this combination.  This blue spruce (I believe that is what it is, couldn't find the tag)is the most perfect shade of blue-gray; even though it isn't strictly native to the area around our property, I may need to plant a few anyway.....




This guy was resting down along the Creekside Trail, tucked back under some Gambel's oak trees(Quercus gambelii) that grow along Red Butte Creek.

Our cabin project is foremost on our minds these days and traveling to other parts of Utah has given me even more ideas. I'm spending a week with family in Salt Lake City, which has no shortage of fabulous old houses and old historic buildings and landmarks-- all sources of inspiration that keeps my imagination humming along at full speed!  By the end of the first day I had already taken a ton of photos of old farm buildings; rusty, beat up vintage equipment and tools; weathered grainy wood; old barn lights (my current obsession- more on that later); tidy green vegetable gardens that make me want to rush to our property right now and plant a few peach trees and whatever flowers will grow at 7,000+ feet; and dozens of farm animals.  All of this will surely make its way into the design and decor of the cabin- one way or another.

I got up very early the first morning (too early, couldn't sleep-- ugh) and went for a walk with the camera and ended up exploring the Wheeler Historic Farm, which was within walking distance from my brother's house.   The Wheeler Historic Farm is a living history museum that was once a farm and dairy that had been established by a pioneer family in the mid-nineteenth century.















The museum is a working farm which means there are vegetable gardens as well as sheep, cows, turkeys, chickens, pigs, horses, goats, and rabbits in pens and corrals throughout and numerous ducks and geese waddling around looking for handouts or swimming in the farm's ponds and irrigation canals.

Ambling around trying to get some good photos in the early morning light, I was nearly run down by a large stampede of geese and ducks rushing to gobble up the pieces of bread being scattered by a woman who looked like she was a regular there.  Here they are milling around hoping for more goodies.

We were so excited to get started at last! Our first order of business was to get water and power  (and TV and Internet) to the property; this involved digging a five-foot deep trench from the nearby highway along a 2,700-foot long dirt road to our property. I use the term ‘road’ loosely here since it was more of a goat track formed over the years by people repeatedly driving back and forth to access other nearby properties and the mountains and canyon area behind our property.  

View of the sunset from our trailer-- lucky us! We get to camp on our property.

We have water!