street food art and flowers galore from the columbia road market

i’m trying to entice everyone i know to come visit me, so here are some photos from the spectacularly beautiful columbia road flower market that takes place every sunday about five minutes from my house.  i happened to wake up at the ungodly hour of 6am last sunday and so i got to experience the market setting up. the food graffiti was spied along the way.

how happy does this picture make you? dude’s got his own banana tree! that’s definitely a reason to smile.

i’ve been seeing this toaster graffiti all over the east end. you know how i like toasters. there’s one at least  a story high at the end of our street. i noticed this cool print shop/gallery, nelly duff, had the toasters all over the outside. turns out they’re selling toaster prints inside too. must do more research and discover this kindred toaster spirit.

you can see the reflection in the window shows the type of architecture in our area. super cute cobblestoned streets and low brick buildings, perfect for random wanderings and suddenly stumbling upon an dusty old antique store or happy little bakery with fresh croissants.

here’s a shot of the early morning market at about 7am. i’m glad i got to see it at this hour because i will probably never be awake that early again. a few hours later, the narrow columbia road is so packed that even an anorexic preteen supermodel would have a hard time squeezing through.

the market consists of maybe 15-20 vendors with a huge plant, herb, and flower selection – i was torn between the hydrangea, the japanese maple, the lemon tree, the tomato plants, the small palm trees, the bougainvillea which reminds me of sunny san francisco and huge waterfalls of magenta pouring down over people’s houses, and another million plants i can’t name.

i pretty much walked around with my mouth open in awe for a few hours, overwhelmed by all the beauty and paralyzed by all the possibilities. the cut flowers were stunningly beautiful too.

i ended up getting a gorgeous bouquet of dusky blue hydrangea, and a fantastic white enamel vintage pitcher to put it in. photos of that, and of the rest of the house, coming soon for those of you who have asked.i forced myself to wait to buy any large trees in order to get housemate chris’s opinion (and help carrying things home). we have a little back ‘patio’ that we plan to fill with herbs and trees and other beautiful growing things that i will do my best not to kill rapidly.

the market also has  a few stalls with antiques tucked away in a little courtyard where i also found gwilym and his coffee cart as well as bacon rolls.  (irene, i also bought you some hilarious vintage greeting cards which are now on their way over the atlantic). here is a bacon butty, slightly out of focus through my love-glazed eyes.

i snapped this photo across the street from my house right around the corner from columbia road. this is probably where swine flu came from.

lastly, i see this little bit of joy every day. whose day isn’t brightened by the thought of meatballs?