Home from designing a kitchen garden for a restaurant in the Wine Country, on a January, 1989, rainy afternoon, Anne Merry St. Denis unfolded her notated drawings. Easily accessible from the back door of the kitchen, the design she favored included a variety of containers, some wooden, some ceramic, some enclosed by stones. On her drawing for this garden were tall trellises for pole beans, smaller trellises for cherry tomatoes, and raised beds for strawberries. Along meandering garden paths were peppers, leeks, garlic, butter lettuce, cucumbers, and beds and containers where grew basil, parsley, tarragon, and cilantro, among many other plants, some flowering profusely.

There were few things more pleasurable for a landscape architect than designing a kitchen garden, Anne Merry thought as she tacked drawings and planting timetables on the wall of her studio.

Nicolas was not at home; their children were in school. Like a blank canvas, the music box she had bought at Thrift Town lay on the table where she created drawings for her clients. She had prepared the surfaces of each side by sanding and applying an undercoat. Since on small surfaces, she would be working from photographs and an old poster, she had decided to use a grid method and enamel paints to recreate these images. The photo of a row of men on skis at Camp Hale was going to be difficult. But, like the Land Girl on the poster, her Mother had worked on a farm during World War 2. That image was where Anne Merry would begin to paint the sides of the music box.

She wound up the music box. As did many children who grew up in households with French heritage, she remembered her mother singing the song that echoed in her studio:

"Maman, les p'tits bateaux qui vont sur l'eau..."