I don’t usually plug things on the blog, but the most wonderful notecards about animals and nature have gone on sale this week from an artist I have come to know and love.

Her name is Abrah Griggs and she lives in Vermont and is shy and unassuming, which is why she is charging so little for these cards, I think they are brilliant, and they reflect her very wonderful and idiosyncratic and ironic sensibilities about birds, lightning bugs, moths, frogs, spiders, butterflies, dragonflies, cats, mosquitoes and rodents.

It is increasingly rare to find a true original and individual spirit in label-crazy America today, Abrah is one of them. She is a very talented artist as well. She is one of those people who undervalues her work sometimes, and the notecards should fix that.

The notecards are funny and original and really appealingly priced -$3.75 for one, $13.00 for four plus shopping. I would say underpriced. Great notecards to use, and a memorable gift. And I see a lot of animal stuff. I want to tape some of them to my study wall.

Abrah is not yet set up to take orders online, so if you want the cards you will have to do it the old-fashioned way – s-mail and e-mail. You can e-mail her at [email protected] and see the notecards here: I’ve ordered five sets, they are very, funny, inventive and original. Abrah has mastered the challenge of being hilarious and touching at the same time. Not an easy trick.

Griggs, who is putting together the Mansion Book Of Stories, has a great and very dry perspective about life in nature.

I love the way she and her creatures look at the world. Once a year, she appears at one of our Open Houses, and I much look forward to her visits.

Abrah Griggs lives way out in the Vermont woods and ponders the bugs and insects of our world all the time. Like me, she has an ambivalent relationship with the outdoors, but finds it fascinating, we are lucky for that.

She puts some wonderfully funny words in the animals and insects mouths, and her imagination is refreshing and original. Her notecards are really worth a look, I think. There is something very special about them.