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SEPTEMBER | PAGE 102 | 2015 O ut here, Eleanor Cummings wakes up at the crack of dawn. "The first thing I do is open my shutters and watch the sun rise over the field," says the Houston interior designer, who built this second home four miles outside of Round Top in Winedale in 2008. "Then I go downstairs and make coffee and watch the sun rise over the east from the living room and the screened-in porch." This simple routine brings enormous pleasure. "The house is surrounded by fields, and I like watching the morning activity," she says of the area's many migratory song and shorebirds that pass through the open meadows. One Easter, she arrived at the house to discover that a coastal bird had built a nest in the gravel drive. "The eggs were a gorgeous pale blue," she says — her favorite color, and one similar to what she's used as an accent for the interiors. Cummings has forgotten the name of the bird, which a friend later identified for her, "but it was dark gray with an Hermès orange ring around the neck," she says. After placing fire logs around the nest to protect it, she and her overnight guests "spent the weekend on bird watch," noting how the female would fly away at night and the male would sit on the nest until morning. Hearing Cummings talk about her house and the wildlife that populates the acreage — she's seen coyotes in the fields, snakes and scorpions in the pool drains — is made all the more fascinating by her sumptuous drawl, acquired while growing up in rural Georgia. Cummings discovered Round Top when she moved to Houston in the 1980s. "Back then, all you could get in Houston were American antiques," she recalls, so she began frequenting the semi-annual Round Top Antiques Fair to buy pieces for her clients. "It's really evolved since then. When Marburger opened up 10 or 15 years ago, it was Katy bar the door. Things got insane." The Marburger Farm Antique show is known to have the best goods from top dealers, while hundreds of other dealers come from all across the country to set up in the fields in Round Top and neighboring Warrenton, Carmine and Shelby. Cummings still shops Round Top, often going 10 days before it opens to scout new vendors setting up in Warrenton, one WHEN TEXAS VERNACULAR SPEAKS VOLUME D E S I G N E R E L E A N O R C U M M I N G S ' P L A C E - A P P R O P R I A T E H O M E I N W I N E D A L E BY REBECCA SHERMAN. PHOTOGRAPHER TIM STREET-PORTER