The ever-expanding brain. / iStock photo illustration.

By Charles Bowen

I’M NOT the student I was 50 years ago. I am so much better now.

Oh, in defense of the late ’60s version of me, I had a lot on my plate. I was 18 and in college and in love. There were guitars to play and poems to write, beers to drink and wars to end. It was hard to focus on history class when history seemed to be happening all around us. And besides, wasn’t history also becoming irrelevant? After all, the world seemed bent on blowing itself up by next Tuesday. As Bob Dylan would later write about those grim, exhilarating days, “There was music in the cafés at night and revolution in the air.”

So I graduated in 1970, leaving campus with an excellent list of books I planned to actually read someday. Well, someday finally came. I have read all those books now and many more, urged on with a little help from my friends—friends like Ms Rose.

For my wife, Pamela, and me, our sherpa on this adventure into renewed education has been Rose Marie Riter. A dynamo of a woman, Rose has always lived what she preaches: Never stop learning. A retired West Virginia school teacher, she was active years ago in campaigning for the life-long learning state law (18B-10-7a in the state code) that enables any West Virginian over age 65 to audit any class in a state university for just $50 per course. Curiously, Rose successfully pushed for this legislation long before she herself could take advantage of it. Then when she hit retirement age, she was knocking at the door of her nearest university. Now Pamela and I regularly sit in those same classes each semester at Marshall University here in our hometown of Huntington, WV.

We have also learned from Rose that the learning doesn’t start and stop at the classroom door. Over the years, we’ve frequently accompanied her to hear about all manner of topics at lectures and panel discussions, seminars and symposia, one of the many perks, she reminds us, of living in a college town. 

Beyond that, it was also Rose who introduced us to the extraordinary Road Scholar system (www.roadscholar.org), a 40-year-old not-for-profit education travel program (formerly called Elderhostel) that offers more than 6,500 educational tours for older adults in all 50 states and 150 countries. The Bowens are just starting out (we have been on only half a dozen Road Scholar trips so far), but Rose is a road warrior when it comes to Road Scholar, having been on more than 40 trips, all around the world.

But of course, dear Rose also has caused us to be a little annoying to some of our other friends. Yes, despite our enthusiasm for the concept, we’ve found life-long learning sometimes to be a hard sell. Oh, many of our peers like the thought of continued education. However, some are turned off by the idea of sitting in college classrooms with 20-somethings; others blanch at the thought of traveling and studying with a bunch of strangers, even people of the advanced same age. And don’t even bring up the notion of leaving cozy digs on a winter’s night to hear some visiting professor yammer on about climate change or the Russian Revolution or what archaeology has dug up lately.

Fortunately, though, nowadays you don’t have to leave home to learn. For years now, the Internet has had great educational resources, and—news flash—it has just gotten even better in the past year.

Several years ago on a Road Scholar trip, Pamela and I first heard about The Great Courses (www.thegreatcourses.com), a series of college-level audio and video courses produced by The Teaching Company of Chantilly, Virginia. The company was started more than 25 years ago by Thomas M. Rollins, former chief counsel of the US Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. These days, more than 600 courses are offered, ranging in length from six to 90 lectures on a broad spectrum of subjects.

But a turn-off factor is that the courses can be a little pricey. If you don’t catch one of the company’s frequent sales, you can spend several hundred dollars for a single course.

However, recently The Teaching Company launched a service called “The Great Courses Plus” (thegreatcoursesplus.com) that gives you all-you-can-stream access to more than 6,000 lectures for a flat monthly fee of $14.99. You can watch them on your TV or computer, your tablet or smartphone. Think Netflix for the brain. And you can try it for a month for free before deciding whether you want to continue.

Of course, now you have another problem. With 6,000 lectures to choose from, where do you start? Just follow your heart or at least your curiosity. Visit the site and browse the categories. History (oo oo! “Egyptian Hieroglyphs.” “Great Military Blunders.” “The Mysterious Etruscans.”). Science (“Exoplanets.” “Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Inexplicable Universe.” “The Science of Extreme Weather.”). Literature and Language. (“Heroes and Legends.” “How Great Science Fiction Works.”). Health and Fitness. Music and Fine Arts. Mathematics. Economics and Finance. Food and Wine. Travel. It’s like a candy store for information junkies. They even let you check out the company’s newest releases as part of the flat monthly fee.

What an interesting trail we’re on. Thank you, Ms Rose. Because of you, we can’t remember the last time we were bored.

These sturdy fronds bridge the pond in the Cavanaugh backyard, enhancing both parts of the small installation. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

 THE FERNS by the small backyard pond are ravishing this year. Planted a few seasons ago, they grew from a patch of pleasing frills to a leggy frond border that sprawls across the water, nearly reaching the other side (not a big reach), like a lacy bridge. While the fern cuts the expanse of water, it gives the pond a stronger presence, and a more realistic one than you might expect from what is, in fact, a rubber tub. 

They’re lovely in the sun, reflecting cool above the black pond; the handful of goldfish that have escaped the raccoon flit and glint about. The ferns are just as charming in the rain, a moody mini meadow. While I’d prefer a swimming pool, even a trough to wallow in in the heat, just looking at ferns is cooling, like a bit of forest, if you’ve got blinders on. 

I don’t think we bought these ferns, which I suspect are some variety of maidenhair. I imagine they arrived thus: We’re driving along a country road and I yell Stop and My Prince hops out of the car and (with who knows what, since we don’t normally travel with a pick and shovel) manages to unearth a clump. We then return home and I wave my arms about over the pond and he digs a fine hole.  

There are other ferns spotted about the back garden. A fine upright asparagus fern, planted in a small urn, is flinging delicate foliage. A Mother’s Day gift from My Prince, it can grow six feet this way and that, if I give it more room. Scattered about are large pots of the more usual drooping sort of asparagus fern, which is great as a filler in the ground and in containers. 

My hanging Boston ferns are coming back, one more rapidly than the other, who knows why. These are such a nuisance to winter over, demanding water and then leaking all over the solarium floor. If I had my druthers I’d ditch them each fall and buy new each spring, but My Prince likes to nurse them back to health, which sometimes works. 

We’re lucky enough to have a smidge of sun here and there, so the ferns by the pond make a hedge for a hibiscus and a new pittosporum which, with any luck, will grow from a tidy mound to a well-rounded shrub, flowering in springtime with tiny orange-scented blossoms—not a showpiece flower, rather one that tantalizes with scent strong enough to delight the back porch, not overpower the spaghetti bolognese, should we be eating outdoors. 

For those with really dense shade, ferns can be the entire show. There’s a small front garden a few blocks away that is shrouded by a giant evergreen tree, under which tiers of maidenhair fern put on a showy display throughout the year, layering down the slightly sloping front yard to the stone retaining wall. One needs nothing more to enchant a spot that’s so devoid of sunlight that few plants have the wherewithal to grow.  

Ferns also lend themselves brilliantly to flower arrangements, as a nest for blossoms or standing on their own. Treated well, they’re far from the ho-hum ferns usually stuck in gift bunches. Soft, light green Lady Ferns and the particularly hardy Male Ferns can grow three to five feet. Pull the lower leaves so you have a naked stalk, arrange in a tall vase, and poof! An extravagant display for the foyer that will last for weeks. Shorter stems are delightful in small vases and containers, such as empty perfume bottles: Set them on the dining table or the mantel, intersperse with tea lights, and you have a miniature indoor garden.  

Generally, ferns are trouble free, and multiply like weeds with minimal care. Water, mulch, that’s about it. You can hack apart a large clump in spring and plant the pieces without worry. The Wild Seed Project has growing tips (if you insist) and photos of several varieties. If you’re after rare beauties, Plant Delights in Raleigh, North Carolina, should have quite a few to tickle your fancy. Open only occasionally to the public, this online nursery specializes in rare, unique and native plants—and has a wonderfully witty catalogue that reads like J. Peterman for the garden muckabout.  

Surf, sand and a lack of gardening angst along Juno Beach in south Florida. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

THE OCEAN is limpid. Aquamarine with diaphanous waves ruffling white where they meet the shore, like a glorious Galanos gown. Parasails soar, sherbet-colored sails against the blue sky. The sun is hot, the water cool, just as it’s been for days and days in south Florida. 

Every afternoon around 4, a slender woman walks the sand. Her top half is shrouded in white, like an egret in a long-sleeved shirt—a rash guard they call it, unattractively. All long thin tanned legs, a tight cowl snooding her hair, topping a brimmed hat with a neck flap, like something Lawrence of Arabia might wear on his camel—or a groundskeeper buzzing hedges at a ritzy resort.

She sports a pole with a small strainer attached to the end. Eyes to the sand and the shallows, she dips at something, looks and dips again, wandering on. 

“Go see what she’s looking for,” I poke The Prince. I’m big on snappy comments, less interested in conversation. 

He goes. Returns. Reports.

“Why do you think I’m looking for something?” she said. “It’s a spiritual exercise—the ocean has much to give. Everything is special.”

That said, she has found jewels, and sea glass, though not a doubloon—yet. “Many ships have sunk here; there are treasures to be found. 

But that’s not why she walks. 

“A spiritual exercise,” The Prince reminds her. “Is that why you wear what you wear?” The get-up does have a kinky nun feel to it.

“No, the dermatologist told me to cover up.”  

He could tell she had nothing on but a thong beneath the white shirt. Her breasts bobble freely. My Prince, so observant.

She walked on. 

Despite its being Memorial Day weekend, the beachgoers are few. A woman sunbathes a few hundred yards to my left. A crowd—meaning a few dozen lobster-colored bathers—are clustered at the beach club a quarter-mile south. In Juno Beach, this is a mob scene. I have often been here when there’s no one to be seen at all. 

My sister Jeanie lives here. My younger sister Bonnie lives not far away. Jeanie had a bit of an medical emergency, and we are here on a mission of care with a side of surf. 

There’s not much to say about gardening in Florida. Some plants, like pansies and tulips, don’t do well. Everything else grows boringly lush, prolific with flowers. Stick a plant in the ground and it grows carefree. Like exotic, beautifully colored and scented weeds. 

And that is all I have to say about gardening this week.  

LittleBird Stephanie won a neighborhood prize for this photo of a well-established Capitol Hill garden that features waves and waves of roses that follow a meandering path, intermingled with greenery and other blossoms. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

THE LAST TIME I won a prize, it was as the Best Queen Esther at our shul’s* annual Purim party, a festival when kids dress up as various Biblical characters, eat cookies and shake noisemakers. That was, I think, in 1958. I wore an evening gown of my mother’s, orange lace it was and probably dragging all over the floor. Since I can’t think this was an attractive look, I can only imagine my competition. 

So, I am pleased to say I just won third prize in the Capitol Hill Restoration Society’s annual photo contest, which more or less coincides with the organization’s spring House and Garden Tour. While it’s a swell shot, it’s possible that I was the only garden entry. I suspect this because the other winners and all the honorable mentions (except one other garden, which also happened to be mine) were artfully composed photos of rooflines and brickwork, railings and windows. The stuff of historic homes, which is what the association is all about.

So, my gardens were picked to represent, shall we say.

My prize shot was of the garden that first captivated me when we moved to The Hill 38 years ago. It runs along the side of the corner house on what’s known as Philadelphia Row, eight or 10 tall brick Victorian-era houses so named because they look to belong in the City of Brotherly Love, not our Capital of Chronic Kvetching. 

That end unit has a pair of long porches with Chippendale railings running along the side, rooms opening onto it in breezy Southern style. The garden stretches from the house front all the way back past the carriage house, probably 150 feet, and every inch of it is densely planted, mainly with roses. There are ramblers and climbers and shrubs, tea roses and floribundas. Pinks and reds and oranges. They blossom from early spring through fall, and they’re dream-scented: none of that pretty-to-look-at-but-sad-to-sniff stuff here. 

Most delightfully, they are mixed with ferns and shrubs, small trees and a sprinkling of companion flowers like blue salvia. 

A flagstone path meanders through, letting the gardener more safely prune and pick amid the barbs; it appears casually laid, as if the stones simply happened.

Too often, in my sensitive opinion, roses are treated as rarefied specimens, each allocated a neatly mulched space, nothing abutting the precious petals. When they go out of bloom, they sit there all nasty with their thorns out—there’s not much pretty about rose leaves. Mixing them with other plants and flowers allows them a showcase when in bloom, a backdrop of greenery— and obscures their less tasty aspects when they’re not. 

Sadly, the home’s most wonderful rose of all went belly up years ago. A yellow climber, it rose 30 feet in height and about as wide to completely cover a blank side wall. To call it astonishing is an understatement. Of course, I coveted it.

Being directionally challenged then as now, I stood there for far too long figuring out its exact location so I could attempt to replicate it in my own new little patch. 

LittleBird Stephanie’s garage, which looks like a charming cottage thanks to the arched door. And yes, you’ve seen this image before. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

At the end of our garden is the garage, which, I’ve already shown you too many times, looks like a charming cottage thanks to a pair of tall windows that flank a beautiful old turquoise-painted door. In the right corner we planted a wisteria, in the left a Queen Elizabeth, a dazzling, sweetly scented pink climber. The concept was that the rose would climb and tangle overhead with the wisteria blossoms in a fantasia of scent and color. 

It was half a triumph, as the rose was glorious for years, dancing along the wall between our garden and the neighbors’, bearing clusters of flowers for several spring months. But the wisteria, which has more than lived up to its reputation as invasive, running rampant every which-where in the garden, has tossed off but a handful of flowers over the years, possibly the only wisteria in existence that blossoms so poorly. 

The rose eventually died in the shade of the apricot tree that was a twig when we moved in but quickly grew to monstrous size and repugnant disposition. When it died, it was replaced by a Kwanzan cherry, another ill-considered monster but with a milder temperament.

And so we have a shade garden, which I am resigned to, as well as being resigned to admiring and smelling the roses in other people’s patches. On the upside, it does save on fertilizer and fuss. 

*Shul. Yiddish for synagogue

IF YOU’RE LUCKY, you’re a friend of Pamela Bowen, who with her husband Charlie Bowen wades through a ton of cultural and historical online offerings every month and—this is the important part—keeps a running tally of what’s been watched or listened to and what they’ve learned therefrom. 

But if you’re reading this, you’re a friend of MyLittleBird, and that’s all to the good because we’re going to start running  outtakes from Pamela’s voluminous annotated lists on a periodic basis (translation: whenever she lets us!). Here’s a taste. Earlier “Now Watch This” columns featured shows available through Amazon Prime, lectures on history and art, plus travel itineraries Zoomed live by seasoned travel guides.

Pamela suggests MLB readers send in their own recommendations: “Whenever somebody asks what to watch online in a Facebook post, it always gets lots of responses,” she points out. Great idea! Then we’ll all get tips from trusted sources—just leave a recommendation or two in the Comment box and send it along.

Meanwhile, Pamela’s report on April streaming.

By Pamela Bowen

• A fascinating new Ricky Staub film is Concrete Cowboy on Netflix. Critics describe it as “Nomadland” with stirrups. The movie shows us a little-known branch of African American culture—Black cowboys in North Philadelphia whose way of life (and the horse stables) for the past 100 years are threatened. As in “Nomadland,” real members of the community play themselves alongside big-name actors like Idris Elba, Jharrel Jerome and Lorraine Toussaint.

• During the Screen Actors Guild awards, we got curious about Ted Lasso, which got a lot of attention. We’d never heard of it. Turns out it’s a comedy series on Apple+ about an American football coach hired to coach a professional soccer team in Britain. I’ve never enjoyed comedies unless they’re really good, and don’t care about sports, and figured this show would be a bunch of clichés. But we gave it a chance. I got hooked before Charlie did. The writers are very clever and the actors are excellent and there are surprising plot twists. Well worth your time.

• We watched Exterminate All the Brutes on HBO after seeing its amazing trailer. It’s by Raoul Peck, who is best known in the US for I Am Not Your Negro, his Oscar-nominated 2016 film (also available on Netflix). This docuseries is Peck’s attempt to unearth what he has called an “origin story” for white supremacy, according to an online review, which continues: Citing Rwanda, he argues that the conditions that enabled the Holocaust were not unique, and that humanity will keep committing atrocities until we take a stark look at our history and choose not to repeat it. Time magazine says of it: “Part personal essay, part investigation, the docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes is a striking piece of nonfiction work that has the intellectual rigor of an advanced history course, and asks that viewers keep up with its many ideas and horrors over the course of its four hours. Raoul Peck picks and pulls at every connecting fiber throughout history, finding several lines through the ages of how hateful dogma begat public policy, systemic murder, and cultural genocide. If you finish Exterminate All the Brutes without re-examining the hundreds of hours spent in history classes, then you didn’t pay attention to Peck’s lesson.”

• Challenger: The Final Flight is an amazing Netflix limited series re-living the 1986 Space Shuttle explosion. It’s worthy of watching, whether you remember the event or weren’t born yet. Of course, we remember it well. I was at Jim’s restaurant next door to the newspaper where I worked then—The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, West Virginia—with a fellow editor and a reporter. We had just ordered lunch when a waitress came over and told us the newsroom had called with the news. The editor went back immediately—to meet with bosses and figure out how to do whatever it was we were going to do. The reporter and I gobbled down the meal and took the editor’s lunch back to her. They had decided to put out an extra. At this time of day, there were a number of reporters in the newsroom, but copy editors wouldn’t normally report for another four hours. But since I, the current features editor, had been a copy editor, I was given the job of gathering and editing all the Associated Press and Gannett wire copy, putting them in a separate queue for quick access. This was a constant job because the wire services kept sending updated versions of these stories in addition to new stories. After an hour or so, the news editor arrived and dealt with the stories in the queue and the photos I’d collected, and he laid out all the pages in the system. Then he and I wrote headlines and captions. At the last minute, he edited the main story and set the whole thing in type. Apparently nobody proofread that page, or the main story he had edited. The problem was that The Herald-Dispatch was a morning newspaper, but this edition was to be published the same day, not the next morning. But the editor had automatically changed “Thursday” to “yesterday” in the first sentence of the main story. I was furious! But the extra was a big success. Reporters, secretaries, ad sales staff etc. grabbed a stack of papers and sold them on the street.

We like to see as many Oscar-nominated movies as we can before the winners are announced, and we’ve done a good job this year. Our latest:

• Promising Young Woman is a controversial movie that got mixed reviews, and I was hesitant to watch it because of the subject matter—rape and revenge. But despite some dark humor, it wasn’t what I’d describe as “intense.” Carey Mulligan is perfect (despite one sexist male reviewer criticizing her as not being pretty enough for the role), the plot is fascinating and the ending is satisfying. It’s on Prime and other services for $6.

• We loved News of the World, although it’s not the best movie of the year by a long shot. The story, set right after the Civil War, has Tom Hanks earning a living by traveling to remote Western towns and charging admission to his reading of newspapers from all over the country. It was a form of entertainment in places pretty much cut off from everywhere else. Hanks is excellent, of course, but the 12-year-old girl he gets saddled with steals the show, although she rarely speaks. (She’s played by German actress Helena Zengel.) The Roger Ebert website reviewer commented: “There’s something comforting about giving yourself over to an undeniably talented group of artists for two hours and just letting them tell you a story.” It’s on Prime and other services for $6.

The elegant, slightly mysterious Carbury House in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington DC. LittleBird Stephanie wouldn’t be surprised if had a ghost. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

I RECENTLY spent two stultifying hours touring parts of my Washington DC neighborhood. 

The Capitol Hill Restoration Society (CHRS) House and Garden Show was canceled again this spring, thanks to Covid. It would have been the 64th tour, an event wherein people line up in sweltering heat, drizzle or downpour to gawp at the luxury, or kvetch at the excess, in the 10 or so homes on display. 

With about a year’s advance notice, the houses and gardens are groomed beyond natural, to a state normally achieved only before selling; as good a reason as any to volunteer for such a thing—getting to enjoy your finished home well before you move on. 

Our house was on a tour once, 20 years ago: the first Renovators House Tour, which benefits the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools, three schools that glide kids from kindergarten through 8th grade. These are homes that are still in the process of being finished. While they have admirable qualities, some level of disrepair is expected—which was, of course, perfect for us that year (and every year since, as it turns out).

LEFT: The ivy-trimmed stairs of this impressive Victorian pile on Capitol Hill are enough to trigger shudders from LittleBird Stephanie’s husband, The Prince. “Foliage” and “falling” both begin with F.
RIGHT: The residents of Duddington Place SE, a small street on Washington DC’s Capitol Hill, compensate for their lack of front yards by commandeering the sidewalk with tables and chairs. / Photos by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

Even so, months of primping were required. I lost 10 pounds painting and hanging and moving and hiding. My Prince kept saying, “I thought we didn’t have to do anything. “

Yeah, ha. It’s like cleaning the house before guests and then apologizing for the mess.  

This was before we installed central air, so we were lucky it was cool and breezy that day. Which also showed the house to particular advantage, the ceiling fans spinning, curtains billowing ever so slightly, no-account fish swimming in a sparkling (for once) tank: The house felt in motion, sparkling. 

I knew there was a reason I’d bought heavy linen sheets at an estate sale years before. Hand-embroidered with someone’s family crest, they’d been stuffed in a bin in the basement for a decade. Here, finally, a reason to starch and iron and use them. My, didn’t they look swell. 

We stood across the street and watched the line flow up the walk and through and up and down and out the back garden gate, smiling. 

Well, that was fun. 

There was a strange vibe to the place after the hundred or two people departed. Climbing under my crisp sheets that night I felt the crowd was still standing around the bed, checking my thread count.  

That was weird. 

We have not been among the chosen for the big tour, the CHRS tour, but then we’re still not done renovating. In fact, what was done back then now needs redoing and we haven’t made much progress on the stuff that needed doing since then. Following this, are you? Good.

Returning to the original subject (refer to Paragraph 1, if you will) the CHRS tour was canceled for the second year in a row. Last year they did some video thing instead. This year they did a series of neighborhood tours, guided and self-guided.

Pressed (hammered) into it by our architect friends Robert and Judith, who between them have more knowledge of the community fabric than most anyone else alive, we took a guided tour of several parks clustered near the Capitol.

The guide, who did her research on Google, she said, was weakly informed but handed out xeroxed maps and charts for us to yawn over. Is this mean, I ask you? Possibly. 

Judith thought so. “Give them a break, they’re volunteers,” she said when I grumbled.

But I take no prisoners. 

Meanwhile, Judith had been standing with her back to the speaker, sketching the aged police station for the previous 10 minutes. 

We spent 20 minutes looking at the side of St. Peter school, the oldest parochial school in the city. Built in the 1860s, the only note of interest is that the red brick building, undistinguished by any ornamentation, could easily have been built in 1955. You can imagine how fascinating that was to look at. They didn’t even include a photo in the handouts.

I turned to Robert, “Is that it? Can we go now?”

“Nope,” he said, leaning back on a patch of someone’s lawn and gazing skyward. “There are six more stops.” 

This about gave me the vapors, but leaving would have been so rude. Sigh.

Moving at a shuffle on the mile-long route did force us to examine streets and properties that we’d passed a few thousand times without stopping. Now forced to do so, we were often charmed (though rarely by anything the tour guide was droning on about).

Duddington Place is right around the corner from Baby’s primary school, but I cruised by it nearly every day for eight years, without noticing.  If someone dropped me on the street and said, Where are you? I would not say DC. Perhaps Charleston?  Maybe London? These small, circa 1890 row houses, each a different mannerly color, have no backyards to speak of and stingy gardens out front, a rose here, a boxwood there. So, the residents have taken to the streets, adding tables and chairs, settees and such. These line the sidewalks on both sides of the narrow street. One can imagine the neighbors in bustled skirts, the men in ice cream suits and Panama hats, sipping lemonade in the shade of the ginkgo trees that shade the block.  

The gardens along the way are glorious with roses and iris and peonies spilling over walls and filling tree boxes; clematis clamber and spill. The boxwoods are lush and green. It’s a gray day, which carries the scents.  

Not on the tour, but eye-catching, was a house guaranteed to give My Prince hives, with ivy growing up the winding iron staircase and across the stair treads to the front door, wonderfully gothic if maybe a bit labor-intensive. Tripping is a distinct possibility. Mosquitos too.

But what price romance, my love?

Speaking of romance. Rising like a gothic fantasy, Carbury House, in the main photo above, is a grand Victorian, started in 1802 and enlarged with turret and porch in 1889. The house and deep front garden have changed little over the decades I’ve been eyeing it, always overgrown with just a hint of decay. It has such an admirable Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil atmosphere. I haven’t heard that it’s haunted, but it wouldn’t surprise me. 

Maybe next year they’ll let us in. 

A yellowwood tree at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

THE AZALEAS are past their peak at the National Arboretum, the verdant surprise tucked into one of the grittiest corners of Washington DC.  

Unfortunately, because we had to be out of town, the Prince and I missed by maybe a week what is perhaps the most spectacular show in the 500-acre park. In years past we’ve trundled along in our rickety Mustang convertible at 20 miles per hour past hillsides smothered with massive plants, rising and tangling in a cacophony of pink and orange, red, white and purple. 

So we looked for something else, which is generally not too difficult. 

The peonies have a lovely bed across Bladensburg Road and Mount Olivet Cemetery. Baby learned to drive there, crawling the curving paths past headstones and mausoleums in our previous ancient Mustang convertible (we’re nothing if not loyal). There wasn’t anything to kill there, so it was quite safe. 

Yes, right, the peonies. Unfortunately the Arboretum powers have decided that we can no longer drive near that patch; one must get out of the car and walk, which presents a problem for us hobbled by rickety hips.  

Other roads are rerouted, one-way when they’d been two-way before. We became so turned about that we never found the dogwoods, which is a pretty enormous glade to miss. You may be more successful—it is a glorious display and will be so through next month. As it is unlikely to have changed in a year, except growing ever more monumental, you can read about it here.

Thankfully, the North Terrace is still easy to get to. The entrance to the rose and herb garden is flanked by a magnificent yellowwood tree, laden with white blossoms, and what appears to be a wisteria tree—there was no tag—perhaps 20 feet tall and about as wide, with fantastically scented white panicles.  

The view from here is dazzling: A pair of arched and vine-covered trellises flank a stone wall overlooking Ellipse Meadow, where 22 Corinthian columns that once were part of the US Capitol stand at a distance on a green hillock.  A quiet pond in the center of the terrace is surrounded by pots thick with jasmine and orange. Under the trellises are shade-loving plants—including, and surprising, a hefty potted avocado tree. (Maybe I’ll try planting a pit again. I can offer plenty of shade.) 

But the real reason for this trip was the roses, usually a stunning series of beds and lattice walls with blooming teas and climbers, bourbons and floribundas. This area is a walking must, and accessible to most. In fact, a wheelchair might be a lovely transport, eliminating the necessity of bending every few feet to sniff and compare the blossoms. 

Don’t we miss roses that have scent? Are we not tired of those ever-bloomers yet? 

It’s a little disappointing, the display this year. Signs announce renovations in progress. I seem to recall there have always been such announcements here. One begins to suspect that it’s an easy excuse for never being finished.

But then, what garden ever is?

The trip is still worth it, particularly on a fine Monday when the weekend crowds are nonexistent and the sky is so blue. Take a blanket and a picnic, the pup can come too if on a leash. It’s easy to find a spot with no one about at all. Pretend it’s all yours. 

US National Arboretum, 3501 New York Avenue NE, Washington DC 20002-1958; telephone 202-245-4523; usna.usda.gov.

Originally envisioned for the dining room, this console table cum garden bench now has a happy life in the garden. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

SOMETIMES all it takes is weeding through a bunch of . . . detritus . . . to come up with genius. 

The pot (of the non-smoking sort) pile grew and grew beside the garden door, a teeter-tottering mess of clay and plastic and ceramic. It’s been that way for over a year, preparatory to the Prince doing something, though it’s possible he’s forgotten what. 

In one of those pick-your-battles moves, I’ve held my tongue and suffered. 

On Saturday morning, and I know not how, I managed to inoffensively phrase a desire to have the potting area under the back porch relieved of enough of his [crap] so that the pots and such could be stored in what should be the potting station under the porch but has become yet another storage area for his I-know-not-what. That was not the way I phrased it, but it was what I was thinking as I said it.

We were having guests over for Sunday dinner and I just wanted the garden with its now-faded tulips to look neat. Amazingly, this was done, with nothing thrown and no foul language. That he pulled the pickup truck up to the gate—and tossed all the pots and saucers into the truck bed—wasn’t mentioned for several days, but at least they were out of sight, out of mind, as most things around here go. (My darling son-in-law, Baby’s Personal Prince Pete, once called this the most disorganized house he’d ever been in; about this he is right.) 

Anyway, early Sunday morning, taking my usual perch with coffee on the back-porch steps, gazing dewily at developments in the borders, I noticed that two stubby concrete pedestals had been unearthed from the pot pile, apparently too heavy to hoist  onto the truck. These had been shoved here and there over the years but had been buried so long they’d been forgotten. 

Then my discerning eye took in a handsome slab of marble, seven feet long, and similarly obtained with purpose and then forgotten, leaning against the far wall of the garden fence.  Putting two and one together, this was . . . 

A Eureka! moment if ever I’ve had one. Put the marble slab on the pair of bases and set them in front of the garden sofa and create a coffee table—or garden bench. The marble is mottled green with the merest hints of pink. The pedestals are a faded adobe red. It works. 

In fact, the slab had been come by at Community Forklift, a re-use store in Hyattsville, Maryland, with all manner of curious house parts. My original intent in buying it had been somewhat similar to this, as I suddenly recalled. 

Leafing through House Beautiful or Veranda or some such other fancy shelter magazine one day maybe 15 years ago, I came across a photo of a console table: a marble top on a pair of pedestals, costing $10,000 or something outrageous for the fancy pedigree. I figured I could do something similar for under a hundred bucks. So we bought the marble slab (it’s really quite beautiful—flat on one edge to go up against a wall and rough-cut on the other for visual interest) for around $50 at Forklift, which has stacks of marble and granite remnants from grand jobs. Our new “console table” would look great against a blank wall in the dining room.

We already had pedestals for the slab loitering about, white plaster Ionic columns we’d bought for unknown purpose at a junque shoppe for $5—for both. Really, who could pass that up? 

Well, the project started out brilliantly, but due to an unfortunate accident, which we won’t get into, one pedestal cracked in half.* So we set the marble against the garden fence, where it would wait for new inspiration, which is what happened.

So, concept revived! The marble slab plus those stubby concrete bases, once hidden in the pile of pots, have found one another at last. Now we have a garden bench. Sometimes I really impress myself. 

*That’s not the end of the story for the white plaster column. Oh, no. Cracked though it is, it now functions as a jury-rigged vase in the living room.

Rita Kempley and her mother, Musaetta Abrams. / Family photo.

By Rita Kempley

MY MOTHER died 20 years ago, but if it were up to her, I still wouldn’t know it. She wouldn’t want me to worry. She never told me when someone dear to me was ill, dying or, God forbid, gone. 

By my mid-30s, I had missed the funerals of my grandparents, several aunts and uncles and a few childhood friends. For all I knew, whole branches of my family might have vanished before I caught on to Mom’s modus operandi.

On a trip back home, to Frankfort, Kentucky, circa 1974, we were sitting around the kitchen table playing Rook, a game using cards that, unlike standard decks, had nothing to do with Satan. My mother was winning and none too humble about piling up the points. In an attempt to distract her, I asked about Gin, a former neighbor with a history of heart disease.

Mother focused her one good eye on her cards. “She’s no longer with us,” she said, making it sound as if Gin had simply picked up one day and moved to Versailles (pronounced Vur-SALES by us Kentuckians).

“But, Mom, I would have at least wanted to send flowers . . . “

“Well,” she responded, “when it’s my time, just put me in a cardboard box and throw me in the Kentucky River.”

“Okay, Mom.” Any argument would only encourage her.

Once, I was home from the University of Missouri on spring break, and Lucy, a high school girlfriend, and I were acting like fools in an effort to make my mom laugh. She stood at the stove, soberly tending a skillet full of pork chops sizzling in bacon grease. Our old material—such as eating with our mouths open—wasn’t working. We’d have to go for something more sophisticated now that we were college girls. 

We weren’t really mean girls, but this was an emergency. I’m ashamed to say it, but we turned to a gothic story about a classmate’s mother.

A life-size portrait of the woman’s late husband loomed over the living room, and, bless her heart, she still set a place for him at the dinner table. He had died four years earlier, but his widow couldn’t or wouldn’t part with her grief, which she supplemented with the sorrows of others. Her daughter complained that her mom’s college care packages always included the obituary pages of the Frankfort State Journal.

Rita Kempley, right, and her mother, Musaetta Abrams, chowing down on a stuffed carrot, a gift from Daughter to Mom. Rita says Mom hung it proudly in her kitchen. / Family photo.

My mother had buried my father many years before, placed a gravestone on top and never set a plate for him again. “When you’re dead, you’re dead,” she said, shoving another pork chop onto Lucy’s plate.

Lucy and I cracked up and needed only the slightest pretext to repeat this truism. My mother, however, took the conversation to heart. Instead of fat envelopes full of obits, she sent me cheery notes from home. No words were minced, but as we journalists say, she always buried the lede:

Dear Daughter,

We’re all fine. The weather is fine. Hope you are fine.

Love,

Mother

P.S. The dog died.

That was hard to top, but I also remain fond of “P.S. Aunt Virgie’s leg was amputated.” 

Like many of my relatives, Aunt Virgie had “sugar dibeetus.” My mother would eventually develop the disease, which she assured me she had under control. She certainly looked healthy, girlish even, in her late 70s, so I decided to believe in her immortality as much as she did.

She never meant to deceive me. She was in denial, according to my psychiatrist of 42 years. Then again, maybe she knew me better than I realized. I didn’t acknowledge my fear that she would die, and I would never discover she was no longer with us. Unlikely as that prospect may sound, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.  

For that matter, she had never officially confirmed that my father was no longer with us. I was 7 years old when he was killed instantly in a car accident. My mother sent me out to play in the sprinkler while she talked with a strange man, then gave him one of my dad’s suits. I found this very mysterious.

The following day we dressed in our Sunday clothes—also very mysterious—and went to Harrod Brothers funeral home. There was a man in the coffin who looked like my father, but I told myself that someone had put a mannequin in the coffin just to trick me. Whoever he was, they put him in the ground at Monterey where my beloved grandmother had been buried several weeks before. Since then, my glass has been half empty and I have always expected the worst. 

My mother so wanted to give me happy endings, she could hardly bring herself to mention her will, which she brought up offhandedly one night over another pork chop dinner in May of 1997. Ed, my husband, was explaining that high cholesterol prevented him from taking a third helping of Southern fried hog.

“Terrible when you can’t eat what you want,” she said knowingly—although, as a diabetic, she hadn’t completely sworn off  chocolate cake, which she served that evening after finally relocating it in the back seat of her car. Mother  had never been one to put things where they belonged. But losing the cake had upset her, I could tell.

Jimmy, her youngest brother, was suffering from Alzheimer’s, which she tried to ignore even though he was incontinent and never spoke anymore. “He understands what we’re saying,” Mother assured us.

We nodded because there was no reason not to. 

Ed complimented the cake—she always made one when we visited—and as we finished off the crumbs, Mom began to tell us about an argument she had with her sister-in-law, Margaret, about writing a will. “Well, I told her, you were my only child . . . ” she recalled with obvious irritation. “It was none of her business . . . ” She folded her arms over her chest and frowned at the memory.

Ed and I were wondering where this is going.

“I have a will,” she said. “If you ever need it, look behind the can of stewed tomatoes on the top shelf of the cabinet to the left of the sink.” 

As we would discover later, Margaret had been one of three witnesses to the document, which was hand-written on lined paper (probably from one of my old school notebooks). The other two witnesses were dead, and although the paper clearly bore her signature, my aunt insisted she had never seen, much less signed it. I guess denial was in the DNA.

A former Washington Post movie critic, Rita Kempley is author of The Vessel and is at work on a memoir about Mom called P.S. The Dog Died.

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” had to leave town for 10 days . . . and spring in Washington DC sprang anyway, including the magnificent Kwanzan cherry tree in the backyard. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

IT WAS LIKE the scene in The Wizard of Oz when the house falls into Oz and the door opens into magical Technicolor, though I didn’t know this happened until I was 12 or so. My dad thought color TV a flash in the pan. I used to think it was a black-and-white movie.

The Prince and I left Washington DC at the beginning of April for a little emergency trip to Florida. Spring was just beginning, heralded by the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, which were at their peak. But the hundred-year-old elms that line our street were just showing a whisper of green, the red-leaf maple’s buds were near to bursting, the Kwanzan cherry in the backyard had but a hint of pink buds, and the tulips were barely pushing their heads up amid the ground cover. 

In short, it was dirt with some colorful bits.

Figuring the tropical plants in the greenhouse would shrivel and die—and thinking it unreasonable to ask someone to water them—I held my breath and moved them to the garden (technically, My Prince did this, schlepping pot after pot down two flights. But the older we get the more we work in discordant concert, like a single grumpy individual, so I get full credit for thinking of it) despite its being weeks from the last frost date—April 21—which we’ve only just reached. 

Each morning I read the pathetic Palm Beach Post, checking the weather (at least that coverage was comprehensive), hoping it would stay cool but not too cool and rain some at home, so all would be safe, though our wonderful neighbor Anouk had promised to be on call in case of emergency. 

Now, upon our return 10 days later, the city is carpeted with blossoms, and our gardens, both front and rear, are bursting with flowers and greenery. The vinca in the front patch, which I don’t even remember planting (not unusual), is running rampant, nearly strangling the hydrangeas and peonies. The trees are out full. . . .  Oh, that cherry is spectacular. 

Oh, all sorts of stuffs are coming up, and I haven’t a clue what too many of them are. Which leads me to a manifesto for dealing with the gardens this year. 

1. I will keep a written record of where everything is and how it performs, so I can avoid mistakes I make year after year. And. If I happen to buy another plant this year, which I should not do—just where am I going to put my 10 caladiums, 12 begonias and a lilac tree, I ask you—I will save the labels or write down what they are and where I stuck them. 
2. I will never plant another invasive species; this is if I happen to buy another plant, which I really DO NOT NEED.  No more wisteria and trumpet vine. I give myself permission to admire them in someone else’s yard while chuckling and slapping myself on the back for my restraint.
3. I will certainly not plant another tropical—except for an orange, which I really really want. 
4. I will absolutely read every plant tag thoroughly before buying  (which I’m not doing) and not fall for another that requires more than 30 minutes of direct sun, a 20-foot Bird of Paradise (even if it blooms), or an elephant-ear bulb the size of a basketball.
5. I will always wear gloves when messing in the dirt. I will invest in gauntlets, gloves that go halfway up my forearms, no matter how ugly. And boy are they ugly. Why, I wonder.  No more tangling with thorny roses with my bare fists, arms raw and bleeding after a fight with lethal canes. 
6. Before pulling on said gloves, which will fit, by the way, I will scrape my nails over a bar of soap so the dirt will easily dislodge and I don’t look as if I’ve spent a lifetime digging in a coal chute. 
7. I will not invest in a single packet of seeds this (or any) year. I will buy the damn plants. (Oh, right, not buying plants. How soon we forget.) Has anything ever sprouted from the thousands of seeds I’ve planted over the years? No.  My seed-planting track record is actually behind my lottery winnings, the scratch-off sort. 
8. I will plant only red geraniums this year. I am always buffaloed into hot pink—that inner 7-year-old, you know—and then regret it. Red geraniums are adult, dammit. I am grown up. 
9. I will not let my tools out of sight for five minutes. They do not leave the premises even when performing good works for others, I’m talking to you, Prince. 
10. Post gardening, even if it’s 100 degrees, I will always take a steaming bath in Epsom salts and two Aleve before going to bed, so that I can arise the next morning instead of deciding I’d really rather not, and staying there. 

Let’s just see how this works out.

Addendum.

Rats. Baby just called: “My neighbor just dug up a bucketful of amaryllis bulbs. Do you want them, Mommy?” 

Did I just say “yes”?

By Nancy McKeon

SO FEW NEEDS, so many wants. Such is the life of the pandemic browser. Here are the things decorative and digestive that have caught my eye recently.

A late-19th-century water jug by Makuzu Közan I (Miyagawa Toranosuke) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the source for this delightful assortment of tabletop offerings. The “Grasshopper Procession” series in porcelain (the original water jug was stoneware) includes a set of four 8-inch dessert plates ($65) and a 15-inch-long serving tray ($42), plus trinket trays and mugs. An 18-by-13-inch serving tray is made of wood and lacquer and is $105. At the Met gift shop.

A plastic watering can can be had for a few dollars, but how long do you want to look at it? A CB2 collaboration with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago resulted in this carafe/vase/watering can by student Mathew Devendorf. Made of stoneware with a matte white glaze, it’s a lot of look for $19.95.

Patrick Coard Paris kicks up the notion of “candle” quite a few notches with his mineral-wax creations. At left is the Oval Queen Carved Cream Shagreen (textured) Candle with bronze-patina brass accents, $225. At right, the Kings Brother Flower Dark Candle is almost a foot wide; it’s $285. Both can be found at Bergdorf Goodman.

Created in his Brooklyn studio, Andrej Urem’s handmade candles burn from the inside, giving them an almost ethereal glow while leaving their unique forms intact. Arjuna (top, left and right, $35) and Passiflora (bottom, left and right, $35) are 4 by 4 by 4 inches and promise about 70 hours of burning time. Small candles (about 2½ inches square) are $25; larger, more complex forms, some a foot tall, run up to $200. All at AU Collection.

An array of candles by Andrej Urem of AU Collection.

Banish those plastic storage bags and the plastic wrap and try Bee’s Wrap, fabric infused with beeswax, which molds to the task by the warmth of your hands and is washable, reusable and compostable. Buy it by the 52-inch-long roll ($30) or the piece (three sheets, small, medium and large, $18). The stuff sounds expensive, and I guess it is, but the price we pay for depending on single-use plastic film may be greater in the long run.

While we’re in the kitchen, I will confess my love for Vietnamese barbecue. But I’m always missing something: limes, dark soy, the right fish sauce, the lemongrass. Enter Omsom, shelf-stable flavor packets by two first-generation Vietnamese Americans based in New York who have teamed with Asian chefs to provide the basics for a variety of classic Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Filipino and Japanese dishes. The packets come with recipes and variations to inspire, plus the sauce, aromatics and seasonings to make it all happen (I have to provide the meat/fish/protein and any veggies I want). For $12 I can buy a set of three starter packs for Lemongrass BBQ or Thai Larb, that fiery minced salad, or spicy Korean Bulgogi. Or for $55 I can get a full “fire bundle,” 12 East Asian and Southeast Asian starter packets, adding up to two weeks’ worth of meals. And no leftover lemongrass will go to waste.

Fifteen years old and queen of England for . . . nine days. This three-parter tells the tale.

IF YOU’RE LUCKY, you’re a friend of Pamela Bowen, who with her husband Charlie Bowen wades through a ton of cultural and historical online offerings every month and—this is the important part—keeps a running tally of what’s been watched or listened to and what they’ve learned therefrom. 

But if you’re reading this, you’re a friend of MyLittleBird, and that’s all to the good because we’re going to start running  outtakes from Pamela’s voluminous annotated lists on a regular basis. Here’s a first taste, four series or shows that are currently available through Amazon Prime (three of which are part of a Prime membership and one of which has to be rented; additional channels of availability are also noted).

Future Bowen lists will incorporate lectures on history and art, plus travel itineraries led by seasoned travel guides.

England’s Forgotten Queen, by British historian Helen Castor, tells the story of Queen Jane’s nine-day reign as the first queen of England. It’s a three-part documentary piecing together the astonishing story of 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey in an epic tale of dynastic rivalry, intrigue and betrayal. Castor interviews other historians (many of them female; not much research has been done on Jane, perhaps because most previous historians were male) and uses video of actors portraying the main characters along with visits to the historical sites to provide added interest. We recommend all of Helen Castor’s documentaries. This one is on Prime.

Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life is the true story of a World War II conscientious objector in Austria. A reviewer said, “The situation is one that a lesser film would milk for easy feelings of moral superiority—it’s a nice farmer vs. the Nazis, after all, and who doesn’t want to fantasize that they would have been this brave in the same predicament? But A Hidden Life isn’t interested in push-button morality. Instead, in the manner of a theologian or philosophy professor, it uses its story as a springboard for questions meant to spark introspection in viewers. Such as: Is it morally acceptable to allow one’s spouse and children to suffer by sticking to one’s beliefs? Is that what’s really best for the family, for society, for the self? Is it even possible to be totally consistent while carrying out noble, defiant acts? Is it a sin to act in self-preservation? Which self-preserving acts are acceptable, and which are defined as cowardice?” It’s on HBO, Hulu and Prime.

The Booksellers explores the world of antiquarian and rare-book dealers and their bookstores, primarily in New York City. It’s a charming documentary about the book world—or more specifically the book-as-object world, with antiquarian booksellers trying to reinvent themselves and their industry in a digital era. The book dealers philosophize about the emotional impact of “collecting,” which is fascinating. “Book experts” include Fran Lebowitz and Gay Talese. It’s on Prime and Pluto.

Ladies in Lavender assembles those two great Dames, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, and sends them off to play sisters sharing a cozy little cottage on the Cornwall coast whose lives are quite routine until one dark and stormy night, a strange young man is washed up on their shore. The critics weren’t kind, particularly to the young man (but he’s so cute, his lack of acting skills can be forgiven), but we both enjoyed it. It’s on Prime and Pluto.

“The Booksellers” explores the world of antiquarian books and the people trying to pump life into the trade. “Ladies in Lavender” is not quite as treacly as it sounds, but then the dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith wouldn’t let it be, would they? Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” is based on the true story of an Austrian conscientious objector during World War II but goes beyond the obvious tropes.

Even without flowers in them, these vases and jars are a garden all by themselves. The unspoken message: Pull together what you own—you may find that your things have enough in common visually to make a statement. Then plop a bloom in one of them and see the whole ensemble take off. / Photo © by Brittany Ambridge.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

SOME NAMES are destined for greatness. How can you not become famous (and probably rich) with a name like C.Z. Guest, or Fleur Cowles, or Vita Sackville-West. Gloria Vanderbilt couldn’t help it—pair any first name with Vanderbilt and presto kowtow.

While that is all beside the point of today’s epistle, you may want to keep it in mind when naming a child. Could you ever be a wallflower with a name like, for example, Celerie Kemble?* I think not. 

This is Charlotte Moss’s 11th book! And we’re still learning from her.

Also. Did you know I named one of my parakeets after Vanderbilt’s son, Anderson Cooper? Coop, as he’s known, sometimes fondly, is the whitest bird I’ve ever seen, just as Anderson Cooper is the whitest man on Earth. I knew Coop was Coop before we left Petco. 

That is even further from the point.

The actual point being that I’m leafing through multi-award-winning designer Charlotte Moss’s 11th book, simply called Flowers, which is out just in time for Mother’s Day gifting.

Approaching this review with trepidation, certain I’d find garden designs impossible to achieve within a decade or a lifetime (here it is already April and almost too late to start for this year); this would only make me testy. So I was delighted that it is largely a magnificent paean to the joys of flower arranging, which, depending on your location or skill, boils down to either going into the garden and picking blooms or going to the florist and picking blooms. Then arranging them. 

Okay, then! Instant gratification. 

Tumbling her own artful philosophy with that of gardening aficionados such as Cowles, Guest, Vanderbilt and a colorful bunch of others including Jackie Kennedy and her sister, Lee Radziwill, the writer Colette and heiress/horticulturist Bunny Mellon, Moss gathers it all into a delicious bouquet of biographical snippets, glorious photos and quotations. 

Humble honeysuckle and romantic roses–both look grand whether on their own or in profusion. / Photos courtesy of Charlotte Moss.

“A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even one solitary vase of a living flower may redeem it,” wrote Vita Sackville-West, who knew from writing. To illustrate, come pages of tables and rooms where a single stem displayed in a charming container brings life to an otherwise static, if elegant, tableau. Flip a few pages and small containers with single stems create gardens on tabletops and mantels. 

This is not a tutorial. If you’re looking for a hundred or so volumes of expert words on composition and containers and such, these are supplied in an extensive appendix. The main text is, instead, a gentle guide to developing your own style. 

“Beware of too much thinking,” Moss says. “Give your instincts a chance.”

In this, she lifts you along. Look at the way frilly carmine-colored roses in a gilded container raise the heat of a turquoise room. How cooling is a simple basket of mint leaves. How glorious yellow tulips look, full blown and blousy in a blue jug. Then comes a bouquet of white hydrangeas, pink and purple anemones, pink and white roses, and a dribble of ivy, that creates a breath of country in a silvery metal bucket. 

Containers get as much attention as blossoms. Just about anything with a hole in the top is inspiration for a bouquet or posy. Shop your house for possibilities: baskets, pots, bowls, glassware, teacups. If the basket or vessel leaks, line it with a plastic container (or several) from that deli potato salad or, for the more upscale, an empty bottle of Kona Nigari water.**

There are lots of pots and planters on display in Lee Radziwill’s Oxfordshire home. Jackie Kennedy’s sister considered this her “house of flowers,” combining floral wallpaper, upholstery and curtains, and displaying a collection of botanical prints. Gilding the lily, one might say, was the magical, three-dimensional effect she created by connecting the plants and flowers to the furnishings and art, a trick easy enough for anyone. Have a picture of a garden? Pick a flower from the scene, put it in a vase and set it in front of the artwork. Voilà!

Or consider Fleur Cowles, legendary creator of Flair magazine. Poohpoohing convention, she mixed weeds with roses, broccoli with chrysanthemums, and considered a hollowed-out watermelon a fine vessel for sweet peas. 

Now, didn’t your little gray cells just scream: I could do that! 

I’d rather look at broccoli than eat it anyway.

*Celerie Kemble, interior designer, makes no appearance in this book—but I’ve always wondered what her mother was thinking. 

 **Kona Nigari Water at $402 per 750ml is the second-most-expensive water in the world. Moneyinc reports that the water, sucked from the ocean depths surrounding the Hawaiian Islands, is said to “help you lose weight, energize you, and improve the quality of your skin. . . . It is recommended by some of the most recognized dermatologists and fitness trainers.” The most expensive water Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani, which is $60,000 per 750ml and is sold in a gilded bottle modeled after a Modigliani sculpture, a shape unsuitable for stuffing into a leaky vase. 

 I do love writing this column.

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” likes flowers, books about flowers, books about people who like flowers. Well, you get the idea.

You may not have antique French pharmacy jars tucked away in the closet, but, says Charlotte Moss in “Flowers,” look around the house for other “vessels” that go beyond basic. / Photo courtesy of Charlotte Moss.

MyLittleBird often includes links to products we write about. Our editorial choices are made independently; nonetheless, a purchase made through such a link can sometimes result in MyLittleBird receiving a commission on the sale. We are also an  Amazon Associate.

“Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees” by Yayoi Kusama, 2002/2021. Printed polyester fabric, bungees and aluminum staples, installed on existing trees across the New York Botanical Garden acreage. Collection of the artist. / Photo by Robert Benson Photography.

By Nancy McKeon

MyLittleBird began featuring “Virtual Museum” posts early in the pandemic, when museums, like just about everything else worthwhile in our lives, closed their doors and began enhancing their websites to reach online audiences starved for art. These valued institutions have now begun to reopen; nonetheless, their online offerings continue to flourish. So even though the New York Botanical Garden, featured here, is now open to the public (with the usual Covid caveats of limited access and timed tickets), MLB will continue to provide as much of a virtual experience as possible. After all, not everyone is able to pick up and drive to the Bronx to see the incredible creations of Yayoi Kusama any more than everyone can get to the Frick Pittsburgh to see the twin photo shows featuring Frida Kahlo.

It’s worth underscoring the way museums and other institutions have reached out to us over the past year. In our virtual pages, we’ve pointed you to the following: the Rijksmuseum‘s clever interactivity, Alexander Calder‘s archive, Raphael in Rome, Jacob Lawrence, Japanese woodblock prints, the Museum of Chinese in America, immersive Van Gogh, the Smithsonian’s Creative Commons initiative, Dorothea Lange at New York’s MoMA, the Museum at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in western Pennsylvania, the Jeanne Lanvin installation at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Balenciaga at the V&A, the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, the New York Frick Collection’s Curator series, Hillwood Estate and Museum in Washington DC, Winterthur in Delaware, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and more.

In many cases museums have posted fairly complete visual accounts of earlier installations, not just the ones trounced by the virus. What treasure! And now . . . onward!

SOME OF US stood enviously on the sidelines back in 2017 while the more dogged snared tickets for Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrors” at the Hirshhorn in Washington DC. Now we have a second shot at experiencing the almost full-body joy of the 92-year-old Japanese artist’s work. Since Saturday, Kusama’s monumental sculptures have been practically prancing across the 250 acres of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

The 16-foot-tall bronze “Dancing Pumpkin” by Yayoi Kusama, 2020, commands the scene on the Conservatory Lawn of the New York Botanical Garden. Urethane paint on bronze. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner. / Photo by Robert Benson Photography.

It’s hard to imagine a more fitting counterpoint to pandemic horror than the dizzying dots that come to life on Kusama’s works. And while the Infinity Rooms displayed at the Hirshhorn enveloped crowds, a few people at a time, in womb-like wonder, the sculptures here explode and spread their cosmic message, of fascination with nature and its power, in all directions, to all comers.

“I Want to Fly to the Universe” by Yayoi Kusama, 2020. Urethane paint on aluminum. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner. / Photo by Robert Benson Photography.

“Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity” by Yayoi Kusama (2017) comprises a glass cube reflecting an infinity of glowing polka-dotted pumpkins within it. The mixed-media work, one of Kusama’s signature mirrored environments, is installed in the Visitor Center Gallery of the New York Botanical Garden. Viewed from the outside, the installation changes over time as pumpkins illuminate and then fade to darkness in a meditative choreography. Kusama has said of pumpkins, “My pumpkins, beloved of all the plants in the world. When I see pumpkins, I cannot efface the joy of them being my everything, nor the awe I hold them in.” Collection of the artist.

Detail from “Hymn of Life—Tulips” by Yayoi Kusama, 2007. Mixed media. Courtesy of the City of Beverly Hills.

“Narcissus Garden” by Yayoi Kusama (1966/2021) is 1,400 stainless-steel spheres, each nearly 12 inches in diameter. It’s installed in the 230-foot-long water feature of the Native Plant Garden of the New York Botanical Garden. The reflective orbs float on the water’s surface, moved by wind and currents, mirroring the environment around them. / Photo by Robert Benson Photography.

“Kusama With Pumpkin,” 2010. © Yayoi Kusama. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo / Singapore /Shanghai; Victoria Miro, London / Venice; David Zwirner, New York.

I guess it wouldn’t really be a Kusama exhibit without an infinity room. This summer, when the Botanical Garden is hoping to allow interior access, Kusama’s new “Infinity Mirrored Room—Illusion Inside the Heart” (2020) will be opened. It responds to natural light through colored glass throughout the day and seasons. Reflecting the seasonality of NYBG’s landscape, the exterior will be on view with the opening of the exhibition. A separate timed-entry ticket will be required for limited-capacity access.

Kusama: Cosmic Nature, New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, New York 10458; 718-817-8700; NYBG.org. Timed tickets are required. Garden and gallery pass, $35 for adults, $32 for seniors (65 and older) and students (with valid ID), $15 for children 2 through 12 (outdoor-installations-only tickets are $25, $22 and $12). Through October 31, 2021.

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By Stephanie Cavanaugh

TALK ABOUT a garden writer’s nightmare. Looks like I’m allergic to flowers. 

There I was blaming my poor budgies, Coop, Buddy and The Boss. Sneezing and wheezing and downing allergy meds. Waking once, in the middle of the night, gasping, “I can’t breathe,” to my terrified Prince. 

Catching the damn birds was going to be a project. They had to be put somewhere else. 

Now they fly free in their room, the solarium/greenhouse next to my office, a space divided from my desk by a screen door, which amounts to not being divided at all. They spend their days destroying the walls, beady eye rolling back in ecstasy as they peck at the wallboard. Then they have a fight. Then a nap. Then they look for something else to destroy. It’s a very noisy, messy business involving ear-piercing shrieks, flying feathers and a great deal of bird poop. And sneezing, which would be me.

Last week  they laid eggs. Or The Boss did, with the assistance of Buddy. Coop is very much a third wheel or leg or beak in this arrangement.

This was a surprise, since I thought The Boss was a he. Best get my pronouns straight. 

Four eggs in all, they had, left on the floor of a pretty little Victorian wire cage, which is more a toy for them than a home. There’s a bigger white cage where they’re fed—and theoretically roost. I don’t know where they’ve been doing their egg producing, but there they were. Eggs the size of jelly beans, appropriate given the season. I also can’t imagine the birthing—the egg size is the equivalent, I estimate, of a woman giving birth to a 20-pound baby. 

We waited in dread for their offspring, though three is really more than enough. In fact, if you’ve an interest . . . ?

Anyway, there I was blaming the birds, and I come across an article by Ashley Abramson  in the Home section of the Washington Post: Enjoy fresh flowers at home—without sneezing and wheezing. 

Flowers, it seems, have fragrance. Oh my. Tell me about it. At this moment the jasmines—there are several—are thick with white flowers, as are the lime and the Meyer lemon, and the paperwhite narcissus. Hundreds of tiny flowers with a combined scent so powerful the whole house is filled with their essence. Ecstasy!

But. 

That fragrance “is made up of small airborne particles released from the flower. These microscopic compounds can cause allergy-adjacent symptoms,* including sneezing, runny nose, congestion, headache, trouble concentrating and exacerbated asthma symptoms.”

This is a ghastly bit of news, particularly because flowers with the most divine fragrances cause the most problems. 

That Stargazer and Casablanca lilies head the list did not overly disturb me. I associate them with funerals, so a certain amount of wheezing and sniveling would be a normal and short-lived—just the duration of the ceremony—response. It might even be a help, if you weren’t overly fond of the deceased but needed to look as though you were. 

But the secondary offenders include jasmine and gardenia, paperwhites and tuberose. And lilac, of which I have just procured a twig, and to which I say, What is life without these? 

The suggestions for dealing with symptoms include not placing them in unventilated rooms. Swell thought that. Otherwise, invest in Benadryl, Flonase, Rhinocort and the like.  

Or stick with non-irritating blossoms such as tulips, orchids, daffodils and (thankfully) hydrangeas.

Happily, it looks like a short spring into summer. Although the last frost date for the Washington DC area is April 21, the plants are going outside now. Sink or swim, my beauties. I’ll breathe to that. 

*10 points for defining an “allergy-adjacent symptom.” 

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” will no doubt continue to sneeze her way through garden life, damn the consequences.

Hungarian-American photographer Nickolas Muray was romantically involved with the Mexican artist and also inspired by her serene-seeming beauty. He photographed “Frida Kahlo on White Bench, New York” in 1939. / © Nickolas Muray Photo Archives.

By Nancy McKeon

ONE MIGHT THINK that the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was absorbed by her own image: More than a third of her 143  paintings are, after all, self-portraits. But, as she explained more than once, she painted herself because that image in the mirror—at times suspended over a sickbed—was the thing she knew best. And she used it for her own purposes: to celebrate in costume the indigenous Mexican culture that was always under threat of being subsumed by the European ascendancy and to express, beneath a stoic visage, the extreme pain (from polio, a fractured pelvis, various spinal surgeries, crushed bones and a leg amputation) that had plagued her short life (she died at age 47).

So a double exhibition at the Frick Pittsburgh of photographs of Kahlo in the fullness of her life—among friends and lovers, at the theater, even just drinking beer (or something) from a bottle—shows us the artist in a very different way. Less distilled, more a part of the world around her.

The confluence of two exhibits at the same time was a happy accident, or rather an opportunity seized. “Frida Kahlo—An Intimate Portrait: The Photographic Albums” was in the planning pre-pandemic and, says Melanie Groves, manager of exhibitions for the museums, seemed like “something that could be achieved” even under Covid restraints. The Nickolas Muray exhibition, “Frida Kahlo Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray,” was meant to be on view in Italy at this time; it became available because of Covid travel restraints, and the Frick Pittsburgh became an alternative venue for it. They add a vivid layer to the story, Groves adds, with the Hungarian-American photographer Muray being an admirer and sometime lover of Kahlo’s.

The albums in the “Photographic Albums” portion of the museum’s offerings are, in fact, Kahlo’s own albums filled with photographic memories. The albums were collected, and shared here, by the Cuban-American New York interior designer Vicente Wolf.

One hundred fifteen images in the Frick Pittsburgh’s “Intimate Portrait” exhibit are taken from Frida Kahlo’s own photo albums, featuring pictures taken by friends and family and professional photographers including her father, the German-born Guillermo Kahlo.

LEFT: Frida Kahlo with guitar, no date. / The Vicente Wolf Collection.

RIGHT: Frida Kahlo sitting on her bed at La Casa Azul, the Blue House, the home she shared with famed muralist Diego Rivera and now the Frida Kahlo Museum, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, circa 1949. / The Vicente Wolf Collection. Print photographed by Peter Riesett, courtesy of Pointed Leaf Press.

Frida Kahlo and the Mexican muralist and engraver Julio Castellanos, no date. Castellanos painted murals for public schools in Mexico and at the same time exhibited art both in galleries and state institutions. In 1946, he and Frida Kahlo received awards  from the Ministry of Public Education. / The Vicente Wolf Collection.

Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, circa 1929, photographed by Tina Modotti. Rivera, some 20 years older than Frida Kahlo, recognized her as the true artist in the family. The pair were married, split, then remarried, though they continued to carry on various liaisons during their marriage. / The Vicente Wolf Collection.

Frida Kahlo with Nickolas Muray in her studio, Coyoacán, 1941. The Hungarian-American fashion and commercial photographer was a Frida fan and her sometime lover. / © Nickolas Muray Photo Archives.

Hungarian-American photographer Nickolas Muray was romantically involved with the Mexican artist and also inspired by her serene-seeming beauty. He photographed “Frida Kahlo on White Bench, New York” in 1939. / © Nickolas Muray Photo Archives.