LAST WEEKEND the Wall Street Journal’s “Off Duty” section asked an important question: Are animal statues inherently pretentious?
Those who agreed with the premise suggested, among other things, that it would be the height of pretension to have concrete lions flanking the doorway of your suburban split level or, it seemed, any other sort of dwelling; others counseled that, with attention to proportion and suitability, a greyhound or a pug or two could be considered appropriate to your home’s station in life.
I stand firmly with one foot in each camp. Stone bunnies on the patio, not so much. Metal frogs cavorting on the rear deck, no go—unless the frog is 7 feet tall and smiling like a loon, then maybe I get the joke too.
These “rules” apply, in fact, to other accouterments that might dot the lawns and gardens surrounding your manse, n’est-ce pas?
LittleBird Stephanie Cavanaugh (a/k/a “Stephanie Gardens” of the Green Acre column) frequently regales us with tales of her landscape cleverness (she doesn’t proclaim her cleverness, I do). But some of us aren’t quite as DIY as Steph (un-wiring a thrift-shop chandelier and hanging it from a tree above the fish pond) or as boho-brave (have you counted the number of times she has recommended spray-painting errant greenery . . . or championed glitter!?).
Nonetheless, many of us want to make a statement with our garden, even if our “back forty” measures 40 feet not 40 acres. Maybe a $21,000 armillary sundial isn’t in the cards, but a slightly more modest obelisk may be. Here are some ideas, some realistic, others not: You get to judge which is which.
—Nancy McKeon
Many fans of the Bird Girl statue—and they are legion—got to know her by way of John Berendt’s marvelous Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The statue, once in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery and now safely in the Telfair Academy in downtown Savannah, was sculpted in 1936 by Sylvia Shaw Judson. Authorized reproductions made of fiberglass, marble dust and resin are available in several sizes; the 37½-inch-tall statue is $459; a 15-incher can be had for $134, and a version that is piped as a fountain is $799.
Crusty and dusty can give a garden gravitas, a sense of timelessness.
LEFT: This antique iron panel is 38 inches tall and could hang on a garden wall to give clematis a place to twine (or how about the classic day-night combo of morning glories and moonflowers?). The panel dates from around 1830 and comes from Tunisia. It’s $735 and we found it on Etsy, from Italian Pottery Outlet.
RIGHT: From Antique Farm House comes this pair of arched window frames. Given an antiqued finish, the frames are three feet tall and $49 for the pair. LittleBird Janet has mentioned wanting to find a mirror to add visual interest to her garden. It’s worth noting that these wooden frames are meant for indoor hanging, so you would want to seal them. And if you’re going to do that, why not have a glass installer cut mirrors as backing for them?
LEFT: If LittleBird Janet’s garden fantasy is a touch more tailored, she might consider these Window Garden Mirrors, $239.20 each at Grandin Road. About 42 inches tall and just over 31 inches wide, they’re made for outdoor hanging and can add a focal point and a sense of depth to a garden.
RIGHT: LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” applied imagination, paint and elbow grease to get a non-electrified chandelier for her garden. With this lightweight Bungalow Rose hanging fixture, you have to apply only your credit card (also a tree branch or other place from which to hang the fixture’s hook). It’s $106.99 at Wayfair. It’s 19 inches tall and made from black metal with a distressed finish. The design includes the glass holders, but not the votive candles (or the tree branch).
A more elaborate way to add instant architecture to a garden or patio would be this Alix Trellis Collection from the New York Botanical Garden at Frontgate. The cast-aluminum group contains nine pieces (with a hand-applied zinc finish)—center panel, two side panels, arch, window box and four pot rings. The entire ensemble is on sale for $1,039.20, and individual pieces range in price (on sale) from $31.20 for one pot ring ($119.20 for a set of four) to $359.20 for a center panel. And who’s to say you couldn’t kick things up a whole notch by having mirror installed behind the panels?
“Stephanie Gardens” repurposed a rusty old iron headboard as a fence to divide the front garden of her Capitol Hill town house from that of her neighbor, thereby saving the shrubbery from a shortcut-seeking mail carrier. We found this vintage headboard (and footboard, not shown) and many, many others that could serve a similar purpose—or, again, as a launch pad for those vines—on Etsy. From Cape May Antiques, the pair is $250. Each is about 44 inches tall and 36 inches wide.
LEFT: In the 1920s, Kenneth Lynch & Sons, a company dedicated to fine ironwork and stonework, was chosen to refurbish a needy Statue of Liberty. Lynch also hammered out the complicated rounded eagle heads atop New York’s Chrysler Building. The Connecticut company continues that tradition of masterful workmanship with serious attention to garden furnishings and structures. From the company’s Estate Elements collection, this very simple, very elegant cast-stone obelisk sits atop four spheres on a pedestal and comes in three sizes, 58, 72 and 84 inches tall (and about 700 pounds in weight!), priced from about $1,650 to about $2,800. As messages go, this is probably as far away from a laughing 7-foot frog as one can get.
RIGHT: A more contemporary, easy-breezy take on the great outdoors is this Orb Garden Sculpture from Grandin Road. Made of pre-weathered solid iron, it’s just over 30 inches in diameter and is on sale for $79.20.
Sometimes the best outdoor statement is simply gorgeous plants.
LEFT: Mary Ellen Kirkendall, who has 1,200 Pinterest followers, pinned this extravagant container, pointing out that such an arrangement can of course be done at a smaller scale. It’s worth noting that the container follows the successful “rule of three” for container planting: something tall and dramatic in the center, lush foliage around the middle and ample vines or trailing plants dripping off the side.
RIGHT: When my sister and brother-in-law bought their current house more than 40 years ago, the Queen Anne Victorian came complete with lovely irises. But Pat divided and transplanted some of them a few years ago to a new spot, along the pool fence, where they glory in full sun. The result is a stand of irises on steroids. It’s a bit hard to tell here, but these guys are almost 4 feet tall, with some stems sporting three or four blossoms. No obelisks or statuary required to make an impressive garden statement.
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, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
The chandelier hangs over the fish pond and all’s right with the world (until the raccoon eats all the fish). / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
HORTENSE WAS fascinated by the annual Moving of the Plants. She was making dovish noises and tilting her head this way and that, red eyes wondering: Will I be next?
I spent a few moments contemplating the installation of a dovecote in the back garden, thinking maybe she’d like to summer outdoors; mingle with the exceptional number of lovely birds that have descended on us this spring. Have you noticed all of the birds? That is one of the (very few) upsides to this virus.
A dovecote seemed such a romantic idea. It’s a bird house with little round holes that doves . . . hole up in. It’s surprising the small spaces that birds can worm into. There’s really not much meat on them—if you’ve ever picked one up and gently squished you’ll notice that they’re mostly feathers. And a beak.
Anyway, I was happily envisioning Hortie (as she’s known) perching among the jasmine and whatnot. She doesn’t fly much, maybe six feet to some perch or other and then back to her cage. I doubt if she’d go far from her food source—she does love her food.
She is, after all 25, which is ancient for doves, who usually top out, or drop off, or fizzle at about 15, tops. Her age may even be some sort of record. Hortense is a ring-necked dove that we’ve taken in for the . . . duration. I forgive you for skipping the remainder of this paragraph, as I’ve introduced her before, but she’s an office pet belonging to an office that’s not open. I volunteered our solarium, since Hortense is only cooped up when she feels like it, and how many people have the space (or the inclination) to let a bird loose in the house?
Really, that pretty much left only me.
As for the dovecote fantasy, the Prince pointed out that our geriatric guest would make a tasty morsel for the raccoon that usually dines on the pond fish, and she would be unlikely to be able to escape.
Returning to the story, which actually has nothing to do with Hortense, we moved the plants out of the solarium last weekend: he trundling them down the stairs and littering the stair steps and floors with petals on their way to the back garden, I contemplating the garden and the where-to-put-what and digging the occasional hole.
Just as the inside of the house shifts from winter to summer, with the lifting of the carpets and the changing of the drapes, when the last petals fall from the Kwanzan cherry tree and the tulips have dripped their leaves, we go from quasi country garden to quasi tropical oasis.
Now the chandelier hangs above the pond, there are bananas and a bird of paradise, jasmine and trumpet vines, palms, orchids, a lemon, a lime, a kiwi, ferns, a plumeria, elephant ears and philodendrons with leaves that grow the size of Thanksgiving turkey platters. There’s also various stuffs I’ve pilfered from my sister’s beach place in south Florida—some are budded. I haven’t a clue what they are, but it’s very exciting.
Lots of patterns, none of which goes with any of the others. Sigh. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Meanwhile, the porch is draped in yards of fabric. I don’t know how I’ve suddenly amassed so many gorgeous tropical palm prints, one green and white, another shot with startling pinks. One features monkeys; I do love monkeys. Sadly, there’s not enough of any one to do more than make pillow and hassock covers. For one reason and another, they are not appealing when combined.
“Mario Buatta would just mix them all,” said My Prince, who tends to latch on to only parts of concepts, repeating these errant bits to me professorially, even when I was the one to plant the concept in the first place.
“No, he wouldn’t,” I said. “The colors and patterns and scale of each print have to work together . . . ” Which is where I stopped saying because I can’t explain it to myself so there’s no use trying to explain to him; it’s just too exhausting.
“There’s a magic to the mixing,” I said, with authoritative gestures. “I’ll know it when I see it. Now, please go find my sewing machine and the staple gun.”
Although. Sewing is not my strong suit. Back in junior high we had Home Economics (remember home ec?); the girls sewed and the boys did “shop,” which involved building cool stuff and fixing cars. Our first project, after learning to thread the sewing machine, was to make a half apron, very June Cleaver. When my classmates had moved on to blouses, I was still ripping out stitches and resewing that damn apron hoping for a “D.”
But I did learn to thread the machine and, given a straight run, I can slam my foot on that pedal and race to the finish like Christian Siriano. The seam may not be exactly straight but, like that new wrinkle you’re obsessing over, no one notices. All this to say, I can make pillows, so long as they don’t involve piping or, god forbid, zippers.
I’m far more talented with a staple gun, which I used quite a lot in a previous life, designing furniture showroom displays. Among other things, it’s very useful for recovering chair seats and hassock cushions. Bam bam bam, done. My kind of tool.
So the backyard is set, not that anyone but us will see it this summer, I fear.
Hortense, meanwhile, seems surprisingly fine with her empty room. I set a pedestal with a Pyrex pan that serves as her bird bath in front of the screened doorway so she can wallow with a garden view. She seems content, or at least alive.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” knows it’s summer when the backyard takes on a tropical feeling.
ONE NICE thing about the lockdown is that, in the absence of new exhibits, museums are giving us a chance to catch up with earlier offerings that we may have missed. One such institution, the Museum at FIT, New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, has several exhibits in its archive worth revisiting.
One that struck me as an antidote to today’s heaviness was from Spring 2016, as far from current reality as possible, I think. It’s Fairy Tale Fashion and concerns itself with the influence of those childhood favorites on fashion writ large. Some influences are obvious (Little Red Riding Hood), others more suggestive. But in all, they answer the question, Where do designers get their inspirations? The answer: just about everywhere.
—Nancy McKeon
P.S. This is just a small sample of the delicious images at the exhibit website.
LEFT: The story of Little Red Riding Hood got an over-the-top fashion take in red patent leather in Spring 2015 from Rei Kawakubo, Comme des Garçons. RIGHT: Swans, from “The Swan Maidens” to “Swan Lake,” have long signaled the stately yet sinuous female form. The “Swan” dress by Charles James was so called because of the backward sweep of the skirt, which extends back like the wings of a bird. / Charles James “Swan” gown, 1954-55, gift of Robert Wells in Memory of Lisa Kirk.
The 2016 FIT Fairy Tale Fashion exhibit had a whole gallery of clothing inspired by Charles Perrault’s tale of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Note the white wolf-as-Grandma figure lurking at the far left.
LEFT: This “Alice in Wonderland” dress is almost as wild as the story that inspired it. The frock, which nods to the Queen of Hearts’s playing-card soldiers, was designed by Manish Arora to mark the 2010 release of Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” movie. The dress was remade in 2015. RIGHT: The color says “Alice” but the dress, with its tutu-like skirt, is a Spring 2015 take by Undercover on “Swan Lake,” often thought to be a kind of fairy tale.
LEFT: Hollywood costume designer Adrian dressed Judy Garland (as Dorothy, of course) in a blue gingham pinafore in the 1939 version of “The Wizard of Oz.” The humble gingham and other simple cottons were features of his high-end fashion collections through World War II as well. / Adrian dress, circa 1942, gift of Mrs. Karl J. Bea. RIGHT: Giorgio di Sant’Angelo produced this dress for his 1971 “Summer of Jane and Cinderella” collection. I don’t know what the Janes looked like, but the Cinderellas were represented by various looks in shredded and frayed chiffon. / Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, 1971, gift of Ms. Lena Horne.
LEFT: Which fairy-tale princess could this be but Sleeping Beauty? Pale, flowing fabric, delicate lines. / Marchesa gown, spring 2012, lent by Marchesa. RIGHT: Inspired by “the fantasy of mermaids,” this gown in the Spring 2015 Rodarte collection captured, designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy said, “the spirit of the sea” and, perhaps, the tale of “The Little Mermaid.” / Rodarte blue and green gown, Spring 2015.
LEFT: From Jean Paul Gaultier, a two-piece fur-trimmed evening ensemble from Fall 2002, producing the very image of Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen. / Gift of Mrs. Martin D. Gruss. CENTER: As she rides off in her sleigh, the Snow Queen is dressed in white furs, perhaps a variation on this hooded cape, 2011, and fur evening dress, 2008, from J. Mendel. / Lent by J. Mendel. RIGHT: This Alexander McQueen gown was part of a collection inspired by witches, but in the context of fairy tales the cascade of beaded tresses on the gown brings to mind long-haired Rapunzel in her tower. / Alexander McQueen dress, Fall 2007.
Tree boxes along this Capitol Hill street are The Prince’s domain. Note how he has expanded his territory to neighboring tree boxes. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
‘WHEN YOU get dressed, could you come outside and help me with some plants?” My Prince asked. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I was still in my sleeping ensemble.
“I was just thinking about it,” I said. I’d been up since 6am and hadn’t quite got myself together.
“You could, I suppose, go out like that,” he said, looking dubiously at my gray-and-white polka-dot pajama bottoms and the black-watch-plaid flannel top, missing all but one button.
“No, no, “ I said. “I’ll get dressed.” Scurrying upstairs, I tossed on gray sweat pants and one of his black-and-white plaid shirts. I really need to do laundry. Also, find buttons.
The new normal.
My Prince wanted help with the street tree boxes, his gardening space; he’s barred from the front and back gardens, which are MINE. There have been incidents that we won’t get into.
Technically only one of these curb side plots is ours, but the neighbors seem perfectly happy to watch him sweat, and our box is already full.
Several decades ago, My Prince built a large rectangular wooden planter that a long-deceased neighbor once called a “coffin,” an accurate description. This is under the hundred-and-some-year-old elm we fear for each year—I can’t imagine this place without its mammoth trunk and the green canopy so vast it mingles with the tree on the other side of the street. The coffin is planted with ivy and a pinkish-red knockout rose, which has no scent but blooms on and on with boring reliability. At least it’s not dead.
When we bought this starter home, 37 years ago, there was just a large patch of hard-packed dirt beneath the tree. At the time I had thoughts about what to do, but these were derailed when a neighborhood group working with children came up with a . . . project. They sawed old tires in half, like slicing a bagel, producing two shallow, round “planters,” and then cut jagged teeth along the top edge, which made them look like shark maws, or castle fortifications at a low-rent theme park.
Block after block they marched on. The tires were filled with soil, and our neighborhood kiddies filled them with burnt-orange marigolds, a most unpleasant little flower. A community improvement project, we were told.
How dare they foist such an egregious idea on us of tender aesthetic sensibilities, I thought.
Oh, the children took such ghastly pride in this hideous effort, pointing out their wee efforts to whoever would stop to listen, leaving us stuck with them for the year. Thankfully, by the next summer they had taken their enthusiasm elsewhere, and we ditched the tire.
Since digging under the gnarly tree roots was impossible, My Prince built the coffin. Ivy was planted around the edges, and over the years a succession of interesting plants lived and died in the center. The rose is in its third summer, a record.
With nothing to expend his gardening efforts on, he eyed a neighbor’s patch, which was bare but for two giant elms (this street is known for them), some rocks and a smattering of weeds. He put in liriope, portulaca, various grasses and creeping this and that, building upon it each summer until he ran out of space and moved to the box on our other side.
On this day we were examining a plot three doors up, which is a little overgrown and not pleasantly wild. He’s wondering if he should split a bunched-up caucus of hostas and move them about and uproot a nice little mock orange he discovered hiding under them. Yes, I decided for him, and suggested he move these bits to the tree box around the corner, which is his latest project.
It’s a good week for messing about in the garden. Cool with a threat of drizzle, maybe a downpour or two, makes it a fine time to uproot and divide and replant. The roots will wriggle about with the worms, and settle in nicely before the summer blasts forth its heat.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
When not attacking her front or rear garden, LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” helps her Prince decorate the street-side tree boxes in a neighborhood version of Manifest Destiny.
IN RECENT months I’ve sent money to José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen. I’ve donated to The Actors Fund and the AARP Foundation. I’ve ordered takeout meals in order to support a few local businesses. I’ve increased my support for Wikipedia, my more-than-daily info go-to.
I point this out just so you don’t think I’m some heartless, totally self-absorbed Boomer creep who sees the lockdown as simply an opportunity to spend more quality time with her mail-order catalogues. Okay, maybe I am. But I’m hoping you won’t sneer at the source of my new “spark joy” (thank you, Marie Kondo) project, my Critter Bar.
The Finnish moose jigger that got my Critter Bar started, next to the CB2 beetle bottle opener (the bug seems to have been replaced by Zuri, a sleek brass panther bottle opener. / MyLittleBird photo.
Remember the space alien bar in the first Star Wars movie? Well, this isn’t that. But I’ve taken to calling it my Critter Bar anyway.
Like most collections, it started innocently, in this case five or six years ago at an open-air quayside market in Helsinki. That’s where I bought an aluminum-maybe-pewter-but-I-doubt-it jigger with a moose head on it—a handsome beast who has eluded me in Finland, Canada and Maine. So now he’s barside, albeit usually standing on that proud head of his.
A bar tray, complete with croc feet! How could I resist? This spring, CB2 introduced little Hank alligator cheese knives. Had to have. / MyLittleBird photo.
Then this past winter I noticed that CB2, Crate and Barrel’s little sister, was offering a little bar tray with the markings of an alligator hide embossed on the metal surface, and the tray had little feet! Well, I stand behind no one in my admiration for alligators, even if I did sell my Barry Kieselstein-Cord alligator ear clips on The RealReal last year. Nearby, CB2 was selling a big beetle bottle opener. I haven’t wrestled with a bottle cap in years, but it just made sense, in a critter sort of way.
CB2 must see something in the zeitgeist that calls for more reptiles ’cause just last month they offered little alligator cheese knives, three to a set. Yes, dear Reader, of course I bought them.
From Michael Aram, this stately, if slightly creepy, praying mantis bar pitcher. / MyLittleBird photo.
But my major catch—and the design seems to be several years old—is from the metal master Michael Aram. It’s a tall, slender steel bar pitcher; what you don’t realize at first because of the scale is that the brass handle is . . . a praying mantis.
With my little bar populated by all these critters, there’s little room for glasses or bottles of wine or liquor (not to worry, there’s a lower shelf). So maybe I will call it quits for now. Unless, of course, Nancy Gonzalez, who makes all those great crocodile handbags (guilty!), comes up with something else reptilian in a bar-able vein.
—Nancy McKeon
P.S. This just in: Perigold is featuring a three-foot-tall resin and brass alligator standing on its hind feet and holding an oval drinks tray. It’s by Maitland-Smith and costs $1,450 and therefore a no-go for me, but I thought you might like to know. On the other hand, the silicone ice-cube trays in the shape of ‘gators I just found on Amazon ($13.99) may be just the thing to round out the critter theme.
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, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
Once a discard, now a centerpiece in the Cavanaugh rear garden. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
‘HOW MANY are too many chandeliers?” asked My Prince, admiring a new installation above the garden path.
This was a startling (and not particularly manly) question, I thought, though it gave me great ruffles of pleasure. “I don’t know, but we’ll find out,” I said.
The first chandelier I hung in a garden was a house gift for my friend Susan. It was a simple black wrought-iron number, about two feet around, with five (maybe six) arms curved upward with flat discs for candles. The Prince and I found it in Tijuana, where we’d taken a day trip from Susan’s place in Los Angeles, a cottage near Venice Beach.
Suspended from a tree branch by transparent fishing line, it seemed to hover in space. At night, with candles lit, the flames danced in the dark as though it had blown in from a Disney cartoon.
Of course, I wanted one—but we weren’t driving back to Mexico for a damn chandelier. Or words (not mine) to that effect.
Surely we’d find another. We didn’t. Sometimes, when you want something, you just have to get it. Regrets can molder even 30 years on.
The new chandelier hangs from the Kwanzan cherry tree over the entrance to the workshop. But who knows? It may soon lord it over the pond. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Not long after, however, I found a chandelier in the local thrift shop, a place sadly shuttered when the neighborhood became too hoity-toity for such down-market emporiums. It was of gold-colored embossed metal, with dangerous wiring and missing crystals—but it was just a couple of bucks.
I ripped out the wiring, inserted candles and draped the thing in some of the shiny magpie bits I collect: broken necklaces with colored stones, clear beads, a strand of silk ivy, bunches of purple and green glass grapes, and a big, crystal ball dripping from the base.
For a decade or so it hung from a sturdy branch of the apricot tree, centered over the round dining table. When the apricot tree finally died (thank god and don’t ever plant a fruit tree in a small yard) the chandelier was moved to the back porch, where it hung for several decades more. Each spring, birds built nests in its arms, cawing in irritation if I dared to flop down on the couch beneath it beneath it to read.
The chandelier is lying under the porch at the moment since we’re in a (really exhausting—don’t ask) phase of redoing and there’s been no place for a hook, though it will be rehung shortly.
The new one we’re admiring is dangling from a limb of the Kwanzan cherry that replaced the apricot: my Mother’s Day gift from The Prince. He found it on the sidewalk (we have the best sidewalks) sometime last week. It was a dainty wrought-iron fixture, white metal, and hung with a scattering of crystals. As it looked more suitable for a young girl’s room, I asked him to paint it black, which gives it gravitas and lets it more or less disappear in the leaves—here hoping for something of the effect of that Mexican number.
We’re discussing moving it over the pond, which would mean hanging it from a telephone wire as there is nothing else to hang it from directly overhead. It’s light enough—lighter than the tree branches that shudder the wires when strong winds blow—so it should be fine.
The pond is already a busy place, surrounded by ferns and flowers, with a large chunk of amethyst sitting on the moss growing over the base of the fountain—half a woman in a drapey gown, her torso sitting on one rock, her head on another. She’s broken a couple of times. But wabi sabi and all that.
Somewhere around here—maybe the garage, the basement, or the attic—there’s another chandelier that the Prince bought for me at Community Forklift, a used building parts place where he rummages for doors and windows, tiles, slabs of marble and other fascinating victims of someone’s remodeling, which he brings home and puts away for projects that never seem to happen.
He bought the fixture as a project for me some years ago, but I never took to it, not needing another project at that moment. Perhaps now, though, since it seems he’s already regretting the soon-to-be-empty air space above the garden path . . . a few baubles and bits and a length of fishing line . . .
How many garden chandeliers are too many? Well, let’s hang three and see.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” can never have enough stuff in the garden.
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, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel No. 1: “During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans.”
SOMETIMES online museum content is a blessing. Consider the case of the “Migration Series,” Jacob Lawrence’s masterpiece, a powerful suite of bold panels narrating the World War I–era migration of African Americans from the rural
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel No. 11: “Food had doubled in price because of the war.”
and harsh South to the urban, and often no less harsh, industrial North.
The series, painted in 1940 and 1941, has 60 panels. All 60 were purchased in 1942, 30 by the Phillips Collection in Washington DC (the first US museum dedicated to modern art) and 30 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Both museums’ panels were showcased at the Phillips several years ago, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and in October 2016 the Phillips created an interactive website for them, allowing the luxury of contemplating the works at leisure in the comfort of one’s home. (MoMA has its own in-depth “Migration Series” site.)
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel No. 34: “The black press urged the people to leave the south.”
Lawrence plotted his work out carefully, writing a caption for each panel, sketching detail what each one would depict. He painted all the panels simultaneously, that is, working not panel by panel but color by color, applying each color of paint across all the panels to ensure their visual cohesion, a complex undertaking, to be sure.
At the site, clicking on each densely colored image pulls up the narrative behind it. In addition, the website offers a video interview with Lawrence, who died in 2000. Panel 60 is titled, “And the migrants kept coming.” It refers to the northern goal for southern blacks, but it’s hard in 2020 not to extend the notion to today’s migrants, all over the world, who are indeed still coming. The site invites visitors to create and submit their own Panel 61.
Daughter Monica with grand-dog Tallula and grandson Wesley. Notice how little attention 5-month-old Wesley is paying to the House Beautiful magazine nearby, dashing all hope of having him become an interior or perhaps landscape designer. / Photo top and right by Monica Weddle; photo bottom left by Pete Weddle.
AFTER 37 SUMMERS, the front yard is finally what one might call established—in great part thanks to having finally triumphed over the postal persons who for years trampled a path across the garden while talking (loudly) on their cell phones. Between the Japanese maple, forsythia, dense ground cover, shrubs, vines and a cleverly employed (if I do say so myself) elderly wrought-iron headboard—arched, elaborately curlicued and bordering the neighbor’s walk—the perimeter is fortified. It would take an act of outrageous aggression to battle through to the neighbor’s front walk. This could yet happen.
Some items:
The scentless but constantly productive knock-out roses are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, filling several large planters with bright red blooms. When one (meaning me) has such a small patch of garden, maybe 12 by 20 feet, one chooses to admire the old-fashioned, sublimely scented but fleeting displays of the bourbon and damask roses in someone else’s garden.
When I was a child my mother trained a rambling red rose along the front fence. It bloomed only once, in June, but the scent was heady. She’d pick a little posy for me to take to my teacher, thorny stems wrapped in tin foil. I’d bury my nose in it on the school bus and can smell it still. The hope was, I suppose, that I’d show an uptick on the report card, though if this worked, it was not visible in the final tally. While a chronic reader, I was an abysmal student.
That was an aside.
Back to the front garden. The hydrangeas have doubled again in size—two purples, one white—and are loaded with buds. I’m hoping the Carolina jasmine, now in its second year, will sprawl above the ground cover of ivy and vinca. A blanket of perfume is the intent.
Our one new addition, a rhododendron named “Holden,” bloomed this week. I mentioned him in the last column, or the one before. He’s truly hideous. A ghastly shade of fluorescent pink that makes my teeth hurt. I hope he dies.
The peonies . . . well. This is not good. I moved them to the front of the garden, along the walk, where (the hope was) their sweet smell would greet passersby. They leafed out beautifully, and buds appeared, Huzzah! Then the buds shriveled into what look like peppercorns.
Several weeks ago I scattered seed in the mid-section. This is usually a waste of time and money. But I do it anyway. Poppies and cosmos, cleome and bishop’s flower (a non-invasive dupe for Queen Anne’s lace). The ground cover is far too dense (or I’m too lazy) to dig in the itty-bitty seeds. So I waited for a rainy day (not too difficult), tore open the packs with my teeth, poured the seeds into my hand, and flung them about, the thought being that the rain would drive the seeds into the ground. Now I wait.
If and when they come up (they never do, so there will probably be no issue), I may not even like the effect. In my imagination it will be one of those gorgeous cottage gardens, the ones with the hollyhocks in the back and masses of this and that organized in a deliberately disorganized way. Butterflies will flit, and so forth. Somehow I know that if anything comes up it will either be chaos or there’ll be just one spindly and listing cleome that, despite a valiant effort fighting toward the sun, will look pathetic. Anyway, I didn’t plant hollyhocks.
Meanwhile, at curbside, which is the domain of My Prince, the ground around the hundred-year-old elm had grown bald— who knows why. In an amazing feat of recall, I remembered writing last fall about clover, which I suggested he try.
To quote myself: “There are 300 clover species (genus trifolium). A member of the pea family, they come in shades of crimson and white. Being a legume, they convert nitrogen to fertilizer, practically eliminating the need for additional fertilization. They’re also drought-resistant, stay green in the heat and attract butterflies and bees and other good bugs that fight bad bugs.
This is an admirable collection of characteristics. Combined with grass, clover also makes a pretty ground cover. “Mix 5 to 10 percent clover seed with grass seed to create a thick stand,” says The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
The stuff has taken off beneath the tree. “If you have no capacity to grow anything, grow clover,” says my personal old farmer. “The seeds sprouted in three days.”
Monica, otherwise known as Baby. / Photo by Pete Weddle.
I might even find a four-leafer in the mix, which leads me to Baby’s garden, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
She gave me a tour the other day, clutching 5-month-old Wesley in the curve of one arm, her cell phone in the other. Here’s the dogwood, the crape myrtle, the roses, the lilac. The iris are coming up around the bird house. The gardenias are moved to the driveway. How lovely it all is.
How pathetic to be squinting at it all on a cell-phone screen.
If I find a four-leaf clover, I’ll wish for this nightmare to be over so on this, her first Mother’s Day, we could celebrate together. My beautiful Baby, her baby and me.
(Oh, her personal Prince and mine and grand-dog Tallula can come too, and we’ll have Popeyes and cake—and hugs).
—Stephanie Cavanugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” has high hopes for every season in the garden.
The Rosary Portico at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
IT’S FUNNY to think that 40 years ago or so Washington’s National Arboretum was one of the least visited sights in the city. One could wander the 446-acre garden with its splendid roses, bonsai, hills blazing with azaleas, the dogwood grove, the lilac forest, peony beds and on and on, and rarely see another soul.
I was working nearby, for a book company’s warehouse around the corner from some of the seediest motels in town, the sort with rooms rented by the hour, if you know what I mean. The area was a bit off-putting to most of the town’s citizenry.
Some days at lunchtime I’d head over to the arboretum with Michael, a young guy who packed boxes while dreaming of becoming a boxer. Irony? He’d run the hills and straightaways backwards, to train his I-don’t-know-whats, while I trudged along in his wake, attempting to keep up.
The Lower Gardens with the Ascension Chapel behind the cherry tree at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Michael also dreamed of driving to England. When I asked how he proposed to do that, he looked at me like I was a fool and said, “I’ll take the bridge.” So much for DC public schools, but that is neither here nor there. He was a sweet kid.
A Pieta mosaic by Carlo Angelo Facchina, the first mosaicist at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The arboretum today is so mobbed on weekends that the lots are often full. A parade of cars winds along 9½ miles of roadway, ferrying those too lazy to hike. It is so popular, in fact, that it’s now closed during the coronavirus pandemic. How, one wonders, did we manage to not keep social distancing in a space this vast? But we did! That’s the American spirit for you. GO AWAY, the locked gates seem to say. Bad! Tsk! No more visits until you can behave.
The Prince and I sadly found this out a few days ago when we drove over, hoping to catch the azalea show—which is phenomenal—and nestle our noses in the peonies, which must be ripe. To not see the roses, which should be in full blaze in a few weeks, makes me limp with sadness.
Please stop reading now.
Instead, we went to another, relatively secret garden. The Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, which has been named “one of the Top 5 places most tourists miss when sightseeing in Washington, DC.” So sayeth its website. It probably ranks up there for residents as well.
Last Saturday there were maybe—and this is a generous count—20 people and a couple of dogs wandering the grounds. A couple of kids were irritating the koi in the small pond. A few people were sitting, sheltered amid hedges, quietly reading. The rest of us were meandering about. It was, you should pardon the expression, heavenly.
Do stay away.
Another view of the Rosary Portico at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The neighborhood of Brookland, where the monastery sits, might be called a Catholic hotbed. It’s also home to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Roman Catholic Church in North America; and Catholic University. Brookland is, by the by, a delightful neighborhood, reminiscent of long-ago Cleveland Park. A village of rambling front porch houses, surrounded by gardens, and a charming little downtown with a smattering of restaurants and a cool arts scene.
Built at the turn of the last century, with gardens in cultivation since 1897, the US home of the Holy Land Franciscans sits on 42 acres, and appears to be buffered by many more acres of green. While the buildings, church and chapels are closed to the public, and many activities and events have been canceled because of the virus, the gardens are open and free to roam— but only until 3 pm, when visitors are tossed out. There’s plenty of parking across the street.
The upper garden, which fronts the Memorial Church of the Holy Sepulcher, is surrounded by the Rosary Portico, a covered walkway with elaborately turned pillars and 15 chapels, as they’re called—really just pauses in the stroll—with plaques with the “Hail Mary” inscribed in 200 ancient and modern languages. Quite fun to attempt to read.
Eleven enormous rose beds front the church itself: The grandiflora and hybrid teas are currently bursting with buds and should be full open by Mother’s Day, which you should definitely avoid. (Because that’s when I want the place to myself!)
The Blessed Virgin looks like “Mary Mardi Gras” with the sparkly beads draped on her at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Tucked amid the trees and bushes and flowers that line the paths through the winding lower grounds are full-size replicas of various shrines in Israel and Rome, the idea being to bring the Holy Land to those who might never have the chance to visit.
Wander down the hillside past dogwoods and azaleas, intricate mosaics and flower beds. In one, a statue of a girl—perhaps a nun—stands in a sea of tulips near the Lourdes Grotto. A weeping cherry fairly smothers the Ascension Chapel. A welcome mat is set before a statue of what I assume is the Virgin Mary (signage is clearly hit or miss), draped with glittery rosary beads (an occasional lapse in refined taste always thrills me).
There are plenty of spots to stop and sit, contemplate, meditate, sketch.
But beware, the toilets are closed. So go before you go, if you go, which I sincerely hope you won’t. But if you do, keep yourdistance and preserve this patch of extraordinary peace and beauty for all of us.
Franciscan Monastery 1400 Quincy Street NE, Washington DC. Phone: 202-526-6800
There are several Monastery websites, none of which offers complete basic information; I suppose that is refreshing, in its way. This one is for Garden Guild: http://www.fmgg.org.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” is a nondenominational admirer of gardens.
The Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America, in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
MANY WEEKS into the quarantine, we have a new MVP at our house. I wish I could say it was the cook/cleaner/house manager, which happens to be me, but it’s not. The most valued player here is my husband, the mixologist who every
Cameron’s Sazerac. / Photo by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.
evening brightens our home with ice and spirits all magically shaken together and served with a smile.
Cameron has always enjoyed a little drink-making. We have long joked his marriage vows included, “and always make sure Stephanie has her beverage of choice,” but the quarantine has brought true meaning to those words. Who knew every evening would be spent at home and that we would need to find small ways to entertain ourselves?
Armed with How to Cocktail (America’s Test Kitchen, 2019), a winning last-minute Christmas gift from our son Ben, Cameron has become a master bartender. He’s been shaking up icy-cold martinis, bone-dry Vespers, a really good, grapefruity Bijon Frisé and his latest, the Sazerac, all with the help of that last-minute gift. Thank you, Cameron. Thank you, Ben.
Lewis’s martini with blue-cheese-stuffed olives. / Photo by Susan Schreck.
Turns out, we’re not the only ones. My brother-in-law Lewis was missing the icy-cold martinis he used to get at restaurants, so Susan, my sister, went on Amazon to buy him a cocktail shaker. While she was browsing, she decided to also order The Joy of Mixology(Clarkson Potter, 2018). Soon Lewis was lined up at the local ABC store (we live in Virginia), ordering, at a social distance, the makings of a well-stocked bar: gin, Campari, rye, simple syrup, Bailey’s, Kahlua, vermouth, vodka and an assortment of bitters. Last night’s cocktail was a cooler-than-cool Negroni.
Over at my friend Dorothy’s house, daughter Claire is the spirit-brightener. Claire graduated from college in May and, pre-quarantine, had been working as an actual bartender while looking for a job with a non-profit. Now she’s plying her trade in her parents’ kitchen with a very receptive audience waiting in the living room. Claire is finding the whole ritual comforting and a very well-received outlet for her creativity. She’s even coming up with her own recipes. Her latest is a Spicy Cucumber Cilantro Margarita, which Dorothy describes as refreshing and pleasantly cucumbery.
I’m raising a virtual glass to my bartender husband and all the others out there. I can’t visit, but I know you’re mixing up something good. When the quarantine ends, we’ll come over and enjoy a drink together.
—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick
Claire’s Spicy Cucumber Cilantro Margarita. / Photo by Dorothy Atherton.
Claire’s Spicy Cucumber Cilantro Margarita
(1 serving)
Juice of 1 lime, saving the husk of the lime to wet the rim of the glass
4 thin slices of peeled cucumber
1½ ounces blanco tequila
2 sprigs cilantro
2 fresh basil leaves, torn up
2 thin slices of jalapeño, seeds removed if you want it less spicy
Seasoned salt (Claire used Penzeys’)
In a cocktail shaker, mash together the lime juice and cucumber until liquidy. Add the tequila, the leaves from one of the sprigs of cilantro and the basil and a handful of ice. Place the top on the shaker and shake until the mixture is well chilled. Add the jalapeño slices and shake two more times, or longer for a spicier flavor.
Wet the rim of a cocktail glass with the lime husk and dip the rim in seasoned salt. Strain the mixture into the glass and garnish with the remaining sprig of cilantro.
When it comes to entertaining, LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is the MVP of MLB.
BILLIONAIRES DO WELL to play down their assets. If some random fat cat started showing off his or her Lamborghinis or $400,000 watches, I’d be among those bristling (if only to hide my envy). But the passage of time seems to take some of the sting away and I’m happy to goggle at the treasures amassed by others. Pierre Fabergé made lavish jewel-encrusted Easter eggs for the czars of Russia, but I can be happy that the craftsmanship has survived without dwelling on the miserable lives of the serfs in that feudal society. Ditto the amazing gold confections of Benvenuto Cellini, wrought in the courts of 16th-century Italy.
Marjorie Merriweather Post was heir to the significant Post cereal fortune, and she spent her money collecting and sometimes commissioning worthy objects. Her Washington DC home, Hillwood, is now a museum and garden estate where many of her treasures by Fabergé (czarist eggs and other baubles) and Cartier (commissioned jewelry and decorative objects) are on view. The newest exhibit, Natural Beauties: Exquisite Works of Minerals and Gems, will be on view until the beginning of 2021, in the hope that visitors will once again enjoy a firsthand look. In the meantime, here is a glimpse of objects that Post prized, all made out of stones and minerals. The pieces shown here were chosen by Hillwood’s chief curator and curator of this exhibit, Wilfried Zeiser, who also provided notes on the pieces.
—Nancy McKeon
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
This frame, with a photograph of Marjorie Merriweather Post, is by Cartier, of Paris, from about 1930. It is made of agate, gold, enamel and rubies. The watercolor on ivory is by miniature painter Malcolm Rae, American, active in the mid-1900s; made in New York, it dates from about 1930.
The French firm of Cartier opened a New York City branch in 1909 and quickly attracted a distinguished clientele. In addition to acquiring extraordinary pieces of jewelry from the firm, Marjorie Post also purchased exquisite objets d’art, such as frames, ashtrays, desk sets and bell pushes. Delicately crafted from agate, jade, lapis lazuli, nephrite and onyx, these items were often ornamented with enamel and precious stones. Together, these objects form a unique art deco collection. Post also patronized other jewelers known for their similar tastes.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
Curator Wilfried Zeiser says Post purchased this 18th-century vase in Paris in 1937 while Marjorie Post was staying at the Ritz. Not much is known about the striking piece except that it is French and made of lapis lazuli and bronze.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
This little leaf-shape box by the firm of Fabergé was made in Moscow between 1899 and 1908. It was fashioned from bloodstone, gold and diamonds. Bloodstone is an opaque dark green jasper with red inclusions resembling flecks of blood, hence the name. It was also Marjorie Post’s birthstone.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
This incredible table is made of malachite, the vivid green stone the Russians began mining in the Ural Mountains in the 1800s. This is the work of the Demidov Lapidary Factory, established by the Demidov family in St. Petersburg in the 1840s. The table was made there in about 1851 and includes gilt bronze work by the city’s Leuchtenberg Bronze Factory.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
This voluptuous table is an example of pietra dura, Italian for hard stone and usually used to denote the Italian design technique of piecing together polished stones of different colors on a marble field to create images. The table was made in Malta around 1850.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
Marjorie Post collected about 150 pieces of Chinese jade, in its many colors and fanciful forms, including religious figurines and snuff bottles. Shown here is a jardinière, or decorative flower box, showing trees and plants whose branches are just beginning to shake off winter. It was probably made in the imperial workshops of Beijing in 1790-95, out of gold, jade, enamel, stone, wood, coral and glass. Post established herself as a serious collector in New York in the 1910s.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
One of the most popular breeds of dog, the French bulldog, inspired this miniature of agate, gold and enamels. It is Western European in origin, from the early 1900s.
Photo courtesy of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens.
This precious rabbit was made about 1900 and sold by the firm of Fabergé. It was fashioned from amethyst and has tiny ruby eyes.
Lately I’m having trouble staying asleep. I nod off all right, but sometime around 4am I’m abruptly awake, listening for . . . something. There’s a lot of nothing out there. No cars. No horns. The birds are sleeping.
Cyclamen has such soft, velvety leaves, doesn’t it? And the color!
I started this flower alphabet a few nights ago. One letter, one flower. By the end, if I reach it, I’ll cadge a few more hours of sleep. One could do this with anything: girls’ names, boys’ names, birds, book titles, cars . . .
It’s like that jump-rope jingle we used to recite—or was it a hand-clapping game? A my name is Anna and my husband’s name is Alan, we come from Albania where we sell apples . . . and so forth. Interesting that it was always their business (we sell . . . “), and it was the 1950s.
And what is the difference between a jonquil and a daffodil? The game doesn’t allow me to look this up. If I turn on the light I will never get back to sleep. I could ask Alexa, but that would wake My Prince. Besides, the thinking is what knocks me out, eventually.
Hustle up. I try to do this as quickly as possible, for some reason racing along is important. I eat that way too, sometimes. Like someone is going to take my plate away, as my mother used to say. But that is neither here nor there.
That should be chrysanthemum, but I can cheat! My game.
N is for neroli.
Is neroli a flower? It must be. Smells like the very essence of fresh lemon. It also sounds as if you’re conjuring a genie from a bottle . . . nerrrroliiiiiii!
O is for orchid.
Need to get a few more tiny orchids to tuck around the pond . . . when I nerve myself up to go to Trader Joe’s, where they’re fairly cheap. If I squint, the setting looks a little like the orchid section of the Botanic Garden. I did say “a little” and “squint.”
Q is also for Queen Anne’s Lace, a frustrating weed, highly invasive—if you can get it to grow. I, of course, would love to grow it. There’s nothing like the frothy tremble of their big, lacy white caps dancing along a path. I also like them in a vase when it’s broiling out and the dust motes float around the living room catching sunlight like diamond bits.
Air plants! If you’re lucky they flower. Sometimes they die and you don’t know it until they shrivel like mummies. Did you know there’s a genus of around 650 species of tillandsia? Neither did I until two minutes ago. I had to check the spelling.
Which didn’t blossom at all this year—meanwhile the neighbor’s is bursting with flowers, sprawled over her garage roof and dripping into the alley. At least I get to smell it—but that was not the picture I had in mind. Ah well, next lifetime.
X is for . . .
X is for nothing, nothing. I’ll come back to it at the end . . .
Zinnia is tops on the list of flowers for children to grow. So easy, they say. Why are mine so measly?
Back to X x x x x x ………..xxxxxxxxxxxxx………….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” writes and cooks and, yes, gardens when she’s not dozing.
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IN OUR ISOLATION, I think we should all take phone pix of our home settings and post them online or at least feature different rooms on Zoom. Then we’ll have the illusion of “visiting” (and distant friends can finally see that digital chinoiserie wallpaper we keep talking about—okay, I’ll just stop talking about it).
Short of that, we’re getting a glimpse into the home lives of the hosts and pundits who fill our late-night and early-morning TV screens. Some, like Stephen Colbert, make gentle references to wife and sons; others—talking about you here, Jimmy Fallon—have adorable little girls who crawl all over them and have basically become co-stars. There are kitchens and dining rooms and family rooms and attic spaces set up as home studios. From what I’ve seen, there are lots of bookcases, but Samantha Bee has addressed the “where to set up the home studio” problem by shooting Full Frontal With Samantha Bee outdoors, along what looks like a fire road in the woods. And of course CNN’s Chris Cuomo, suffering from the virus, continues his show from his basement, often checking in with brother New York State governor Andrew Cuomo.
I mentioned bookcases. That’s about all we get to see of John Krasinski’s setup in his new Some Good News (though the set is straight, Krasinski does seem to do his job wearing a coat, tie and . . . boxer shorts. Not much more than shelves to see in Trevor Noah’s penthouse apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, on Manhattan’s West Side, but there were pix of the aerie-like pad when it was a real estate listing; those won’t tell us what the decor is like now, but we can get a glimpse of what made the host of what is now called The Daily Social Distancing Show pay $10 million for the place.
The nothing-but-the-bookcase approach is bland but doesn’t distract from news of the day, which is important to the morning shows. But we do get a peek at what seems to be CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King’s lower-level family room, a corner of NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell’s house and a nice, bright glimpse of the Connecticut kitchen of Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts (though she seems to broadcast mostly from an entertainment area in her lower-level family room, wearing her yellow slippers).
Here’s what a few of these TV people are showing us.
Tom Hanks hosts “Saturday Night Live” on April 11, 2020, from his kitchen. / NBC.
In his post-coronavirus-infection Saturday Night Live monologue on April 11, actor Tom Hanks said he was “more like America’s dad than ever before” because “no one wants to be around me very long, and I make people uncomfortable.” By contrast, the Hanks/Rita Wilson home kitchen, the setting for his appearance, makes us quite comfortable. There are Shaker-style cabinets in what looks like a cherry finish, counters crowded with what the appliance industry calls “small electrics,” assorted clutter corralled into corners, a peninsula with white cone pendant lights overhead—and the “open” concept that allows us to view all of this. (The glass-front upper cabinets holding dishes and glassware look quite orderly, I must say.)
If the kitchen looks familiar to those who’ve done a kitchen in the past 20 years and not overly glamorous, it is both of those things, and nothing wrong with that. It has the lived-in comfort of the sweatpants Hanks said he’d been wearing since March 11 (for the show, he wore a suit and tie).
The daily digs of regular SNL cast members also showed up in Zoom clips—lots of clutter, some very “spare” decor, as in little visible furniture, and a couple of cramped New York galley kitchens. But if there’s ever a shortage of stainless steel, one could do worse than round up the appliances of this group.
“CBS This Morning” co-host Anthony Mason in his dining room. / CBS News.
While Tom Hanks stood in front of his kitchen for his guest appearance, CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason goes one better: He has taken over the dining room of his family’s sprawling prewar Upper West Side apartment for his daily hosting duties. According to the Los Angeles Times, the shot is set up each morning by Mason’s college-student son Nick, which suggests that the family may dismantle everything and use the room for its intended purpose each evening. The co-host is fine with people commenting on his decor, including the splashy painting of Venice’s Piazza San Marco over his shoulder (though someone should rehang those pix so they make visual sense). He didn’t want the place to be like “a slick-looking TV studio: It’s a New York apartment,” he told the Times. But there’s a whole raft of TV equipment, of course, including a ring light, used to light faces evenly, perched on top of a stack of books, far right.
Seth Meyers of “Late Night With Seth Meyers” shown in the attic-space studio in his Connecticut country home. / Late Night With Seth Meyers, NBC.
Seth Meyers of Late Night With Seth Meyers has played around with his quarantine “set,” winding up in this “attic crawl space” and asking mock-leading questions about the little chair in the corner and the tiny door and what might be behind it. The black hardware on the doors echoes the place’s age and rustic feel, as does the little spool-style table on which rests first one copy, then two, of the steamy 1977 family saga The Thorn Birds. Meyer’s “studio” is not in his $7.5-million eight-room duplex in Greenwich Village, which was featured in Architectural Digest. It’s the Meyers family’s 18th-century Litchfield, Connecticut, Georgian home, which has an easy charm that is as curated-craft as it is rustic. That’s thanks to wife Alexi Ashe’s designer sister, Ariel Ashe, now a design partner with Reinaldo Leandro. Putting the set in this quaint space keeps us viewers from swooning over the elevated-country furnishings in the Greenwich Village apartment, including two $4,500 silk pendant light fixtures and a $7,100 burl oak console from the Ashe Leandro collection for Ruemmler furniture. In Connecticut the furnishings, Ariel Ashe says, are from eBay, flea markets and local antiques shops.
Jimmy Fallon reports from the family room, with a “Mary Had a Little Lamb”-playing Winnie in the background. Note the Little Drummer Boy-style drum bar against the back wall. / The Tonight Show, Home Edition, NBC.
There is so much going on on the home set of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that it’s hard to peg the aesthetic. It’s not been hard for Winnie and Franny (far right, holding a paper snake she will soon use to attack Fallon) to steal the show from Dad. / The Tonight Show, Home Edition, NBC.
It’s hard to know what the story is at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, now that the action is taking place in the host’s home. There’s so much going on, one element contradicting the next, but I’m going to take a shot: The theme is . . . theme park, several of them. There are the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs figures hanging on one wall, a drum kit mostly hidden behind a puffy sofa, a theater-size popcorn machine, an adult-size chute (not shown) that lands mid family room. At least I hope this is the family room, though some stories have called it the living room (but I guess that’s fair when the living includes 4- and 6-year-old girls Franny and Winnie and Gary, the dog). Upstairs is more subdued though no less quirky, with wood-paneled walls plus stair handrails and beams that look like tree trunks and branches whose bark has been peeled.
Okay, I’m stopping now, visually exhausted.
Stephen Colbert, of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” did a show from his bathtub . . . / The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, CBS.
. . . then decamped to his New Jersey backyard, but has since settled in an indoor corner with bookshelves containing books that actually look as though they’ve been read. / The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, CBS.
Stephen Colbert has staged episodes of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert from various places in and around his Montclair, New Jersey, home. The bathroom has a nice combination of modern style (the glassed-in shower stall) and traditional (the wainscoting and the soaking tub with the Victorian-style exposed tub filler). The patio seems a bit bleak, perhaps because of the season. The trelliswork is nice, but the cast-aluminum chairs and table seem pretty random. And the firepit . . . well, it’s a firepit.
Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan focuses on the feed from his wife, NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell, all business up top and comfort (sneakers) below. / NBC News.
The home of NBC News’s Andrea Mitchell is a charming old farmhouse on a winding, almost-rural road in Washington, DC. That’s not what this setup looks like, for sure. The tall, tailored curtains make for a neutral background for Mitchell’s broadcast segments, and the rest of the space, clearly a home office, is swathed in drop cloths, leaving very little opportunity for style to shine through. Two charming notes about this broadcast are Mitchell’s sneakers, worn with her very proper television dress, and her husband, 94-year-old former chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, monitoring her work, all got up in a suit and tie.
Al Roker and Pepper, seen (by millions) at home in New York. / Today, NBC.
Al Roker and his trusty laptop in the kitchen. / Today, NBC.
Today show weather guy Al Roker and wife, TV journalist Deborah Roberts, own my dream house. It’s an Upper East Side town house that sits quietly on its street not far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art exuding solidity. The TV couple bought the house some years back for several million dollars, and it’s certainly worth at least three times that now, or whenever the pandemic is over.
Roker’s been quoted as saying he always thought a town house “was real New York living,” and it’s hard to argue. What I admire about the place is the low-key nods to the home’s age—the wainscoting in what I assume is the dining room, the simple fireplace mantel, even those venetian blinds in the kitchen, which I’m guessing are wood. But it’s a cleaned-up traditional, light and airy-feeling (which is sometimes hard because attached town houses are narrow and deep and usually get light only from front and back windows and often a skylight). We can’t see much of the wall behind Roker in the top picture, but there seems to be a hand-painted (or perhaps wallpaper) mural adding interest above the chair rail (I love chair rails).
Pepper, the Rokers’ rescue pup, is of course a great selling point—for the homeowners, not the house—but so’s the kitchen. From what I can see of the upper cabinets, they’re a bit beyond the usual without anything tricked-up going on. And, unseen in these images, is the kitchen island, one that makes sense: It’s one of those stainless-steel tables sold by restaurant-supply places, narrow and on wheels so you can move it to where it’s needed for the real purpose of a kitchen, meal preparation.
When the Rokers move on to their next place, and when I win the lottery, I’ll buy it from them—if there’s a way to install an elevator.
IF THERE WAS ever any doubt, now we know what Americans will do in a lockdown: bake and shop.
Especially shop. My sister, Pat, calls it “sending myself little presents” while she’s stuck at home, and she’s not wrong, the only difference being the credit-card bill at the end of the month. At a time when we can’t get together with friends or extended family; when we’ve baked until we’re out of flour; seen “Frozen” more times than the animators who drew the movie have (I stole that line from Jimmy Kimmel); and it’s sketchy to go out to the few stores that are open, online shopping is a more worthy diversion than it usually is on a dull Sunday at midnight.
The shopping stops short of being glamorous, for sure. Some prized items are borne of today’s necessity (LittleBird Kathy’s barber scissors?) or an abundance of caution, otherwise known as paranoia (my sister’s oxygen monitor?); others are things we’ve been meaning to buy for a long time, especially after spending all of our waking hours staring at that empty corner of the front yard (hence my sister’s new Old-Fashioned Smoke Tree, $29.99, shipping from Spring Hill Nurseries on April 27). A less permanent purchase is neighbor Pat’s: a 4-pound bag of Tootsie Pops, $24.99. There’s a woman who has her priorities straight. And my personal favorite: friend Jane’s purchase of a needlepoint canvas that’s a portrait of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg!
Feel free to chime in in the Comments box. What have you been buying? Is it out of boredom or something you’re finally getting around to focusing on? I think we all want to compare notes.
—Nancy McKeon
LEFT: Pat, a friend in Bethesda, Maryland, looked around her kitchen and saw how her cutting boards were “looking grungy.” Opting for cheap and cheerful, she headed over to Amazon and bought two flexible clear mats for $6.29. Needed or not, it’s hard to care at that price.
CENTER: Pat, who says she’s too old to go to the grocery store in this climate, also went online to find “elbow macaroni” for a neighbor who wanted to make mac and cheese. Using De Cecco Cavatappi (they’re ridged, which may be why De Cecco calls them cavatappi: it means “corkscrews”) will certainly elevate the comfort food into something even heartier.
Pat also reports that she ordered a six-pack of 10-count Crystal Light On-the-Go Natural Lemonade for $18 and up from Amazon, mostly because she’s too embarrassed to ask neighbors (see “too old to go to the grocery store,” above) to buy her some more Barq’s Diet Root Beer, which is what she really craves but now knows can also be bought through Amazon.
RIGHT: Pat my sister, not Pat my friend, was reading something that suggested the resin-composition knob on her Le Creuset Dutch Oven might not survive in a very, very hot oven (it’s okay up to 450 degrees, the company says). So, over to the Le Creuset site she went and bought the Signature Stainless Steel Knob, on sale for $14.40 to $19.20, depending on size. Cheaper than at a cookware store. So she didn’t spend all that time typing for that alone, she also bought a Signature Deep Dutch Oven, $200. I didn’t ask her which color.
LEFT: Rusticating in isolation (with family) in a West Virginia farmhouse led LittleBird Kathy to seek comfort from the feet up. Hence these Women’s Daybreak Scuffs, $64 at L.L. Bean. If a dog isn’t your thing, you should know there’s also a cat (dark red slipper with a charcoal gray cat), mossy green with a brown moose, mossy green with a brown-and-gray squirrel and other critters and motifs (sun, fir trees, turtle, butterflies).
RIGHT: In case anyone doesn’t know that dogs are close to Kathy’s heart, this purchase should seal the deal. It’s a fabric Frisbee from MuttNation, country singer Miranda Lambert’s foundation supporting dog rescues. The purchase is through Tractor Supply Company and it costs $6.99. But Kathy currently has four dogs so she bought several.
LEFT: One of friend (not sister) Pat’s friends decided a tennis trainer was what she needed. We couldn’t find the exact one she bought on Amazon, but there are at least 30 versions, from about $8 up. The idea is that if you don’t have a wall to hit against, the elastic string attached to the weighted base of the trainer will return whatever you send its way. This one, the SoloT Tennis Trainer, is $24.95 through Amazon. (Couldn’t you fashion something like this yourself? Sure. Maybe. But would you?)
RIGHT: The current baking frenzy has both sister (not friend) Pat and me dealing with hardened brown sugar. As it so often does, King Arthur Flour has the answer, an Airtight Brown Sugar Keeper, $12.95. The secret to keeping brown sugar from hardening is moisture, which you probably know, but if you’re tired of replacing that nasty damp paper towel in the brown sugar box, this may be a more elegant solution. The Keeper holds up to 2 pounds. You do have to soak the terra-cotta disc housed in the lid periodically. If you already have a container, you may prefer the King Arthur Flour Brown Sugar Saver, which is a 2½-inch version of the disc alone and is $6.95.
LEFT: LittleBird Kathy has a serious kitchen jones these days. She just gifted herself this Chef’n Mini Juicester, which has two sizes of citrus reamer and its own “juicing cup,” which has measurements marked on it. All that on sale for $6.36 at Williams-Sonoma.
RIGHT: Necessity may also be the mother of shopping. Tweezerman’s Stainless 2000 Shears, $28, will be a godsend until the hairdressers and barbers are back in business.
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, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
It’s hard to see the little koi pond for all the cherry blossoms. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
SNOW AT LAST!
It’s an inch or so deep in the backyard and pink as a ballerina’s tutu. The blossoms are falling from the Kwanzan cherry, covering the pond, the stone path, the flower borders. It’s gorgeous today, and will be tomorrow, but by the weekend it will be as glamorous as snow drifts after a warm week. Brown and slushy underfoot, unpleasant.
The tree had a reasonable run this year, the flowers opening around the first of April—two weeks earlier than usual—and only now beginning to shed its candy-colored puff balls. Monday was particularly beautiful, with patches of torrential rain followed by brilliant sunshine, the winds whipping up showers of petals mingling with the raindrops. Having nothing much else to do, I watched.
Snow in April! The Kwanzan tree shed its pink beauty all over the Cavanaugh backyard. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Confinement is a curious thing. A few weeks ago, at the start of it all, I wrote about cooking with whatever’s to hand. Getting creative with bits of this and that, which (in a previous life) would have been allowed to grow fur before discarding (one can’t just toss perfectly good food, can one? it has to be beyond saving). Now that bite of green pepper will flavor tomorrow’s concoction or maybe whatever I invent the day after. Why, I can probably build an entire meal around it. Who knew?
Such is also true in the garden. Normally, around about now we’d be planning a trip to Raleigh, North Carolina (land of the fried Ho Ho) to visit Baby and her Personal Prince Pete, wee grandbaby Wes and granddog Tallula, and make the rounds of the State Farmers Market and flower centers, which should already be bursting with plants and flowers, filling the truck bed with a summer’s haul. We are, instead, here, squinting at Baby and the others on a tiny phone screen, which is better than nothing, I suppose.
We tried a few days back to visit Ginkgo, our neighborhood gardening emporium, but most of the joy is gone when there’s no time to putter and mull; to pick up an eye-tempter and meander about the rows, considering what goes with what and where. Now we masked gardeners are being allowed in one at a time, the crowd outside (since when is 10 people a crowd?) patiently waiting a turn. Mustn’t hold up traffic.
I quickly snapped up seeds: poppies, cosmos, cleome, bishop’s lace, sweet peas and moonflowers, with no particular idea of where they’ll go but envisioning the sweet and sweet-smelling bouquet they’ll make. Suddenly, I felt so rich. And what fun it was to shop. Shop!
If I can’t take the time to mull in the garden center, I have all the time in the world to mull at home. What can I do with what I have? When the supply lines are crimped, my brain becomes surprisingly fertile.
For umpteen years there’ve been sweet-potato vines in the center of the window boxes, some years an acid green, others a blackish purple. By fall they’ve ruffled their way down from the second floor, frilled ends visible through the living room windows. Those in the lower boxes puddle on the porch floor.
This year I find I have a fabulous mass of asparagus fern, a modest patch that exploded over the winter in the greenhouse. Digging it out of the pots and sawing the roots, I had five voluptuous sprays for the front of the boxes. This was instantly stunning, in a way I normally wait months to achieve.
Instead of my usual debate (entirely internal but terribly fraught) over what I should put in the back, I clipped five generous branches of schefflera, dipped the stems in growth hormone and jabbed them into the boxes. Flanking these are branches of geranium, also overwintered and hormone-dunked. And in the corners of each box, ivy twines (or raggedly hangs, depending on the appetite of the pigeons and squirrels. Why do they like only some of the ivy, not all?).
So many common houseplants can be divided or easily rooted in water or with a bit of hormone (if you’re lacking the store-bought stuff, honey is said to inspire roots). You can make much out of little, with no splicing, splinting or what-notting necessary—it’s instant gratification, or near to it.
What many consider the bible of subdivision is Plant Propagation by Alan Toogood, published by the American Horticultural Society and apparently out of print, though available used on Amazon. The British horticulturist (you know you can always trust a Brit in these matters) has tips for propagating more than 1,500 plants—from snip and stick the stem in the soil to fussing for a summer or six hoping for a bud.
Though having nothing much better to do at the moment you might take on the challenge.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” has time these days to get creative with the window boxes.
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, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
HORTENSE WAS sitting on the floor in a corner of the solarium much of yesterday morning. There is nothing to see there, just the grayish-white molding and a scatter of potting soil. She had been sitting on a leaf of the bird of paradise earlier, having winged it to the skylight, realized it was closed, and then settled down. How light she is. The leaf scarcely trembled.
The day before, she sat in a schefflera and stared at a brick wall for several hours.
Why, I ask you, would she do that when there are options: to press her nose to the glass that surrounds the room and take in the enormous pink pom-poms of the Kwanzan cherry tree that crushes up against the windows, or to perch among the geraniums on the baker’s rack and talk to the birds flitting about the garden.
She’s just getting used to me.
Hortie, which is her pet name, is a 25-year-old ring-necked dove, which is a very old bird. They usually live 15 years, few make it to 20. She has elegant colors, taupe and buff and beige and a touch of wet sand and that black ring. She has a strange overbite and is a little mangy-looking around the neck, but so am I. Old she may be, but quite healthy, or so I’m told.
The other day I was eating jelly beans while taking a break from obsessing over Google News by obsessing over the plague statistics for my neighborhood, published on a local listserv. Scrolling along the notices, this one caught my eye: “We’re looking for someone who can take in our office bird while we’re shut down,” the story went. “Hortense . . . has
Hortense still seems to be ignoring the glory of the Kwanzan cherry right outside. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
lived in our offices for the past 12 years. She’s in very good health and is pretty low maintenance—she’s generally free during the day and loves to sunbathe, and is accustomed to spending the night in her cage. The ideal situation would be a sunny spare room, away from other pets . . . ”
Reading her rather lengthy and detailed bio, it appeared we’re kindred spirits. Besides having similar necks, we both like baths, sitting in the sun and eating. I’m not frightened by the vacuum cleaner either and frequently vocalize.
Well, golly, I thought, or words to that effect. If not me then who? Not only do we have so much in common, the name Hortense, says Wikipedia, “comes from Latin, meaning gardener.”
If that’s not fate . . .
For years my little solarium, a space about 10 feet square just off my office, functioned not only as the winter haven for my tropical plants but as an aviary. There were two, and then four, and then only one parakeet, beautiful shades of yellow and green and a dazzling swimming-pool blue.
There were several beautiful cages, including a Victorian model made of curlicued wire. These were used (by the birds) chiefly for dining, occasionally for sleeping. Otherwise the birds were free to wing about.
They were loud and messy, fighting and making up. Shredding plants, pooping on the sills. Chasing each other in flashes of color, ruffling the jasmine and lemons. It was lovely. And then, in a series of tragedies, there were none.
The bird notion was originally a decorative one, like wallpaper, or flower arranging. My view of birds was pretty much the same as my view of our goldfish, which are regularly consumed by the raccoon, like shiny lagniappes. (Their lives may be short and end brutally, but the garden pond is an idyllic place to spend that brief existence—the alternative being someone else buying them to feed to a pet snake.)
Who’d think I’d become enchanted by, and ridiculously attached to, parakeets? In the process of my daily procrastination I noticed their personalities. I grew to know their individual voices, their moods. Vinnie, who turned out be a girl (you can’t tell until they are some months old) was most irritating and rather ugly and so I loved her most. Shakira, a handsome male, was named for the singer (he went wild when he heard “Hips Don’t Lie”). Those two made out a lot. Blue was gorgeous, and knew it, preening and snappish. Yellow and Boychick liked playing with string.
When they all passed I decided I was done with pets. I’d already sworn off dogs when my beagle, Bagel, died at 17. The sorrow is too much, and you know when you take in an animal it will most likely pass on well before you do.
Covid-19 (and what happened to Covid-18, might I ask?) changes everything, doesn’t it? While she’s only supposed to be in residence until the plague abates, Hortie might outlive me. Bring her on, I said.
It’s too early to move the indoor plants out, but we did it anyway, trusting the forecast, which says the mild temperatures will continue. An alarming number of plants are toxic to birds, so the hibiscus, philodendrons and jasmines were moved to the back porch, where the brick walls absorb the day’s warmth.
On Monday morning I opened the front door to two women in masks and gloves, toting Hortense in her little carrier bag, a large cage, and a shopping bag with her food, vitamins, bathing dish and copies of the Washington Diplomat, a newspaper I once wrote for and no longer do, for reasons we won’t get into. That the paper was for cage liner seemed appropriate.
While we’re prickly about social distancing, it seemed only right to show them Hortense’s new home, which seemed to please them.
This morning, she seems to be getting used to me, though not yet singing or cooing or whatever doves do. In time, I expect, I’ll wish she’d shut up. She splashed around a bit in the Pyrex dish that serves as her bathtub, and is now on a perch in her cage examining her neck in the mirror, stretching this way and that, looking for her best angle, I suppose.
Reminds me of . . . me.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” has room in her plant-filled heart for feathered creatures as well.
WEGMANS USED to be my happy place. All the shelves packed with possibilities. Cremini and shiitake mushrooms waiting to be stir-fried. Bins filled with different kinds of apples—which should I try today? Fresh-baked breads calling out to me. I loved the abundance of the stores, especially crowded ones: so much food, so many happy people.
All that’s over for now. I knew the magic was dying when my husband pulled me away from the women handing out samples of Irish bangers. “No samples, no,” he said. We were in the first days of the current crisis. Schools were still open, but we knew there were troubled days ahead. He tossed a package of bangers into our already full cart.
That cart wasn’t full of possibilities, it was filled with protection. As if I could save my family with an abundant supply of tomato sauce and pasta. Flour, butter and eggs would bake a wall against the danger outside. A bag of oranges would keep them safe.
Now, we walk anxiously down the aisles, maintaining a discreet distance from our fellow shoppers. The paper-goods aisle reminds me of pictures of Cold War–era markets in the Soviet Union, where. if you saw a line of people, you just joined it automatically. Who cared what was being sold? If there was a line, you must need it. You want to clear an aisle today? Just cough and watch the other shoppers scatter as fast as they can.
The panic buying is over. Now we have a carefully built list, designed to ensure we don’t need a return trip for many days. Designed to keep us away from the store.
Thankfully, after we get back home and wipe down the boxes and put everything away, there’s still the familiar pleasure of cooking the food. My sons are extra-appreciative of everything I make, and I’m getting a lot of thank-you hugs. Ben, a college refugee, eats everything I make and acts as if it’s 5-star cuisine. Sam is enjoying the parade of lazy breakfasts and late dinners: why rush?
During our infrequent trips to the market, I thank every worker there. My heroes are the supermarket stockers and checkers. One day things will go back to normal, but I hope I’ll never forget to say thank you. I think I’ll love the supermarket even more then.
—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick
LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” is former Recipe developer and food columnist for the Washington Post.
Eternal rest grant unto them, oh Lord, and the rest of us will settle for clean fill for the garden, here offered by Montlawn Memorial Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. / Photo by Monica Weddle.
CAUTION! Gallows humor ahead. Also, puns.
Dirt ain’t cheap. Say you want to construct your own hillock, or fill in a swimming pool (would that you could give that pool to me), or the base for some other Grand Scale Project. Nothing fancy required. No leaf mold, kelp, fish emulsion, manure or compost—just a small mountain of soil for an underlayer. That could get very costly.
Well. Just before the edict came down to Stay at Home, Baby and her baby—that would be my grandbaby, a delightful little chap now three months and change—were tootling around Raleigh, North Carolina, buying bags of soil to fill in her new garden border, which consists mainly of a thin layer of soil over an impenetrable mass of building rubble, courtesy of the contractor.
Having spent however much, they were on their way home when a sign materialized near the gates of a cemetery, Montlawn Memorial Park, that brought her to a screeching halt. “Free Fill Dirt,” the sign said.
Being a child raised on the oeuvre of Roald Dahl and having learned her ABCs from Edward Gorey (“A is for Alice who fell down the stairs”)*, she instantly recognized the Green Acre column possibilities and called her mummy. That would be me.
Montlawn, an 80-acre plot founded in 1932, advertises “a serene lake, magnificent mausoleums and the extraordinary Whispering Waters Cremation Garden,” they say. This is “complemented by lush landscaping and beautiful water features.” Certainly many fine folks remain here.
Do they really offer free soil as well? “Sure,” a pleasant-voiced woman named Beth told me. “If you take the first entrance and turn right to the maintenance area, there’s a huge pile of dirt.”
Apparently, excess soil is a byproduct of burials.
Do all cemeteries offer it? “I would think so,” Beth mused. “But I don’t go around checking.”
I had no luck digging up dirt, free or otherwise, at cemeteries in Washington DC; most of them are closed because of the plague, no longer have vacancies or are working with only a skeleton crew. Only a lonely woman at Rock Creek Cemetery could be raised in time for deadline, and her answer was No.
This is too bad. There are many famous and fascinating folks buried around this town. Fancy dirt from, say, Congressional Cemetery on Capitol Hill? Among the remains are President John Quincy Adams, J. Edgar Hoover and Choctaw Chief Pushmataha. Residents of Rock Creek Cemetery include Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Upton Sinclair and Gore Vidal. Then there’s the heroic cast at Arlington Cemetery.
Talk about lending any garden an air of gravitas—and bragging rights.
If you’re into Voodoo (and if you’re not, this may be a fine time to take it up), cemetery soil has many other uses, benign and not.
Moodymoons.com, an interfaith community dedicated to celebrating your “inner goddess,” suggests sprinkling graveyard dirt in your home garden to honor the cycle of life and encourage the dead to “come back” in the form of your crop. Lovely for people who believe in reincarnation.
My mother, my tomato.
And for home protection, which we could all use a lot of right now: “Walk the outdoor perimeter of your home and sprinkle a little graveyard dirt on all the corners to protect it from dark entities, unwanted spirits and negative energy.”
An ounce of graveyard dirt is available on Amazon for $5.61 with free shipping for Prime members. “This iconic graveyard dirt,” says the product description, “is a powerful symbolic tool, used to form a link with ancestors and spirits of the dead for spirits of protection, curses, and compelling love spells.”
“Love this product!” said one of the 24 reviewers who awarded it 4 stars. “It definitely definitely works and I would buy again.” She’d better hustle, there are only 17 bags left in stock.
Excuse me please while I call Baby and tell her to grab her shovel and a few thousand baggies. This could be my “finding a Vermeer at a yard sale” moment.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” knows great dirt when she hears about it.
From The Gashlycrumb Tinies: A Very Gorey Alphabet Book, $10.80 at barnesandnoble.com.
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, whether through a retailer, an online store or Amazon.com.
Sometimes the best outdoor statement is simply gorgeous plants.
