Green Acre #156: Tropical Plants, Meet Tropical Weather!
Cannas and birds of paradise–in paradise. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
These are the seductive little Desert Gems. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Jasmine. Of course. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Sago palms, ready to thrive but probably not at LittleBird Stephanie’s house. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Sigh. The ocean and the deserted Juno Beach in Florida. Possibly more appealing in winter, but if tropical plants can survive the summer heat, can’t we? / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
OH, WHAT HAVE we here? Looks like clusters of blackberries dropped in pots, but the colors are . . . radioactive—are these really found in nature? And do these things grow like this, loose clusters in a heap?
There was a multi-tiered rack of them hidden from sight of the garden center gendarmes so I plucked one flower or berry or what do you call it. It was loose. You know—just asking for it? Then I plucked another, and another, one of each color, surreptitiously shoving them in the deep pockets of my tan shorts (hoping the colors didn’t bleed and stain). I mean, these things were just piled in little pots. How are they growing?
I don’t understand this plant. Is it a succulent? The tag says they’re “desert gems cacti.” What the hell is that? Sounds like a made up name to me.*
Not everyone is me, which is probably a good thing, but I’d really like to know . . .
“Are these tacky?” I asked my baby sister Bonnie, who’s wandering around with me, appalled at what I’m doing.
“Yes,” she said, with a nervous giggle. I see a thought bubble above her head: “You’re stealing!,” it says. I don’t care, I want some.
If one blew off in a storm and landed on the ground and I picked it up and pocketed it, would that be stealing? No! I say—that would be tidying. So this is advance tidying. The afternoon rains are coming, this could happen. But that is neither here nor there.
There are many unidentifiable things at this Home Depot in North Palm Beach Florida, where we’d gone to buy a toilet flipper or flapper but got diverted. Even those plants that are identifiable are strange—enormous or weirdly colored—just not normal. And so cheap. I’m panting. Lemons and limes, hibiscus and cannas, oh my god a huge bird of paradise in bloom for $25. I’ve been wooing mine for years with no sign of flowers.
There are masses of bougainvillea, fiery orange, blazing red, hottest pink. You can buy a 10-foot palm tree for about $150. I think, as I always do, that I should rent a truck, fill it and drive home. Except that I don’t like bridges, or highways, or driving, for that matter.
The flora of Florida amaze me—enormous, glossy, wildly colorful, thriving without the torture required to coax them into straggly growth in Washington—despite our long, hot, sunny, tropical summers.
My sisters live here, the old one (as she’s affectionately known) in an oceanfront apartment that’s bigger than my house; it’s on the 8th floor of a condo on Juno Beach, a tiny town snuggled between Singer Island to the south and Jupiter to the north, about 20 minutes from the posh of Palm Beach.
There are two terraces with glorious views. The one out front is the Prince’s favorite. When you sit here it’s like being on an ocean liner—you hardly see land. If he’s not in the ocean, he’s here watching it.
Or, he’s beachcombing for rocks and shells. “They’re thousands of years old,” he marvels with childlike glee. He always brings home bags full, which I dispose of. Using them for drainage in the bottom of pots.
Unlike most south Florida beach towns, Juno is not overbuilt. There are a handful of condos, some private homes, no hotels, and a lot of beach grass and wild flowering plants. About a mile away is a pier and a public beach. Most of the land between state road A1A and the ocean is too narrow for building, so what’s here now is what will be here—until it’s eventually swallowed by the ocean. This is where we stay when we visit.
I like Florida best in summer. The snowbirds have flown north to their summer homes in Maine or whatnot. Hurricane shutters are closed over their windows. Often enough we are the only people on the beach. The only people on the beach. This is true.
Juno is a prime turtle-nesting area. The mammoth adults, many weighing over 300 pounds, drag themselves in to shore late at night leaving g0uges in the sand that resemble tractor-tire tracks. They dig big holes, lay their eggs, cover them with sand and return to the water. Each morning, turtle guardians (humans) mark off the nests with posts so they won’t be disturbed. Throughout the summer the eggs hatch and the tiny turtles trundle off into the ocean where some of them will survive the big fish that find them extremely tasty.
Isn’t nature amazing?
It’s raining in DC, flooding they say. But except for the usual late afternoon storm, it’s sunny here. We’ve been here a week and I’m very tan.
Before leaving yesterday I went down to the beach with scissors, a baggy and a spoon. I snipped a bit of this, pulled up a bit of that—I have no idea what these things are but they’re irresistible—and scooped up some sand, which I’ll mix with soil when I get the haul home.
At the airport, the TSA agent searched my beat-up leather satchel and pulled out the stuffed baggy. “Ah, beach plants,” she said, and gently tucked them back between my flip-flops. “Have a good flight.”
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” finds fascinating flora wherever she travels.
* Desert Gems, I discover on the Internet, are a ridiculously colorful variety of cactus from Mexico, which seems obvious once you give in to believing they’re real. They’d appear totally natural surrounded by sombreros and piñatas, lit by a sunset and washed down with tequila shots.
Artist Jill Finsen’s living room, wrapped in color. / Photo by Jill Finsen.
Artist Jill Finsen’s Washington DC living room, looking beyond to the hallway. / Photo by Jill Finsen.
WHAT DO YOU call a room where the hallway, the living room walls, the ceiling, the bookcases, and even the moldings around the windows are the same pale green, a green with the softness of early spring, celery perhaps, or honeydew?
Then you hang paintings or stack them against a wall, large and small and in between, splashes of color as vivid as a…
Garden.
There is no terrace or balcony or fire escape outside artist Jill Finsen’s apartment in a wonderfully rambling 1928 apartment in Tilden Gardens on the northern edge of Washington DC’s Cleveland Park—though the condominium’s six buildings are set within five acres of flowers and trees and fountains.
Yet, sitting on a sofa in the hot summer twilight, one feels as if the nearly 100-year-old trees that line Connecticut Avenue, just outside the window, have reached their limbs inside to bring the swelter-exhausted some shade.
The mood is enhanced by a screen of curious plants that line the windowsill, a ponytail palm three decades old, the strange poky praying-mantis branches of a pencil cactus. There seems to be no division between outside and in.
There are a few advantages to not having outdoor space. Bugs, for one, and possibly two and three. Your fingernails stay clean, and there’s not much dirt to schlep.
Key to it all is the total embrace of green. White trim around windows, while clean and fresh and sharp, stops the eye. That’s out there, this is in here, it announces. Paint it and the entire wall disappears into the outdoors.
Jill, retired from a career in policy development for AARP and now a full-time artist, actually acted on the old expression “And if you don’t do it, how old will you be in three years?” and just completed an MFA at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture. She moved to that city for the duration of the courses and let out her apartment while she was away. She’ll return to DC in the fall, after her usual summer spent painting in Maine, with jaunts to Cape Cod.
That’s where she is now, so we chatted by email.
MLB: It’s pretty bold, to paint the woodwork like the walls. How did you decide to do it?
JF: Your request is poignant as my entire apartment color choices were done by my dear friend Robert Hardgrove, whom I called Hardgrove.* He died in late April and I was just in DC for a celebration of his life. Most every room was wrapped and all in different colors. . . . Unfortunately, I cannot remember the names, but green in the living room was something like honeydew, although that was not quite it. The ceiling and the woodwork, including the built-in bookcases, were painted the same color, as was the entryway into the apartment.
When I engaged a Realtor to help sublet it for the three years while I was in New York, she insisted we paint a more neutral color for the living room. Of course, I showed Hardgrove the options so it would not be as bad as it might have been. I regret doing it and when I return in November, I will return the green to the room.
It’s called “wrapping” the room?
Yes, I think it is.
How does it make you feel?
I love the continuity of it, and Hardgrove’s choice of colors worked splendidly in every room with different lighting during the day and evening.
Any regrets?
Only that I painted over it. But not the bookshelves so there will not be that much detail to do when I return. And going forward, I hate that Hardgrove is no longer available for consults.
How about art against such definite color?
As you know, I have eclectic tastes in art and, except for the hall wall, the art was mostly by others. It worked just fine.
Have you ever created a painting that replicates the color/mood?
If I did, I was not aware of it. But I do like green.
How would you describe your style?
Hmm, I would say eclectic re style and not married to one era. I like Heywood-Wakefield [mid-century furniture] and have several pieces and have more modern furniture as well. I always go for comfy and clean lines both in feel and visual. It is what appeals on a gut level.
My painting style? Hmm. In short, perhaps a Fauvist bent. But I think I am challenging to categorize. And others who have looked at my work from a critic’s eye would agree. Here is a statement that I use:
“My paintings depict the interplay of the familiar and the imagined. At times awkward and quirky, they celebrate emotional responses to the people, objects and places I portray. Rather than realistic hues and forms, I use bold color, flattened planes and varying paint texture to invite the viewer in through emotion rather than by offering a map of specifics. It is unimportant whether the viewer knows that a particular painting depicts a cove in Maine, a beach on Cape Cod or a specific home or friend. My intent is to suggest that the viewer might share in the joy of that space or engage with the subject of my portraits. Painting from observation or memory, I create exaggerated objects and leave anchoring details unresolved within an imagined space. Viewers can roam the image for themselves, entering where they will and leaving with an experience that is both aesthetic and affecting.”
Just like sitting in Jill’s living room. You share in the joy, engage with the space and leave affected by a most singular aesthetic.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
*An only-in-Washington character, Robert Hardgrove had a dual career—as chief political adviser and strategist to Congressman William Stanton (R-Ohio) and as an interior designer whose elegantly appointed, and distinctly colorful, Kalorama apartment in the century-old Altamont co-op apartment house was once featured on the front page of the Home section in the Washington Post.
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” this week explores how the immersive feel of the garden has been brought indoors by a Washington DC painter.
This family home in Dana Point, California, has a new kitchen and a new look. In this feature from the July-August issue of Traditional Home magazine, designer Ohara Davies-Gaetano called for basket-weave pendants by Currey & Company to light up the kitchen’s gathering place. The pendants are $740 each at Build.com. Similar but smaller pendants by Elk Lighting are $169.60 each at Build.com. / Photo is by Victoria Pearson and appeared in Traditional Home magazine.
FOR EVERY action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Most of us remember that from high school. It applies to interior design as well.
Now that it seems as if every contemporary interior is topped off with a wild splash of Star Wars–worthy light sabers, here comes the visual relief: humble, homey-looking globes and pendants made of wicker or rattan or bamboo.
I wouldn’t say it’s an “equal and opposite” reaction because how many of us want to switch out our lighting fixtures depending on the season? No show of hands necessary: not all that many. Even in an earlier era when white slipcovers and straw rugs were used to transition the living room from the gloom of winter, changing the chandelier would have been a step too far.
So, as I flipped through the recent crop of home-decorating magazines I wasn’t surprised by the appearance of baskets turned into dining-room light fixtures and woven-wicker pendants marching along the ceiling over a contemporary new kitchen island. Editors at these “shelter” magazines want to capture the spirit of spring and summer, and what better way to do that than break out the natural fibers?
I think there’s more than seasonality going on here, though. Rooms need color and perhaps a mix of metal and wood, but they also need texture. And the humble reeds and canes of wickers and rattan supply it in quick order. Here are some ideas in case you’re tempted.
—Nancy McKeon
LEFT: From Anthropologie, the Emery Pendant in rattan over a wire base. It’s 26 inches tall and $498. RIGHT: The Remegio Table Lamp in rattan with a jute shade, $168 from Anthropologie.
These festive Palisades hanging lamps are made from synthetic wicker so they can hang indoors or out. They’re by Kichler and, left to right, are $262, $262 and $272. All the shapes come in natural or bronze finish, at Lamps Plus.
LEFT: The indoor-outdoor Amphora floor lamp in synthetic wicker from Bover comes in different sizes; prices start at $637 at Ylighting. Available in light and dark finishes. CENTER: Target features this Task Table Lamp with a pink shade (the navy is no longer available) by Opalhouse. It’s $44.99. RIGHT: Lacy-looking Headlands Bell Pendant light is $298 (14-inch diameter) and $398 (21.5-inch diameter). Both from Serena and Lily, and the airy look also comes in oblong and globe shapes.
In this interior shown in Luxe New York magazine, designer Sara Gilbane turned a Tanzanian basket into a hanging light fixture over the antique farm table. Photo by Zach & Buj for Luxe New York, LuxeSource.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.
The historic farmhouse at River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
A green-roofed shed at River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The tented terrace at River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia, , headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. It can be rented out for occasions. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
A view of the Potomac River from the terrace at River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
A fringe tree in bloom at River Farm in Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
IT WAS FATHER’S Day, and in my search for Something To Do For My Prince, or My Baby Daddy, as fathers now seem to be called, I tripped across a most fantastical combination: an old-car show and garden tour at the Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society
I don’t mind looking at old cars once a year. Unfortunately, once I’ve made the rounds of the cars there is nothing much to do but swelter and burn, as these events are often in open fields on grass as sere as sere can be. Or else in a small town where everything but the streets is rolled up because it’s Sunday and you could die of thirst and hunger in addition to sunstroke and boredom.
Here was an event to please us both. He could view the burly Packards and sleek Cobras in an open field at the farm’s entrance while I legged it about the grounds, looking for an idea or a bit of something to pinch.
River Farm was one of five owned by George Washington, though he neither lived nor worked this land.The 1,800-acre parcel was leased to family after family (I’m really shortening this stuff up) until 1859 when the property was subdivided and sold, then sold again. In 1971 the Soviet Union offered to buy the farm for use as a retreat, which got a lot of backs up.
A gift of $1 million from the Enid A. Haupt Charitable Trust enabled AHS to buy the now-25- acre estate and the horticulture group moved its headquarters to the site.
Built in 1757, the elegant brick manor house is perched on a hill overlooking the Potomac. A popular venue for weddings and events, the boxwood-lined bluestone terrace is tented for much of the year and hung with chandeliers. A ballroom is available for cooler months.
Surrounding the house are naturalistic and formal gardens, including a four-acre native grass and wildflower meadow that wanders down to the water.There is no shortage of bees here. Or ducks. Or birds. It’s said that foxes and bald eagles are often seen, though not by me.
The plantings line curving paths that meander through borders of annuals and perennials, passing a 200-year-old Osage orange, which boasts warty looking and inedible fruit, and an orchard of pear, apple and persimmon trees. Espaliered pears and apples create a screen in the parking area. A sunken wall, called a ha-ha, divides the meadow from the more formal gardens, which include several designed on a small scale for children.
The quiet is astonishing. While the event was not well publicized, there were still hundreds of people admiring the cars and wandering through the house and grounds. Yet my ears heard nothing but wind-ruffled leaves and the chitter of birds. Often enough I felt alone with the Monarch butterflies swirling among the day lilies
Scattered about the property are benches and chairs and picnic tables for visitors; intimately arranged little private people pockets. Admission to the house and grounds is free (though donations are encouraged), and dogs are welcome.
Amazing that anything like this still exists so close to home. Right?
I was, for a time, a member of the AHS which, for $35 a year for an individual, gives you (among other things) discounts on admissions to 300 gardens across North America and (for some delightful reason) the Cayman Islands.There’s also a magazine, published six times a year, that is guaranteed to intimidate you into condominium living.
While it was no big deal as dues go, we weren’t taking advantage of the discounts and I could weep looking at the magazine and so let my membership lapse.But now I think I’ll re-up. Such an extraordinary space deserves support.
P.S. I pinched nothing.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
River Farm, 7931 East Boulevard Drive, Alexandria, Virginia 22308; 703-768-5700, ahsgardening.org. It is open year-round Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm. From April through October, it is also open on Saturdays from 9 am to 1 pm. Garden admission is free, though donations are encouraged. River Farm is closed on national holidays.
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” celebrates green thumbs wherever they may be every Thursday.
“Highland Lake,” from 2007, is an earlier photo by Cecilia Paredes.
Cecilia Paredes produced “Shield” (“Escudo”) last year, 2018. It’s 52 inches tall.
This is “Lily,” by Cecilia Paredes, from 2009. It’s one of her smaller works at 21.5 by 21.5 inches.
It took me a second to find traces of photographer Cecilia Paredes in “Paradise Hands,” from 2010. This work is a modest 17 by 21.5 inches.
“The River Within” is a 2016 work of Cecilia Paredes that could command a room. It’s a monumental 49 by 42 inches.
“Asia,” by Cecilia Paredes, dates from 2009.
Here’s “The Secret,” the large-scale 2018 Cecilia Paredes photo I’d be happy to redecorate my living room to accommodate. It stands 55 inches tall.
HAVE YOU EVER stood in front of a piece of art and wanted to melt into it and be engulfed by it?
Okay, maybe that’s just me, but it’s how I feel about the large-format photographs created by Peruvian artist Cecilia Paredes. One in particular, “The Secret,” has a field of lush but offbeat green accented by golden damask-style swags and flourishes; to me, it offers comfort as well as a striking visual experience.
Paredes’s photos are in fact a record of her performance art, the performance being that she paints herself, clothing and body, to disappear, or almost disappear, into the patterns of fabrics hung behind her. In some works she is quite apparent; in others, a second or third glance is needed to “discover” her, camouflaged inside the image.
Paredes, who is better known in Europe than in the US, is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work is in New York for the inaugural exhibition of the new Ruiz-Healy Gallery, housed in a charming Upper East Side brownstone. The gallery is an extension of the San Antonio gallery that concentrates on contemporary Latin American art. Paredes’s show, in which her art is paired with that of the late San Antonio-based Chuck Ramirez, is open through the end of July 2019.
And, coincidentally but fittingly, “paredes” is Spanish for “walls.” If I could afford five-figure wall treatments I’d probably give her every wall in my home. If there were ever a piece of art I would love to design a room around, this is it.
—Nancy McKeon
“Cecilia Paredes & Chuck Ramirez: Photographing Identity,” Ruiz-Healy Art, 74 East 79th Street, 2D, New York, NY; ruizhealyart.com; 212-510-7873. Open Tuesday through Saturday 11am to 6pm and by appointment. Through the end of July 2019.
PERHAPS YOU’VEnoticed the air space in your garden. That’s the area above the flower border and below the roofline, or the back wall, or under the tree. Something needs to go there, something that’s breath-catchingly beautiful, and maybe a little witty.
Just as ceilings are a canvas too often neglected, that mid-space—between five and seven feet up—needs a bit of pizzazz.
Of course, we have a few ideas about filling in the middle.
There’s a world of umbrellas out there, and one of them belongs in your garden.
Umbrellas. You don’t even need a flower if you plant a fabulous umbrella over a table, or on the patio. Umbrellas from Bali, Thailand and Japan are the bailiwick of Oriental Umbrellas, a UK importer of garden parapluies blooming with color and fringe and elaborate ornamentation. A big one will set you back $400 or so (and probably as much again for shipping). But oh! The effect. There are smaller ones as well to just jab about the garden.
The Iyanna Market Umbrella is almost 9 feet wide and is on sale for $82.99 at Wayfair.com. It also comes in aqua, lime green and tan.
In the more modestly priced, hundred-bucks-or-so range, Wayfair has market umbrellas in shades such as acid green, mango, flamingo pink and Tiffany blue. Some of the umbrellas even have lights installed on the underside, making dinner feel like a trip aboard a UFO.
Solar Umbrella String Lights can perk up a patio at night. This set is $19.99 at Bed Bath and Beyond.
Already have a perfectly good umbrella but think it would look cool with lights? Amazon has battery-powered ones that string under the canopy, and Bed, Bath & Beyond offers solar lights that drape over the top. Either of those will cost less than a single Harriet Tubman.
LEFT: A chandelier adds a nice element to a garden. This four-arm wrought-iron candle chandelier is $37.99 at Houzz.com. RIGHT: The world is awash in picture frames, big and small, new and used. Pick a pretty shrub and “frame” it by hanging a frame in front of it.
Chandeliers. A crystal chandelier is always a stunner, but you’ll have to retrofit it for candles unless you have it under a roof. Consider a black wrought-iron chandelier from Houzz. They have a four-arm number for just $38. Pick up some fishing line at the hardware store and tie it to a tree branch. With candles lit at night it appears to be floating in space.
LEFT: Flameless “candles” are the ticket for evening patio fetes. Available just about anywhere. RIGHT: Edison bulbs are overdone, but these LED versions are dimmable and come in warm white, daylight white and frosted daylight white at Amazon.com, packs of six for $24.79 to $26.99.
3. Faux candles.Flameless battery-operated candles have come a long way from plastic discs with plastic flames. Now they’re covered in wax, in about any hue you can think of, and have ingenious lights that seem to dance and flicker like real candlelight. Stick them in trees, in niches, wherever, with no fear of setting off a conflagration—though I have always found firemen to be extremely cute.
String lights. Oh my, these are nearly overdone. But LED Edison bulbs still bring a smile when strung over tiny gardens and narrow alleys; they bring café style. They’re also gorgeous in the winter months when everything is dead, or even better, covered in snow, like in this photo from Potager on Instagram. There are approximately a zillion string-light options online, including starbursts, curtains and even tent-scale canopies—most so cheap that anyone can afford to play. Look for warm or soft white to avoid glare.
Picture frames. With all of the Marie Kondo-ing going on, there are probably plenty of fabulous frames right now at the thrift shop or in a yard sale. Snap one up and suspend it in front of a particularly gorgeous plant or in front of a statue or other garden ornament, for a 3D effect (that fishing line does it again).
Statues. Right.
Pillars and posts. Ah, for a Corinthian or Doric column. Sink one or maybe have two flanking a walkway and topped with a flowering basket of something or hoist your gargoyles atop the pillars.
Hanging baskets from trees. Some trees grow spindly, with foliage and flowers confined to the top; I’m looking at you, Rose of Sharon. Hang a basket of flowers or ferns from those limbs and create interest along the stem.
Round paper lanterns are always welcome in the garden. These are from the online Paper Lantern Store.
Solar Chinese lanterns. Garden lanterns have been around so long now that they’ve gone from cool to overdone to cool again. At the Paper Lantern Store they have them in a range of sizes, from a wee eight-inch number to huge 48-inch rounds, in paper or in nylon in a range of colors and patterns— though we like white for the ethereal moonlight glow.
A birdcage with a stuffed bird inside hanging in the garden. Why not? / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Birdcages. A wonderful bit of whimsy I came across a few years back was an antique birdcage suspended from a tree with a stuffed cockatoo on a perch. Even sillier? Glittering glass goldfish ornaments swimming in the air.
Speaking of fish. Last week I mentioned that somehow our feeder fish, the cheap sort you’d usually buy to feed your anaconda, all went belly-up in a mysterious tragedy. They have been replaced. My Prince sprang for 10 of the 32-cent fish, as opposed to the 18-cent fish. I’m sure this was a torturous decision for him and I’m glad I wasn’t along for the ride.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” also has ideas about gardens, hers and yours. She shares them on Thursdays.
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.
WHAT ARE YOU doing tomorrow?” Robert asked me. We were sitting on the back porch last Saturday night, drinking wine, listening to the silence as his wife, Judith, and My Prince debated kir or Cointreau inside at the bar.
We had just returned from dinner at Washington, DC’s Wharf complex, a boardwalk along the Potomac River lined with some of the city’s priciest condominiums and restaurants, mixed with yuppy bars, concert venues, pizza purveyors and fishing boats that never fish, relics of the area’s earlier incarnation. They still peddle fresh fish and carryout, which you can eat sitting on the concrete ledges that line the walkway, which is what we did.
We bought crab cakes and clam platters from one of the stalls and watched women in slinky gowns teetering on the stone walkway, trading up from flip-flops to obviously unaccustomed stilettos, clinging to their tuxedo-clad escorts for balance, heading to some formal do. Other women with screaming-pink leggings applied to their ample bottoms clutched men in wife-beaters flashing tattooed muscles. Babies screamed. Toddlers dashed about. Country-western dancing was being taught on a barge in the river.
It was horrible. I will never return, though I’m happy to have been. Once.
“Tomorrow?” I said. Sunday extended as a long blank day. It was supposed to rain, which would scotch most plans. If it were certain to rain we could take in a movie, but if it were just patchy . . . ?
Sunday came and I sat on the back-porch steps, as I have done for the last 36 summers, staring at the garden and letting my brain rattle about.
In the beginning, there was a straight concrete path that ran from the back-porch steps to the garage (or more pretentiously, as the price of houses has soared, the carriage house, though it’s possible no carriage ever abided there, although a Model T may have. Why was there a garage built behind a 1914 house? Surely there was plenty of street parking. That’s an aside).
The walk was cracked here and there, with sprightly spurts of weed poking through the gaps. It was not attractive. I painted the concrete to look like bricks, a little trompe l’oeil that was witty, if I say so myself. That the painting was a bit slapdash made it more realistic, said guests who were frequently fooled.
Poverty always brings out the creative in me; that’s possibly why I remain broke, to stimulate my creativity. What I could do with a pile of cash, I wonder. Probably hire people to do things for me, which would likely make me less creative but with more time to do something else.
Baby says I would not be me if it had been another way. How true. She would probably not be here either, as I’d be sunning myself on the deck of my yacht, moored off Bali or Bora Bora, drinking out of a coconut. How tragic.
Anyway, the walk remained for a few years. As I’d used a brick-colored stain, it needed an annual touch-up, which my knees did not appreciate.
It was my gym in the years when Baby was little. I’d finish my third or fourth cup of coffee and smoke my third or fourth cigarette and then run the 20-foot length, back and forth from the bottom of the steps to the garage/carriage-house door. I imagine the neighbors whose upper windows overlooked the walk found this amusing or bizarre.
I don’t recall when it was that the Prince decided to smash up the walkway, laying a gentle curve from here to there (or there to here) and filling it with a truckload of river rocks, flat stones an inch or so in diameter, in various shades of gray. It was, I will credit him, a thought of genius.
Curving the path is another way of fooling the eye, making the distance to the garden’s rear feel much farther away, while adding interest to a basic rectangle. From the back steps, scallops carved into the borders make it impossible to see the whole of what is a very small garden.
Let’s walk.
Go down the porch steps, and to the right are elephant ears, hydrangeas and ferns. On the left there’s a small flagstone patio and a dining table under the cherry tree. Follow a slight curve past another hydrangea, and the jasmine and palms and cannas appear. You can hear, but not yet see, the fountain and the little pond, which is just behind a stand of daylilies . . .
Ah. This is not good.
The fish are floating, and not in a lively way. Poor babies, they were so happy, not even 12 hours ago, frolicking golden in the last of the day’s sun. Clearly this is not the doings of the raccoon. There can be only one culprit.
What did My Prince do now? May the fish be reincarnated as mosquitoes and viciously bite his pale Irish ankles in revenge. At least, thanks to the curving path, I didn’t have to see this before I was thoroughly tanked on coffee.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” shares her thoughts about her garden, and the gardens of others, every Thursday.
THE SAINTED JEREMIAH, as one friend called my good old dog, died in December 2017 at age 14. For a St. Bernard mix that wasn’t bad, right? But even better: He lives on!
In a goofy but ultimately satisfying way.
Thanks to the clever people at Crown & Paw, Jeremiah is now The Veteran. You can see how well he fits that description.
What Crown & Paw does is offer images from various Renaissance and 19th-century portraits, all of which can be digitally altered to render Lily or Killer as The Baroness or The Admiral, or any of about two
Not many things bothered a generally indifferent Jeremiah, not even little Boston terriers who wanted to be friends. / MyLittleBird photo.
dozen images, including some rather dark and disturbing “Ice and Fire” templates (yes, as in “Game of Thrones”).
If your pup (or kitty!) is still with you, you can probably take a new photo to work with your chosen template. Jeremiah could have been The Emperor or The Ambassador, but since he is long gone, I had to choose a portrait carefully, making sure the angle of his head in the one decent photo I had of him would work (see inset). A simple upload (and a credit-card number) were all I had to provide.
I know this is really, really silly, even stupid. But I grin every time I glance over and see Jeremiah all decked out. Okay, the lolling tongue isn’t quite to military code, but that’s just the kind of trooper he was.
The Crown & Paw people say they will try to add double portraits in the future; for now it’s individual images. The 8x10s, on stretched and mounted canvas, are $49.95; there are larger sizes but . . . really.
“Mrs. Maisel” doing her thing to promote the Amazon comedy series, yesterday at the Shops at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. / MyLittleBird photo.
THERE SHE WAS, posing under an enormous hat woven of grosgrain ribbon. “Mrs. Maisel” (not the star of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Rachel Brosnahan, but a lovely facsimile) was on duty yesterday on the second level of the glossy (but rather suburban-seeming) Shops at Columbus Circle, near Central Park in Manhattan. She stood in all her ’50s finery behind a sign promoting the Amazon comedy series, which I loved and which was renewed for a third season even before the second season bowed.
Season 3 began filming on the Upper West Side at the beginning of April but has a long way to go (literally, too: Apparently they’ll be filming in Miami come June). Most of us have already binged Season 2. So I guess this is Amazon’s way of keeping up the enthusiasm for the, frankly, marvelous show. (Also, up on the third level of the mall, is an Amazon book store, so there’s that.)
Anyway, Mrs. Maisel, actor-model Denise Reed, preened gamely for shoppers’ cameras (including mine) and happily took pix with whoever asked. All those young girls who are obsessed with the show were charmed by the model but weren’t sure what to make of my telling them that I had worn those wonderful ’50s dresses and hats the first time around (I should have added that I was very young, might not have scared them so much).
Fellow obsessives, note that other Mrs. Maisels can be found at spots around L.A. and in downtown Manhattan at the awesome Oculus transportation hub, which also houses shops and the terrific dinner destination Eataly and overlooks the profoundly moving World Trade Center Memorial.
THE MANIA is mine, but I know there are people out there who agree with me. And this is our time of year!
Every spring I scout around for new patterns; some of the pieces from earlier posts are still available. Styles range from the sophisticated to those truly for the silly season. The sophisticates seem to be beating out the more whimsical offerings, and not just in my editing. And I’m not saying that I buy more dishes each summer—my cupboards would collapse. But I sure do like looking at them. And . . . every once in a while . . . okay, I buy one or two. That’s why God invented canapé and dessert plates, right?
Here’s what I’ve found this time. Feel free to pile on and share your discoveries. We addicts like to compare notes.
The Beatriz Ball Collection shows a very different approach to melamine, and a lovely one it is.
LEFT: The 14-inch-diameter Vida Alegria Bowl comes in blue, shown, also creamy butter, green, salmon and white, and features beaded trim along the crinkled edge. It’s $57 at Nordstrom. Vida Alegria has a matching 21-inch-long lozenge-shape serving tray ($50), a 20-inch-square serving tray ($62) and a sweet footed cake stand ($62).
RIGHT: Beatriz Ball Collection captures summer salad in white melamine with this Vida Large Lettuce Leaf Bowl; it’s almost 14 inches across the top and $52.50. The Small Vida Lettuce Leaf Bowl, 8½ inches across, is $26. All at Nordstrom.
Here’s melamine having fun.
LEFT: From Kate Spade New York comes this four-piece Citrus Tidbit Plate Set. The plates are six inches across and $30 at Saks Fifth Avenue.
RIGHT: From Anthropologie comes the Tropical Collection, here a trio of Tropical Melamine Nut Bowls in assorted patterns and colorways. $18 for the three at Anthropologie. Single Tropical nut bowls are also available, now $4.20 each.
From the One Kings Lane website comes this sophisticated blue-and-white melamine dinner ware, Indochine Ikat by TarHong. From left to right is the 15-inch-long Indochine Ikat Serving Tray, $50; the 10½-inch Indochine Ikat Dinner Plate, four for $80; and the 8½-inch Indochine Ikat Side Plate, a set of four in coordinating patterns for $55. A set of four 4-inch bowls (not shown, in coordinating patterns) is $45. All at One Kings Lane.
The Ingrassia by Latitude Run 16-piece dinner service (dinner plates, salad plates, shallow bowls and tumblers) comes in three colorways. You have to pick one—Sea Aqua, Citrus Green or, not shown, Canyon Coral—but each one has pattern and contrast within its color palette. Each set is currently on sale for $46.99 at Wayfair, which features a seemingly endless selection of melamine dinner sets.
LEFT: Anthropologie’s Tropical Collection includes 10½-inch dinner plates; choose red motif (upper left) or green motif (the one with the frog). They’re now $7 each at Anthropologie.
RIGHT: Anthropologie strikes again with Hailee canapé plates in, from top, pink, raspberry or turquoise. They’re now $4.20 each. A set of three Hailee Nut Bowls, one in each colorway, is now $10.50.
LEFT: This Edison by Bay Isle Home 12-piece dinner service for four in waterside colors is $74.99 at Wayfair. The pattern is also available à la carte, as it were, in sets of six dinner plates ($38.99), six salad plates ($37.99) and six cereal bowls ($38.99). Should you crave order, there is also a 13¾-inch-wide serving bowl ($59.99), a two-piece serving platter set, one oval, one round ($53.99) and a three-piece serving set (chip-and-dip server, oblong platter and three-section divided serving dish, on sale for $45.99). All at Wayfair.
RIGHT: The clever folks at Juliska have now made it safe to take their delicate style outdoors. From the Juliska Isabella Collection, we show the Isabella Acrylic Berry Bowl (5 inches across, $15 each), Isabella Acrylic Goblet ($17 each) and the 72-ounce Isabella Acrylic Pitcher, $49. Juliska’s Isabella Collection also includes tumblers, cocktail and wine glasses and other pieces. They’re all at Bloomingdale’s.
LEFT: Anthropologie is really on a melamine tear. These Lehua dessert plates comes in peach, cream, sapphire and turquoise. A set of four of one color is $32. Lehua also comes in 10½-inch dinner plates. For a limited time, a set of four—in peach, turquoise or sapphire—is $28.
RIGHT: Anthropologie’s Colloquial 6-ounce melamine tumblers come in five cheerful designs: Watermelon Whimsy, Lemon Meringue, Haute Dogs, CC: Cats and Literal Leopard. They’re $6.50 apiece.
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.
Two years ago we ran this story on Nancy Pelosi, then House Minority Leader and now of course House Majority Leader for the second time. It was part of our What’s in Her Closet? series. With the national spotlight shining brightly on her now, we thought a refresher course in Pelosi style was a good idea. Her individual outfits may have changed but not her sophisticated style.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on her way to attend a news conference where House Democratic lawmakers and the LGBT community voiced opposition to Trump’s transgender ban in the military, July 26, 2017. / Photo by Michael Reynolds / EPA / Rex / Shutterstock.
NANCY PELOSI has a tough job and that’s in addition to her role as House Minority Leader for the Dems. Her wardrobe must subtly convey her position of power and authority. With that in mind, we thought we would poke around in her wardrobe and see what pointers we could find.
JANET: This simple knee-length (or just slightly below the knee) sheath plays well for a busy day at the office. The pink ensures she doesn’t fade into the background and it’s a cheery choice for a warm summer day. She’s slightly top heavy, so for balance she elongates her legs with a pair of pointy pale pumps.
NANCY: I think this is a terrific look: Pelosi gets to shed the armor of a suit jacket but in no way does she look the less powerful for it. In fact, I’ve come to think that one of the most powerful female outfits is a slim skirt or dress with those sky-high heels. (I didn’t say comfortable, just powerful.) She has the identical (I think) dress in a vivid green and it looks great too. Fashion folks may have shed their pantyhose on warm days, but on conservative Capitol Hill they’re apparently still a must.
KATHY: It must be terribly difficult for a woman to dress for Capitol Hill. To be taken seriously must you don manly power suits and forget femininity? I think Pelosi has found the solution with this ladylike pink number. Plus pink does wonders for a brunette’s complexion.
Nancy Pelosi and husband Paul at the MusiCares Person of the Year awards honoring Tom Petty in Los Angeles on February 10, 2017. / Photo by By Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.
JANET: A good lesson on how to do formal. By wearing black shoes and some sort of black stocking with her pants, she doesn’t disrupt the line. Pelosi’s white tunic works two ways: The funnel-shaped collar (a look favored by Brigitte Macron) frames her face, and the verticality of the V-neckline and the side slits taper the top half of the silhouette.
NANCY: I love this look: It’s feminine yet still dignified as suits her office and her age. In fact, it’s rather sporty, albeit in fancy fabrics. The shorter sleeves keep the jacket/tunic from seeming too heavy. It’s a look a lot of us gravitate to naturally, and here’s an excellent example to reinforce that instinct.
KATHY: I love this look too. It’s so elegant, pretty and unfussy. Plus the drape of the tunic takes 10 pounds off and who can argue with that?
Pelosi at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Lincoln Memorial, August 24, 2013. / Photo by Joseph Sohm. / Shutterstock.
JANET: Rolling up shirt sleeves is a studied, casual look and requires practice to achieve. On the other hand, pushing up sleeves on a suit jacket just looks unpolished.
NANCY: I’ve done this with the sleeves of a lined jacket to save a trip to the tailor, but now I see how sloppy it looks and promise to stop doing it. Like most of her male colleagues, Pelosi wears her jackets buttoned when she’s standing (President Trump is the one man in public life who famously does not button his jacket, and it looks bad). But Pelosi has a little too much chest to always pull this look off successfully; in most of the pictures we’ve looked at, her jacket is pulling or gapping above and below the bust, making it seem like she’s wearing the wrong size. Working on the Hill does lend itself to conservative skirt suits and pantsuits, but maybe—note to self—adapting the cut of her evening jacket/tunic in white, above, would be more flattering.
KATHY: I want to like seersucker. I really do. But it conjures up images of panama hats and boardwalks. Yes, Washington can be unbearably hot in August, but this suit simply isn’t cool.
Pelosi with adorable grandsons at the Logo Trailblazer Honors in New York, June 22, 2017. / Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Rex/Shutterstock.
JANET: I don’t like lace much except on tablecloths, handkerchiefs and lingerie. Save head-to-toe lace for the boudoir. And, yes, I know lace is a big fashion trend. I don’t care.
NANCY: I know, it’s been hard to avoid lace these past few years—it’s everywhere, for day and night. But I think this outfit is simple and flattering. It’s obviously for a big awards ceremony, where it’s not over the top. It may not be my first choice either, but I think she looks great in it.
KATHY: I don’t have a problem with lace. It appeals to my inner frou-frou. Therefore, I’m a fan of this outfit. One of the things I like about her evening dress-up choices is the simplicity and ease of the outfits, as in easy to wear.
Pelosi, House Democrats call on GOP to cancel recess and return to the office to D.C. to do the country’s business, Oct. 2, 2012. / Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
JANET: Pelosi knows her strengths. Bright colors flatter her. This photo was taken five years ago, but pantsuits—and ones with flared legs—are having their moment today. Wide legs look better with chunky heels than high-heeled pumps. Wear the stilettos with your skinny pants.
NANCY: Here’s thesuccessful version of the Pelosi everyday formula: a pantsuit whose jacket fits correctly without any pulling or gapping, a blouse that cuts through the male-ness of the suit by allowing for a décolleté and simple jewelry, and high-heels that appear feminine but are capable of a powerful stride. Even though this jacket fits well, I still have doubts about always having it buttoned up. I don’t think a woman loses power points by letting it stand open.
KATHY: There’s no ignoring a woman in red. Female journalists learned that covering Ronald Reagan. If they wanted to be called on in press conferences they made certain to wear the red Nancy Reagan made so popular. Red stands out and so does Pelosi in this handsome suit.
The two-acre Bartholdi Park with its historic Fountain of Light and Water is across Independence Avenue from the US Botanic Garden’s Conservatory. The park is open every day of the year from dawn until dusk. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
This view from the gardens–including the flamingo in front of Ohio’s John F. Wolfe Palm House and the vivid blue of the Tucson Botanical Gardens’ Barrio Garden–shows how close the US Capitol is, just up the hill (as in Capitol Hill, get it?). / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
A closeup of the vivid blue wall that is part of the Tucson Botanical Gardens’ Barrio Garden, the state’s contribution to the “Gardens Across America” exhibit at the US Botanic Garden in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
As LittleBird Stephanie points out, that orange canna stands out dramatically from the Barrio Garden’s blue wall. The Tucson Botanical Gardens’ installation is Arizona’s addition to the “Gardens Across America” exhibit at the US Botanic Garden in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
An elegant evocation of the John F. Wolfe Palm House, part of the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Columbus, Ohio, is that state’s contribution to the “Gardens Across America” exhibit at the US Botanic Garden in Washington DC. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
This graceful foot bridge is part of the South Carolina exhibit, featuring Magnolia Plantation & Gardens in Charleston. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
The Bookworm Gardens from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is inspired by children’s books. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
If you have any creative leaning or yearning, be it writing or gardening or painting or cooking, Julia Cameron’s guide to unblocking your imagination is an inspirational bomb. And this is coming from the least likely person to read an instruction manual or how-to book. Except diets, but that’s another story.
It’s not an easy path to follow, taking 12 weeks to complete, and few people, including me, finish on first attempt. There are even classes that you can take, hand-holding sessions to power you through.
I gave it a first stab shortly after the book was published in 1992, and quit midway through, at the week where you’re not allowed to read anything. NOTHING. I had no idea how addicted I was to reading until it was forbidden. Suddenly, gum wrappers were a temptation on the supermarket line, as were cereal boxes. Words irresistibly sucked at my eyes like vampires, and I furtively nibbled at them, feeling like such a cheat.
Then, in a eureka moment, I realized that when I stopped reading, I started seeing. Such were lessons learned.
This is a really long way to come around to the two elements, introduced within the first few pages of the book, that continue to nurture my creativity: Morning Pages and the Artist’s Date.
With Morning Pages you open a notebook, pour your coffee, pick up a pen, and just spill, writing non-stop for three full pages, about anything and everything that enters your brain. It’s cathartic. I have many volumes of mental detritus stacked on an office shelf.
The Artist’s Date is a single hour each week where you go off all by yourself to somewhere—anywhere, really—and just take in the space. In the beginning, this was peculiarly difficult, like an undeserved treat. Shouldn’t I be doing something more productive, I’d ask myself. A money-making activity perhaps? But as I wandered I realized this was refueling, fresh ideas were filling in the mental spaces emptied in those pages of writing.
Though no longer consistent with either practice, when mentally stalled, I still do one or the other. In this week’s case, despite the constant rain, my gardening brain was dried to a frizzle.
So, on Memorial Day off I trekked to the new exhibit at the US Botanic Garden, the greenhouse and gardens at the foot of the US Capitol. “Gardens Across America,” which opened this week and will run through October 1 of this year consists of 20 vignettes that represent the diversity and beauty of the more than 600 public gardens across the US.
Some are beautiful, others educational, some just there to make you smile. There’s the romance of Magnolia Plantation Garden in South Carolina; the pop-art bus from Sheboygan, Wisconsin’s Bookworm Gardens (gardens inspired by children’s books), and the carnivorous plants that represent Atlanta’s Botanical Gardens—both catnip for kids; and Tucson’s exuberantly colorful Barrio Garden, which highlights the mingling of cultures in their Botanical Gardens.
How magnificent it all is, against the shining backdrop of the Capitol dome.
Each setting is the size of a small city garden plot and offers plenty of ideas for such, though not necessarily the obvious ones, which is where the quiet state brought on by solo wandering comes in. Thoughts pop.
Look at that ultramarine blue on the walls of Tucson’s Barrio Garden, how the orange canna vibrates against it. Why not paint the house? Or perhaps a door?
Maybe a bridge could go over our little backyard pond, softly arched like the one in the Magnolia Garden, but Chinese red, not white, and shouldn’t there be moss hanging from the tree branches overhead?
Oh! Oh! That flamingo semi-topiary, a flower-studded pipe-and-wire frame in front of Ohio’s John Wolfe Palm House. There must be something in the garage, the attic, the basement that can be used to construct such a thing; put it next to the bridge and against the blue wall.
Or convince My Prince of this necessity.
Wandering into the National Garden, adjacent to the conservatory, the last of the roses still lure the nose. Perhaps they are sprayed with rose perfume, like that new-car spray used-auto dealers employ.
Carting that thought home, I spritzed the window boxes outside the bedroom with Ben Dita Luz, the orange blossom scent Baby brought me from Spain, and a tango commenced between the powerful note of citrus and the softer notes of lavender and geranium frothing in the boxes. Really, one could have passed out in ecstasy.
Instead, I had a hot dog and went to the pool.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
“Gardens Across America,” on display through October 1, 2019 at the US Botanic Garden, 100 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington DC. Free admission.
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” has the artist’s spirit if not the whole Artist’s Way.
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.
Some of us don’t know where butterflies come from or where they go. To us they’re like the sayings of people who are gone from our lives, wisps of memory that come and go. / iStock photo.
I WAS IN the shower the other morning and recalled my late friend Walter saying something like “How can someone take a shower and not wash their feet?” I haven’t the faintest recollection of what we were talking about. I only remember several of us were sitting around his cabin in Virginia chatting when he said this.
Now, almost every time I take a shower these words pop into my head. It’s not the message I’m paying attention to, though; it’s the fact that Walter is still alive in my head.
My mother also said funny, inconsequential things from time to time, and when I think of them she’s alive as well.
Which proves something we all inherently know: People don’t die until the last person who remembers them dies.
I suspect that most of us have little catch-phrases that lodge themselves in our brains and pop up at appropriate (and sometimes inappropriate) moments. My sister, for instance, says every time she sits down to play bridge, our mother’s bridge-speak comes flooding back (“eight ever, nine never,” and no, I have no idea what it means). It’s got to the point, she tells me, where her bridge partners are also quoting our mother.
My writer friend Pat says every time she hears the Spanish saying Mi casa es su casa, she remembers her late friend Arlene, who spoke no Spanish but would say it whenever Pat, who lives in Maryland, asked permission to do something when visiting her in New York. “That phrase comes up more than you would think in everyday life,” Pat says. And, she adds, “it reminds me what a welcoming host she was.”
“What a co-inky-dinky” is one of the sayings lodged in LittleBird Mary’s head. It’s how her father always remarked on coincidences. Silly, but still, it’s there long after he isn’t.
The mother of another friend, Ann, seemed determined to put a good spin on things. “If they don’t come,” she would say of invited guests, “they won’t have to go home.” (By the way, Ann plays bridge frequently with my sister so she probably spouts Mrs. McKeon’s bridge maxims as well.)
LittieBird Janet seems to be shadowed by her late mother when she’s shopping. “My mom always used to say ‘cheap can be expensive’—which resonates with me whenever I’m thinking of buying something.”
As LittleBird Kathy was sitting in her “mere 50 degrees warm” house in the country the other May day she was reminded of how her mother said that the ‘old folks’ always referred to those chilly, often wet days that would interrupt May’s warmth as the May Bleak. “Such an apt phrase, I’ve always thought. So Wuthering Heights-ish. So darkly romantic. So indicative of a need for hot tea. So contrary. Sort of like my mother.”
My brother has a weird one. Every time his friend George would drive past our mother’s house when my brother was entering (how often could this have happened?!), George would roll down his car window and say, with a flattened affect, “Menudo.” My brother cracks up every time he thinks of it. I guess I don’t have to get it as long as my brother does.
My brother also emailed me this with regard to Walter’s foot-washing advice: “BTW, you should only rinse your feet. Washing feet disrupts the balance between gram negative and gram positive bacteria that exist on them. Together, they tend to destroy foot fungus.”
So now I’ll have two things—and people—to remember when I take a shower.
What kinds of things have friends or relatives said that stick in your brain and bring them to mind?
The inexplicably healthy and wonderful dogwood down the street. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
I HAVE NO IDEA what’s growing in the front garden. It’s quite possible that my seeding technique—wait for a rainy day, tear off the top of a seed packet and scatter the seed about randomly—has worked, for a change. All sorts of unrecognizable foliage that does not look like weeds is growing thunderously, thanks to the rain, which in Washington DC this spring has been ceaseless.
My fertilizing technique closely resembles my seeding—wait for rain, throw the fertilizer around, go inside, drink more coffee, lie down on the sofa and read.
Do you know Val McDermid? She’s a sick and twisted writer, if you’re in the mood for such, which I am. Her novels are set in Scotland, where it’s wet and cold instead of wet and hot. This is refreshing. I seem to be spending a lot of mental time in Scotland lately. I don’t know about that either.
Despite various gardening thoughts that intruded throughout the winter, here it is not even Memorial Day, and I’m already lost. One would think, after 36 years in this one particular garden, some great concept would be coming to fruition. No.
Well, I do know the basic bones of the place, which I happened into for various reasons. When Baby was in the process of moving from one house to another in Raleigh, she uprooted her hydrangeas, two pinks and a green, and I stuck them in my yard. There was some vague promise of returning them when she got settled. This did not happen. She can visit them any time, however.
There is also a red-leaf maple sort of midway and off to the side, which separates our house from the neighboring property, almost giving the impression that we are completely detached. I like this notion, being somewhat antisocial. The maple replaced a floundering pink dogwood, which sent out pathetic flowers in spring and then looked diseased from late July until frost. Down the block is a white dogwood that is totally neglected and yet is the most magnificent and long-flowering specimen that I have ever seen outside the National Arboretum. I do not understand this.
The maple was, of course, a mistake. Despite being a lovely shape right now, it will grow far too big for the space in a very few years. Not so much an issue for us, but it will eventually encroach on the neighbor’s front walk. This will be a nuisance. For them.
We also have two forsythia that are planted in the way back (such as the “way back” is when the plot is only about 20 feet deep). These reliably do what forsythia do, tossing off flailing limbs of yellow flowers each spring, which either last or not depending on the heat. A couple of pinkish-red Knock Out Roses bloom endlessly in scentless boredom.
It’s the middle that is a mystery. There’s all this foliage that I don’t recall planting, an interesting mix of greens, I will say. I think I scattered zinnias and some attract-the-birds wildflower mix. How do I forget when this was just a few weeks ago?
This morning I’m thinking of adding another layer to the mystery.
Frustrated with my complete inability to grow Queen Anne’s Lace, a flower generally considered a weed, presumably because it’s as difficult to eradicate as dandelions, I bought a package of Bishop’s Lace. It is considered a tame cousin, which grows to four feet tall and has an ethereal lace cap, which is the effect I’m going for—I particularly appreciate the fireworks frill in flower arrangements.
There is, however, not a single bare patch in which to plant them, never mind scrape down an inch to cover the seeds with soil. Enter the flower bomb—seeds packed within a casing of compost and potter’s clay, dried for a few hours, then scattered about before a rain. As the casing dissolves it automatically forms the growing medium.
Except that I don’t have potter’s clay or compost, and am not about to go get some. So I shall experiment, packing seed into dampened potting soil instead. This is such an exciting thought, I can’t tell you. Maybe there’ll be flowers. Or maybe not.
If you’re the anal type, an excellent recipe for flower bombs, with all the proper directions and seed choices and so forth is at Gardenista. Go for it.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” writes about city gardening with almost as much creativity as she exhibits in actual gardening.
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 WASHINGTON POST just yesterday confirmed what we all think we know but weren’t sure: People are not ironing as much as they used to. Some of it is thanks to wrinkle-free garments, of which there are more and more. And some of it is the casual dress codes we all seem to have adopted, which allow lots and lots of knitted, not woven, fabrics. And Lycra—let’s not forget Lycra! A little bit of stretch makes those shirts snap to attention, right?
No surprise then that sales of irons are down, though it seems that most people keep one around, just in case.
And yet. There are a few things the Post article, written by veteran design and lifestyle reporter Jura Koncius, points out that have taken the place of irons and ironing. Steamers, for one. And sprays that sorta kinda smooth woven fabrics. We list a few below.
But what about you? Do you still iron? Shirts and blouses? Tablecloths and napkins? Bedsheets? (Now there’s a cumbersome chore, best left to commercial outfits that wash, iron and fold your sheets into blessed stacks of smooth, wrinkle-free cotton or linen. What a pleasure to sleep on. What a pleasure not to iron them yourself.)
We’ve gathered comments from some of the LittleBirds, below, but we want to hear from you as well. Do you iron? Do you avoid it? Do you send stuff to the dry cleaner just so you won’t have to iron? (Aha! That’s why dry-cleaning is such a big part of your budget.) Do you still even own an ironing board? An iron??? Bare your souls, we want to have a group hug.
—MyLittleBird staff
Here are some products mentioned in the Post and a few we added. And to avoid the ironing problem for once and all, we show some non-iron shirts.
LEFT: In a pinch, many time-pressed people swear by Downy Wrinkle Releaser. It’s $5.79 for the 16.9-ounce bottle at Walgreens. The product also comes in a 3-ounce spray bottle, terrific for relaxing wrinkles at the office or while traveling. It’s $1.59 at Target.Rowenta IXEO All-in-One Iron and Steamer Solution
CENTER: LittleBird Mary bought a small Esteam steamer years ago for travel and finds it great for wool sweaters that have gotten scrunched in the suitcase. This new little Ovo iron and steamer is cute and portable and can be found at Bed Bath and Beyond for $49.99.
RIGHT: From Rowenta comes IXEO, released in the United States this spring, which allows ironing and steaming with one lightweight steam-iron and a board that holds three positions for comfort. The water tank holds a lot and is portable for refilling. This just may deserve a corner of your bedroom. It’s $249.99 on Amazon.
If steaming is all you want to do, Rowenta’s Commercial Garment Steamer may do the trick. The water tank is large and allows for a whole hour of steam. It’s $88.99 at Target.
LEFT: In the old days we called this a mangle. But mangles weren’t quite as sharp-looking (or probably as expensive) as the Miele Rotary Iron, $2,049 at AJ Madison Electronics.
RIGHT: Leave it to Miele to create the Lamborghini of ironing/steaming products. The Miele FashionMaster does both and folds away for storage. It’s $2,499 at AJ Madison Electronics. There’s a less-expensive model, $1,999 at AJ Madison Electronics, that doesn’t have the separate hand-held steamer attachment.
LEFT: This Ruffle Dolman T-shirt from Jones New York is a knit and probably doesn’t need ironing. But if there are wrinkles they’ll just become part of the fabric’s pattern. It’s $39.50 at Lord & Taylor.
RIGHT: This cute gingham-check sleeveless shirt from Foxcroft is 100% cotton treated to be non-iron. It comes in four colorways and is $79 at Foxcroft.com.
LEFT: Foxcroft’s Lilith shirt with its scalloped hem comes in an array of colors and is blessedly non-iron. It’s $98 at Foxcroft.com
CENTER: From Coldwater Creek comes this Anytime No-Iron Tunic, available in white and several colors. It’s on sale for $69.95 for misses and petites, $89.95 in plus sizes.
RIGHT: Here’s how to look crisp on the hottest summer day. It’s the Taylor sleeveless shirt from Foxcroft. It’s non-iron and comes in a dozen colors. It’s $79.
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.
Step-dog Tallula probably can’t read, but she tries her best to respect the neighborhood flora. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
THERE’S AN ART to walking a dog in a city neighborhood like this one.
With a few grand exceptions, Washington’s Capitol Hill has narrow streets lined with row houses, most 100 years old or so where two SUVs trying to pass each other snort like bulls until one backs off.
On some blocks the tree boxes along the sidewalk’s edge are cared for, one after the other a fireworks of flowers, as if there’s a competition. Massive rose bushes and tangles of day lilies. A stand of peonies.
Many are also planted with yard signs about love and kindness, many quotes by Martin Luther King Jr. Down the block where Ryan Zinke, the unlamented former Secretary of the Interior lives, there are numerous variations on “Zinke Go Home,” even though he left that post months ago. It can’t be pleasant for him. This is a very liberal community.
Signs on Capitol Hill go way beyond simple “No Dogs” warnings. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
Other blocks are hit or miss. Here’s a pretty one, there’s a patch of . . . dirt. We look for those patches of dirt, me and Tallula. Yes, Tallula is with us again for a few weeks as Baby and her Personal Prince Pete are traveling. Lisbon then Seville, where the sun is shining as I drag their sodden, mud-encrusted, 65-pound dog from tree box to tree box.
Trust them to find a Mexican restaurant in Spain. The menu Baby’s Personal Prince Pete posted on Facebook last night included nachos with the usual cheese, refried beans and guacamole, followed by “the same frikken nachos but with grilled chicken.” I wonder if Spaniards are better at Tex-Mex than the Salvadorans who rustle it up around here.
That was neither here nor there, but interesting, sí?
Back to the Hill and the quest for a spot to . . . go. The challenge is finding the uncared-for boxes and letting the dog loose, making a statement of sorts if you’re into gardening.
It’s not just the drippings and droppings that are of concern—though both are to flowers as beer is to slugs.* There’s also the scratching and tossing and itching and rolling that accompany canine evacuations, maneuvers that endanger tender stems just now emerging.
Some tree boxes will fool you, like the ones that line a stretch of pavement around the corner, planted with what look like hair plugs. This is a lawn that someone expects to happen. As a semi-known garden columnist, I realize this, even though the small rectangular plots have neither the typical wire hoop surrounds or the coy little iron signs with the pooping dog and NO! (It’s hard to make these tasteful and still make the point.)
Such daring! I think to myself as I pass the plugs. Do they really expect people to understand that there is some gardening event going on and steer clear?
Of course, not even signs and hoops discourage some walkers, who appear to be openly hostile to flowers. “It’s public space,” they huff as Fido squats over a pansy.
Indeed it is: These curbside boxes are not owned by the residents of the homes they front but by the city. Fact is, even the entire front gardens of most if not all of our houses are owned by the city, which could exert eminent domain at any moment and install four-lane highways on every block to allow SUVs to pass one another without hostility.
However, that is no excuse for soiling soil that is clearly under cultivation. Such beautification projects are meant for us all to enjoy.
Then there are the cats. Someone said dogs have no memory, or maybe someone said I have no memory, I don’t recall. When it comes to cats, Tallula has a fabulous memory. There was one she saw maybe six years ago that has never reappeared, yet Lu will stop and stick her snout through the fence and wait, and wait, until I yank her leash.
Why do felines have license to roam, to taunt, leashless—hovering just outside the reach of paws, licking their nasty feet and grinning. I know they’re grinning. Mustn’t kill the evil cats.
But back to crap. I was grateful for this morning’s deluge as Lu had a bit of a bowel explosion. There was only so much I was able to scrape from the tufts of weed, depositing it in the handy plastic Washington Post bag that arrives each morning with the newspaper. A smear of brown was left amongst the green.
As I scurried off, hoping no one was watching, I gave thanks to Zephyros, god of rain, thunder and lightning, that this bit of effluvia would soon be washed away.
Leaving it for a flip-flopped foot exiting a car would be downright unneighborly.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
* Fun for kids: Fill a saucer with beer, drop in your slugs, and watch them shrivel like the Wicked Witch of the West!
LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” urges dog-walkers to be as mindful as she is of little horticulture projects.
Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old Sudanese university student, led her Khartoum neighbors, men and women, in anti-regime chants. Photo via Twitter.
This article first appeared in Prime Women.
EVERYWHERE I look there are newspaper and magazine stories, indeed entire books, about modern women’s roles: how we can have it all; how we can’t, not really; which “women’s chores” successful women have ignored, downplayed, neglected, belittled, to get where they are, be it in politics, the arts, or corporate life.
Spoken or unspoken, the backdrop to these tales of triumph is the argument (discredited? reductive?) of biology as destiny, how the “natural” role of women revolves around what the Germans call “Kinder, Küche, Kirche,” although I doubt they’d mention anything about children, kitchen and church in front of German chancellor Angela Merkel, who, apropos of nothing (or maybe not), has no kids of her own. You can think of the Germans’ Three K’s as a variation on “barefoot and pregnant” or “a woman’s place is in the home.”
As the most successful women continue to struggle, it’s for more success, for equal pay for equal work, for cracks in the glass ceiling. And yet in those same newspapers and books I am bombarded with examples of women for whom biology really is destiny, and not a pretty one.
A couple of weeks ago it was the 19-year-old Bangladeshi girl who was doused with kerosene and set on fire because she wouldn’t recant allegations of inappropriate touching by her headteacher; Nusrat Jahan Rafi died 10 days later from the burns that covered 80 percent of her body. In January it was a 20-year-old Pakistani girl whose husband sliced her nose off during an argument. Closer to home, in Honduras, we New York Times readers were treated to a photo of a serene-looking 28-year-old woman in a wheelchair; in a rage, her alcoholic husband had hacked off her left foot and mutilated her right leg, the lower half of which had to be amputated. There’s so much violence against women in Honduras, the Times report said, that they’ve coined a whole new kind of murder: femicide.
Somehow, our assigned role as the “weaker sex,” seems to embolden men to act out the biology of their destiny as well, weaponizing their testosterone. Yes, of course that’s a wild exaggeration. And yet.
We may want to cross third world countries off our list of places where women can thrive. But there are enough examples, though fewer, I think, in the modern West to give us pause. The difference, it seems, is that in modern Western societies we actually try to punish the guilty.
We know that humans’ primitive lizard, or reptilian brain, regulates such basic functions as breathing and heart rate. But is there something inside the lizard brain that insists that women are prey, are weak, are natural victims? That we do in fact belong in the kitchen and not on the campaign trail or the C-suite? Or is it a social construct that has developed in the human brain, which metaphorically wraps around the lizard brain and the mammalian brain? The human brain is the one that’s supposed to be the most evolved. The jury’s still out.
I keep wondering if it’s fear that causes men to try to control women. Are we that powerful? Well, we are the ones who produce the next generation of our species. Yes, we have partners in that enterprise, but the male of the human species has been known to act like the bull elephant or, yes, the reptile, and after the “hard job” of fertilizing wander off till nature strikes again.
I have an odd habit of examining news photos of rallies and demonstrations. I’m looking for the women. In American and European protests they’re easy enough to spot (though I don’t remember seeing any women with the Unite the Right marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017). But elsewhere in the world, chances are the only figures to be found out in public are male.
So I was heartened in early April to see, on Twitter feeds everywhere, pictures of a rally in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. The star of the photo was a smiling woman draped in white standing atop a car leading her fellow Sudanese in anti-government chants. And in that crowd were women, lots and lots of women, who are being greatly credited with organizing the rebellion that toppled the country’s 30-year military regime. And they along with everyone else were filming the dramatic moment with their phones.
The young woman, Alaa Salah, was quickly dubbed “Sudan’s Statue of Liberty” and “Nubian Queen.” In reality, the 22-year-old is at university studying engineering and architecture. You know, doing the things modern women are supposed to do when they’re not toppling their repressive government.
Today’s it’s the government, tomorrow who knows? Maybe Alaa Salah will be kvetching about the pay disparity between her and her male engineering colleagues, maybe she’ll be angling for a post in a C-suite somewhere. And maybe she’ll also be a wife and mother, raising children to understand the power of women . . . and not to be threatened by it.
After she stripped to her (glamorous) undies, at some point Lady Gaga changed into this flouncy Marc Jacobs dress, shown left on the runway. At right, an Yves Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello jumpsuit was worn by model Amber Valetta.
This article first appeared in Prime Women.
FEMINISM. That’s what the rapper/singer Cardi B said she was representing at the Met Gala Monday night in her blood-red Thom Browne gown trimmed in thousands of feathers with a crystal-studded breastplate accented by two very large rubies for nipples.
Feminism of such power that the concoction required a team of tuxedoed men to hoist her train and puddle it around her for the photographers. The front of the gown was upholstered to look like nothing less than a vagina. Did I mention that the gown was menstrual-blood red?
Cardi B was channeling the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s 2019 theme of camp-in-quotation-marks not camp-as-in-Girl-Scouts, as everyone who cares knows by now. But she explained to an interviewer that she wanted a look that was “not too Halloweenish.”
In that she failed, as did almost all of the A-listers we watched on InStyle, Vogue.com, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and god knows where else. Consider singer Katy Perry arriving as a large illuminated chandelier by Moschino—and then changing into something more comfortable: a giant burger. Vegan, of course. Then there weredesigner Michael Kors channeling Elton John; Madelaine Petsch (“Riverdale”) as Tinkerbell; actress-singer Zendaya as Cinderella in a demure ballgown that, with a wave of a wand from her Fairy Godfather, began to glow from the inside; and actor Jared Leto dressed in a rhinestone-decked red Gucci cassock-style gown, basically looking like a colorful Rasputin, carrying a replica of his own long-locked head (just as the models in Gucci’s runway show did last year—yikes!).
You’ve heard that there are sights that, once seen, cannot be unseen? For me that was Kim Kardashian West nipped into a “naked” dress, her pneumatic boobs exploding bravely over and around the tight bodice, the nude material of the minidress literally dripping with crystal drops of “water.” The people at Thierry Mugler knew she was a California girl, she explained to one of many interviewers. The goal of the look, completed by wet-looking hair, was to be that California girl just emerging from the sea, little drops of water sparkling all over her.
Too bad she couldn’t sit down.
Kardashian wasn’t the only one so encumbered. When off-camera, female guests could be glimpsed teetering on their sky-high heels (singer Miley Cyrus said she was able to wear higher heels this year because her new husband, Liam Hemsworth, was there to hold her up). There was a lot of mincing in place of walking. As most of us know, what looks good on camera does not always translate into comfort or practicality.
Benefit participants (because this was, after all, a benefit to raise money for the Costume Institute) had a hard time defining what “camp” meant and how they were interpreting it. I have no such trouble: As a couple of the male guests pointed out, camp has its roots in gay culture and is most frequently expressed as exaggeration. The most exaggerated subject? Women, especially famous women. That’s where female impersonators come in, performers who make themselves up as over-the-top Marilyn Monroes, Judy Garlands, Barbra Streisands, all of them gay icons. In the old days it was Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
There was camp well before writer Susan Sontag tried to put her finger on it back in 1964, with “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ” In fact, it goes back to the exaggerated dress of the 18th-century French court (think of the complicated curls worn by both men and women), the cabarets of the Weimar Republic in 1920s Berlin, even back to cross-dressing in ancient Greece.
If any woman can be said to be a female impersonator it’s Cher, who lampoons herself at every opportunity. Cher is of course eternal, but in this recent era, Lady Gaga fills the bill, presenting herself as over the top in just about everything. She was one of the gala’s hosts and staged her entrance to the fête stripping down from a billowing fuchsia coat-dress to a less-billowing black gown on to a long pink sheath and finally to glittery black skivvies, all in the course of her 17-minute-long entrance. Not a trace of that shy, thoughtful singer in “A Star Is Born.”
At some point in the evening she put more clothes on, an all-ruffle minidress from Marc Jacobs. It was cute.
RuPaul, the drag queen known for the reality-show competition “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and certainly a camp icon, credited his sequined wavy-striped trouser suit to Zaldy, who has done his costumes for 25 years.
That credit was important: Most of the celebs cited their designers. Gucci, chief sponsor of the event along with Vogue magazine publisher Condé Nast, came up frequently. As did Moschino, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta and others. Some of the participants sat at tables purchased by the fashion houses (the tickets were $35,000 apiece), others are signed to deals as “the face of” a particular brand. There’s a reason I know that those 44 carats of ruby nipples worn by Cardi B were from Stefere, maker of “rock chic” jewelry: Cardi B announced it.
Received wisdom says that this kind of publicity cannot be bought. But of course it can, and is, most demonstrably at any event where there’s an arrival staging area and lots of photographers. Everybody promotes everybody and the audience (that’s us) is theoretically inspired to get some of those fancy names for ourselves. So, as an enormous, over-the-top, super-expensive event, the Met Gala is a whopping success. And the getups worn by the players are always entertaining.
One thing they’re not is fashion, as in clothing worn by normal people, even wealthy, chic ones (although we may soon see a fresh flurry of plumage in ready-to-wear, based on the sheer tonnage of feathers in evidence on Monday).
Thinking back to Katy Perry as a large burger—and photos of the rapper Lizzo pretending to gnaw on her—it’s worth noting that because of all the red-carpet vamping, the sit-down dinner portion of the evening is always quite short, ending when guests are herded into another area for the evening’s performance. And any number of guests (including The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert) have said they didn’t have enough time to eat. Comedian Tiffany Haddish had her own solution to Met Gala Hunger. Stuffed into her sequined zebra-stripe clutch (matching her sequined zebra-striped suit, of course) was a plastic bag filled with fried chicken she brought from home.
I’m not sure if that’s camp, but I think so.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention: the Met Gala, like the tail wagging the dog, is “simply” the opening night for the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, this year, “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”
—Nancy McKeon
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street), New York, NY. The exhibit runs through September 8, 2019.
THE SAINTED JEREMIAH, as one friend called my good old dog, died in December 2017 at age 14. For a St. Bernard mix that wasn’t bad, right? But even better: He lives on!
I gave it a first stab shortly after the book was published in 1992, and quit midway through, at the week where you’re not allowed to read anything. NOTHING. I had no idea how addicted I was to reading until it was forbidden. Suddenly, gum wrappers were a temptation on the supermarket line, as were cereal boxes. Words irresistibly sucked at my eyes like vampires, and I furtively nibbled at them, feeling like such a cheat. 
