UPDATE: Le Creuset has joined the Zelensky Green initiative (which I just made up). The newest color for its Dutch ovens and other enameled-cast-iron cookware is Olive Green.

—Nancy McKeon

The military green of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s T-shirt shows the serious side of the color, while the giddy green of Bottega Veneta’s spring suit reflects the color’s message of rebirth.

By Nancy McKeon

THE TELEVISED IMAGE of Ukraine’s incredibly steadfast Volodymyr Zelensky in an army-green T-shirt cannot be what fashion prognosticators envisaged a year ago when they declared that green would be the color of 2022.

They were forecasting fashions like the vivid Kelly green suits and dresses that Bottega Veneta marched down the runway for this spring. Or the Beata Coated Jeans in Emerald from The Frankie Shop, pants that threaten to redefine the word “vivid.” And Allure magazine has assured us that green is 2022’s biggest beauty trend, including but not limited to lime eye shadow.

So emeralds, having nothing to do with the Isle or the fact of today’s being St. Patrick’s Day, are everywhere. Except in my closet or even in my neighborhood. On the streets I see men and women punctuating the usual New York black with lightweight khaki-green quilted jackets and army-green barn jackets. At this gloomy moment, it just seems right.

I’m a fan of green in many of its shades and manifestations. But I think I’ll hold out for vivid flashes of greenery in objects around me, rather than turn myself into a plump four-leaf clover. Here are a few things that have caught my eye, with a nod or two to the more outré ideas out there,

LEFT: For those who dare, the “Just My Luck” eyeshadow palette from Colourpop has a nine-pan green and coordinating shadow, $14.

RIGHT: Part of Williams-Sonoma’s new Famille Rose collection, this serving bowl looks like spring is springing all by itself. Made of hand-trimmed porcelain, it’s about 10½ inches in diameter and $59.95.

Bottega Veneta sent this suit, right, down the aisle for spring 2022, but I’m hoping the color trickles down to the cute little Cassette bag in Parakeet ($1,000).

LEFT: From Cos comes this $69 oversized shirt in cotton. There are plenty of the shirts available in normal blue and white, but the pink and green are almost gone.

RIGHT: Embracing the green trend, the Moonlight Ankle Boot from Louis Vuitton is $1,720.

From the Bunny Toile collection of Michel Design Works, paper cocktail napkins are $8.99 for a package of 20 napkins (luncheon size is $9.99 for 20). The hostess napkins are $9.99 for 15. Not shown: a glass Bunny Toile soap dish, about 5 by 6 inches, for $12.99.

LEFT: We’ve seen color coming back into drinking glasses for a couple of years now, but not as spring-like and cheerful as these, the Morro Stemless Wine Glasses from Anthropologie. Handmade of soda-lime glass, they’re $48 for a set of four. Anthropologie calls the color Pink, but we know it’s Green.

RIGHT: From Hermès, “Danse Pacifique” pays homage to Papua New Guinea in a classic 36-inch-square silk twill scarf. In this colorway (there are six others), it’s as fresh as spring itself. $480 at Hermès boutiques and Hermès.com.

LEFT: This découpage “Frog Close-Up” rectangular glass tray is 11 by 14 inches, its image dating from the early 20th century. It’s $185, and made by hand by John Derian Company, of course.

RIGHT: The hand-glazed stoneware Lilypad Platter is almost 21 inches long and 12 inches wide. It’s $78 at Anthropologie. (The Lilypad Serving Set, also shown, is handcrafted of stainless steel and is $38.)

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. 

iStock

By Valerie Monroe

A FEW MONTHS ago, late to the party, I discovered I could download audiobooks from the public library. My first: volume one of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, read by the Shakespearean actor Ben Miles. Magic.

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

Recently, I found myself listening to another trilogy of my own making.

Volume one: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It could have been called Astrophysics for Dummies, but that title had evidently already been taken. Frankly, this book wasn’t even dumb enough for me, as chunks of it flew over my head like a flaming asteroid shower. But the story was sufficiently understandable that I was able to grasp (and consequently stare glassy-eyed and slack-jawed at) the grand majesty of the universe. How’d it start? Why? What’s in it? Where’s it going? And the dizzying question, was there/is there a Who? For days I walked around listening and muttering, “What the hell?”

Back on earth I happened next to download Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. And there it was again, the mystery—but this time in a story about the grand, sometimes terrifying majesty of head trips goosed by drugs and spiritual wizards. Encouraged by tales of expanded consciousness, I gave my ego the fish-eye, suspecting it might be getting in the way of…well, everything. You can read more about microdosing and psychedelics here.

Finally, because a friend long-ago recommended it and I wanted something short-ish, I picked up Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

The book is well-read, so you might already know what I absolutely did not: It’s a psychiatrist’s graphic diary of his time imprisoned in Nazi death camps and his theory (simplified here) about how and why one might find a reason to live in an environment designed to kill that very impulse.

We’ve now unexpectedly come to the beauty part.

I had the extraordinary experience of listening to Frankl’s book while shopping at a CVS. I was searching for emery boards and an eyelash curler (this inexpensive one I found there is OK, but I prefer this slightly pricier one), while in my ear I heard a story of incomprehensible cruelty and horror. Just reading that sentence might give you an idea of the disconnect. The story—so vividly narrated that the prisoners’ suffering and despair turned the shelves of polishes and mascaras into a fake-looking, glazed backdrop—gave me the feeling I was shopping as someone delivered a Kaddish. (In a way, I was.) And of course, I began to consider my unbelievable good fortune. I had the luxury of a leisurely walk and enough money to not even think about whether I could afford what I wanted—and then there was the utter frivolity of the things I bought.

But it turns out those things didn’t feel frivolous at all. Looking forward to the small ritual that each required promised a comfort I hadn’t before been entirely aware of. Because these books, in different ways, had reminded me of a few basic things:

1. In the context of the universe, we’re a mote—hardly even a mote of a mote. There exists a majesty so vast and complex even the most brilliant of us haven’t been able to figure it out.
2. The stuff we’re made of is the same stuff as everything else we can see (and cannot see) even though we feel distinct from it. (Hello, ego.)
3. If there is an overriding motif that persists throughout the human spirit (in spite of unrelenting, unimaginable cruelty), it is gratitude. And, not unrelatedly, love.

Amid these imposing, sometimes daunting themes, a little ritual can provide a sense of grounding, don’t you think? File your nails into a pretty shape and paint them red! Curl your lashes! Apply your creamy, rosy lipstick and blot! Let yourself be present for the luxury of each. Even the smallest ritual can feel like a respite—or a celebration—in the mad, magnificent mystery that is your life.

Anyway—that’s a big “Anyway”—if you came here looking for beauty product suggestions and you made it this far, I don’t want to disappoint. Here’s another one I like a lot. I use Tocca laundry soap in “Florence” to hand-wash my winter scarves. It’s delicately (and gorgeously) scented with bergamot and gardenia; so when you’re outside in the cold and catch a whiff of a spring garden cozying your neck, you’ll feel buoyed, even if you’re drowning in down.

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 window box of March 2022, chez Cavanaugh. Purple pansies, sprigs of wintered-over geraniums and Rapunzel-length ivy swagged across the front. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

HOW MANY columns have I written about window boxes? 

Many, many . . . so many.  Yet there’s always something else to say.

There are the summer boxes dripping with ivy, sweet potato vine, colorful annuals (and many experiments—cherry tomatoes—often misguided), fall boxes with pansies and cabbages, winter boxes with bows, ornaments and boughs, late-winter boxes with ever more boughs and sprigs of this and that . . .

And spring boxes, which are just starting to take shape. There’s never a reason for window boxes to be empty—or worse: filled with a collection of browned and desiccated shrubbish. 

Certainly now, as the gardens begin their season of blossom, so too should the boxes. While tender annuals are still too early to plant out in weather that can go overnight from 70 degrees to 28, as it has done this past week, there are plenty of plants that can withstand the chill, particularly if your boxes, like mine, get afternoon sun, which warms the bricks (should you have them) and brings the temperatures just above freezing.

There are pansies and their charming, smaller siblings, the violas. These are cheap and plentiful in garden centers, with colors that range from shades of yellow and blue to purple, mauve, salmon and red. Geraniums can go in too, as long as the temperature near the house does not descend to brutal. Mix in ivy and you’ve an Ode to Spring. 

If you don’t mind spending for the ephemeral, places like Trader Joe’s have little pots of tulips, daffodils and other early bulbs, all of which rely on the chill to stay perky for more than a handful of days. Take them out of their little pots and water them well before planting so they have an opportunity to stretch and wriggle their spindly roots in the soil, then water again. 

On the downside, warm weather means they must be frequently replaced; on the upside their deaths mean an opportunity to try something else. 

On second thought, why bother with plants that expire so quickly? Get a bunch of cut tulips or drop a buck or two on daffs, stick stems in those wonderful plastic water holders with the pointy bottoms and rubber caps. No dirt under the nails and a quick makeover. 

A particular delight of window-box gardening is that transformations are as close to instant gratification as one can get.  

One morning last week I yanked the magnolia and fir branches that have been the mainstays of my late-winter display. In went purple pansies and sprigs of geranium—mine are wintered over in the greenhouse* so there’s always a big bush to pinch from. (Just cut a couple of inches of branch, dip the end in rooting powder, and poke it in the soil. In a week or so they’ll settle in and, if there were buds at the tips of the branches, start flowering.)

The ivy that mounds on each corner of the five boxes (two downstairs, three up) was looking scraggly, grown to Rapunzel lengths, so I swagged the vines to the front of the boxes, like ribbons. I do like the look and may keep it, even if I add sweet potato vines to the centers, as I usually do, and let the vines overlap and tangle. 

The puzzle of getting height at the rear, a backdrop of green to set off the colors, was easily solved by adding clipped branches of green from various yard plants. Some leftover baby’s breath from who knows what arrangement fluffs it all out. Like snowy punctuation. 

Next month some of this will get ditched and annuals will be raring to join in.

My boxes are more than 25 years old, as wide and deep as the windowsills, and heavily braced to take the weight of soil and plants without dropping on someone’s head. We’re insured, but still. That would be unpleasant, and the boxes would be expensive to replace.

The deeper and wider the box, the more room for play. A big box can be a complete garden in miniature, at a fraction of the cost of planting an entire plot of any size. 

They also provide instant curb appeal, a nice thing to have whether or not you’re selling your home. Not to mention they can distract from imperfections like a little peeling paint, less-than-shiny brasswork, a trash can or two in unsightly colors. Perhaps you have none of these? Lucky you. 

My window boxes regularly perform for an audience of strollers (This includes people pushing strollers. Where did all these babies come from? Must be Covid-related. That was an aside.) People stop and frequently take photos; sometimes I peek out the shutter slats at them as they’re pointing and talking. If My Prince or I happen to be outside, they’ll often call out their appreciation, and we gratefully take our bows. 

*Greenhouse sounds so very grand. It’s but a glassed-in porch My Prince created on the second floor, a room for the parakeets and the tropical plants that move to the garden in summer. It’s small. Too small for a photo or I’d show you. But it’s delightful. 

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. 

By Nancy McKeon

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, who died on Wednesday at age 84, was a survivor of wartorn Europe. As such, she roved the world with wary eyes, always on the lookout for countries behaving badly. After her long tenure—first as US Ambassador to the UN, then as the first female US Secretary of State, 1997 to 2001—she wrote, she taught, she attended celebrations and benefits.

She also wore jewelry, pins to be precise. And in fact she developed a whole diplomatic language around her collection, a combination of costume pieces and valuable ones.

As she told it, her habit began when she was US Ambassador to the UN (1993 to 1997). She had criticized Saddam Hussein of Iraq, which caused Hussein’s poet-in-residence to call her “an unparalleled serpent.” At a subsequent meeting with Iraqi officials, Albright addressed the offense by not addressing it directly: She trimmed the lapel of her suit jacket with a 19th-century serpent pin of 18-karat gold with a diamond dripping from its mouth.

You wanted a serpent? You got one.

When she was prepared to be waspish in an encounter, there it was on her lapel, a wasp pin. There were playful pins as well, and plenty of flora and fauna. Some were fun, some sent messages, and many became part of American diplomacy, certainly, at least, an ice breaker in conversations.

Albright’s collection was showcased in her 2009 book, Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box. The collection is currently on loan to the National Museum of American Diplomacy and will be donated to the museum when the galleries are complete. The pins circulated to museums around the country from 2009 to 2018, thanks to Elaine Shocas, Albright’s chief of staff at State, who was also behind the book.

Meanwhile, there’s an absorbing online exhibit of Albright’s pins at the museum’s site, filled with gorgeous pictures and little tales here and there about a long life that began in Europe, found a home in the US, and then roamed the world, always with a sharp eye, sometimes with a sharp tongue and usually with an appropriate piece of jewelry.

This 19th-century serpent started the whole collection, with its sly language. / From the exhibit at the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Pin photography by John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler.

There are lots of animal pins in Albright’s collection, including the bold zebra perched on her shoulder during a 1997 meeting with South African President Nelson Mandela. / From the exhibit at the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Pin photography by John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler.

Frogs were a favorite, and why not? / From the exhibit at the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Pin photography by John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler.

Albright’s pins sometimes look lethal, such as this lavishly decorated sword with serpent, left, and sometimes teem with hope and lightness of spirit. Such is the case of this 18-karat white gold and diamond butterfly, right, which is about 3½ inches high and was a gift to Albright from the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. / From the exhibit at the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Pin photography by John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler.

Pins from Albright’s earlier years include, from left, her husband’s fraternity pin, a circle pin of gold and enamel, an alumnae leaf from Wellesley College, her alma mater, and the Sheaf of Wheat, a symbol of abundance and health, given to her upon her return to Georgetown University after serving as Secretary of State. / From the exhibit at the National Museum of American Diplomacy. Pin photography by John Bigelow Taylor and Dianne Dubler.

From Albright’s native Czechoslovakia come two Art Nouveau pins in sterling silver. The pin trimmed in coral beads was inspired by images from Alphonse Mucha, the famed early-20th-century Bohemian/Czech artist, most popularly known for his highly stylized Paris theater posters.

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.

Deep in the Cavanaugh backyard jungle, Our Lady of the Busted Body—look hard, bottom left—stands watch (hard to do without a head) over the koi pond. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

IT IS SPRING, though not time yet for serious gardening. Despite the warmth of the sun, it’s too early to do much but mulch and prune and yank the dead this and that. One can only consider what will go where, when it’s time to plant, which is after the last frost date, which is, in Washington DC, around April 21. A good stretch away.

Doing the above doesn’t take a lot of time when you have just a few small patches of garden, like mine, and said garden is already filled with decades of established shrubbish, so there’s very little pondering one can do. 

This week, the tulips are poking up in the back yard, the ferns are looking lively, the cherry is budding out, and that’s about it. So the focus moves to ornaments, specifically one ornament, the concrete statue of a lady in a draped stone gown, standing by the pond, feet planted in moss, endlessly spewing a stream of water from a ewer, which splashes gently into the water.

My Prince brought her home several decades ago, puffed up at the deal he’d struck. Her head was knocked off so he got her cheap. He set the head at the hem of her robe, just until he could get around to fixing her. Really a minor job, he assured me. 

As things go around here, this did not happen. Instead, some years later, a raccoon or other night marauder, knocked her over, severing her torso from her waist. Assuring me that this too was a simple fix, he artistically rearranged her body parts, moving her head to one end of the pond and her chest to the ground beside her, nestled in ivy and the occasional small orchid. And so she remains.

Guests see Our Lady of the Busted Body and say, Why? My Prince says, I’m going to fix her, we have the pieces. I cackle gently in the background. 

Yes, we do have rude friends, which is why I like them. 

No, she is not to everyone’s taste; garden ornaments seldom are. Consider gnomes, plastic flamingoes, and those god-awful fairy gardens, which seem to be breathing their last, at last. 

Often, the first time you see something clever, a tipped-over pot spilling portulaca or alyssum, for instance, it’s a delight. But then you round the corner and see another and another and suddenly tipped pots are like mushrooms after a rain and the delight is gone. 

Rule of thumb: If you see it at Home Depot or the like, its charm has passed its sell-by date. 

No matter what you think of our half a woman and her disheveled parts, I doubt there’s another like her. 

She’s particularly delightful when we move out of the fairytale cottage garden mode we live in each spring—when the tulips burst open beneath the wings of the kwanzan cherry, branches laden with double pink frills of flowers, and the wisteria drapes the roofline of the garage. When the last frost arrives, out of the greenhouse lumber the elephant ears, the palms, the hibiscus, the bananas, the Bird of Paradise; plants and flowers that enjoy or at least tolerate the midsummer murk and occasional splotch of sun. Enter the jungle.

The lady makes me think of Greek or Roman ruins, like she’d eroded over centuries, not decades, and visiting her is a bit like playing Indiana Jones, like stumbling upon a secret place. 

Sit by the pond for a spell, listen to the splashing water, and daydream on.

iStock photo.

By Valerie Monroe

SOMETHING GOT ME musing about expectations recently: It’s pretty easy, I thought, for them to lead to disappointment. Not the expectations themselves, but the having of them. And then I thought about the happiness that can result from either setting low expectations or eliminating them altogether. And that idea led me to a story I wrote a while ago for O, The Oprah Magazine, about a certain expectation, along with another surprising one, that proved to be wrong.

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

I had spent the summer Saturday by myself, meandering through a part of the city I was still, after 30 years here, unfamiliar with, and it had yielded up a banquet of pleasure. A small old redbrick church, and next to it, protected by a black wrought-iron fence, a pristine lawn dotted with pale, deep-set gravestones, tilting one way and another in the dappled late-afternoon sunlight. A hidden lane, bright green moss sprouting thickly between its cobblestones, leading down toward the riverbank and a series of playful bronze sculptures of baby animals tumbling in the grass.

Around suppertime I realized that I wasn’t far from one of my favorite restaurants. I rarely go there, because it’s expensive and always packed, but I thought I might be able to sit at the bar and have a dozen of their tasty oysters and a glass of wine. After all the meandering, I was very hungry. I could see from the street that there was one seat left at the bar, already crowded with people who seemed to have recently napped and showered and spent some time figuring out what to wear and who now looked especially fine and happy to see one another. I was feeling a little bit like Pigpen, in my dusty sandals and shift. But I wanted those oysters. (And that glass of Chablis.) So I went in, navigated the crowd, excuse me’d over to the empty seat, and sat down, a bit self-consciously. I was a middle-aged woman alone at a bar among strangers. Where were my friends? Didn’t I have any? My own personal bugaboo settled over me like a soggy towel, dampening my pleasure: Was this experience my first step on the path that leads inexorably to rubber-soled flats, loose, tentlike garments, and an obsessive interest in public television?

I sighed aloud. If that was my future, I might as well enjoy myself getting there. I asked the bartender to recommend a wine. He offered me a taste of something delicious. The first dozen oysters were so astoundingly good, I had to have a second. As I was savoring them—deeply savoring them—I became aware of the couple sitting next to me. He was chattering animatedly while she, half-listening, watched my every slurp and sip. Finally, she interrupted him: “I have to have what she’s having,” she said, pointing at my plate. 

I was completely happy. Why had I felt a need to judge or label myself? (Middle-aged woman eating and drinking alone, no friends, crazy lady.) I’ve been running away from being alone all my life, even though I often enjoy it. I’ve avoided it because Loneliness, Being Alone’s ugly stepsister, is uncomfortable, sometimes painful. It’s the pain that sociologist Robert S. Weiss, PhD, describes as “separation distress without an object”: You’re longing for connection but don’t know with what or whom. Which—in me, anyway—leads to a kind of emotional chaos. Not long after my date with the oysters, I began to wonder what would happen if I could tolerate that distress without reaching out to anchor myself with a phone call or an e-mail, a book, the television, a plate of shellfish. If I could just be with the loneliness without trying to fix it. To do that, I’d have to let go of the judgments I’d attached to being alone—that it’s a problem, a punishment for not being good enough in some way. 

One night alone in my apartment, I felt restless and sad. I missed my husband. I missed my son. I even missed my mother. What to do with myself? I was staring out my window with nothing to do, no one to speak to. Just a person, staring out the window. Can you understand what I mean when I say that as I allowed the feeling of loneliness to arise in me, I felt a heartbreaking compassion, recognizing that every person everywhere throughout history has been subject to the very same loneliness I was feeling in that moment? I started to weep, with sadness and awe and grief and joy. I felt connected to the world in a new, different way, admiring the capability of the heart to hold all those feelings at once. And of course because it was my heart, too, how full I felt, and complete. 

This profound loneliness was, in fact, exactly the opposite of what I’d always been afraid of. I had, I realized, once again meandered into a place that I was, after many years, still unfamiliar with. And once again, it had yielded up a banquet of pleasure, unexpected and glorious. 

According to the Pew Research Center, more older people live alone in the US than anywhere else in the world. So it seems like a good idea (not to mention a healthy one) to try to figure out how to do that happily—in a way that doesn’t cut off the banquet-of-pleasure tap.

Reading this story years after I wrote it, something else struck me about expectations. Those rubber-soled flats, the tent-like garment, and the excessive interest in public television pretty much describe me—and some of my friends—to a “T” today, but so not in the way I thought it would. The fear of what I might become, signaling a kind of doom, was dressed in the very outfit I’m wearing as I write this. Glorious? Not exactly. But it’s us.

And speaking of rubber-soled flats…

“Ask Val” answers your urgent questions, Vol. 14

Yes, you, soaking your feet in a tub of—what is that, warm water and lavender Epsom salts?

Q: A couple of my toes have suddenly become gnarly and I’m developing what looks like a bunion. I’ve always taken good care of my feet! Why is this happening to me?

A: I feel you. Even if we wear shoes—rubber-soled or not—that don’t strangle our feet, eventually we all lose some elasticity and flexibility in the soft tissues—the tendons and ligaments. This can lead to increased stress on the bones, potentially causing them to change shape. And when the bones start to change shape, you’re looking at hammertoes and bunions. (All right, don’t look at them, but there they are.)

A tight Achilles’ tendon from years of wearing high heels can predispose you to such foot problems, so don’t wear heels when you don’t have to. (Duh.) Also, stretch your Achilles’ and the plantar fascia (the ligament that runs from your heel to the ball of your foot) and if your feet are hurting, consider getting a doctor’s evaluation; orthotics can prevent ugly problems from getting uglier.

A friend recently pointed out to me that someone who’s been walking around six miles a day during the year and a half of this pandemic has basically walked from coast to coast across the continental US. This same friend, a great walker, encouraged me to get a pair of Hoka sneakers, because they’re cushioned in such a way as to make walking more comfortable if you’re prone to foot, knee, or balance issues. Once aware of the brand, it looked to me like almost every woman over 50 wore them. Different styles fit differently, so it’s best to try them on rather than ordering them online.

Gravel gardens look good, but getting there is not half the fun. / iStock photo.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

EVER HEAR of a gravel garden?

This is not a rock garden, where rocks of various sizes are artfully placed among the shrubbish in—usually—some attempt at a Japanese aesthetic. 

Gravel gardens are four- to six-inch-deep beds of gravel thickly stuck about with plants. They require no mulch or fertilizer; the gravel suppresses weeds and retains water. 

Once established, they’re pretty much self-sustaining, requiring 80% less work than your usual . . . um, dirt and plants, or so says garden writer Margaret Roach. She recently provided a lengthy screed on the subject in the New York Times, illustrated with a photo of an enchanting stone cottage nestled in a thriving grove of trees, flowers and ornamental grasses, nourished only by a gravel bed. 

Sounds great, right? Easy peasy. Okay, let’s go! First thing is you remove about six inches of topsoil and replace it with six inches of gravel.

Break out the backhoe. Already we’re in trouble. 

Not to worry, you can do it with buckets, said My Prince. That’s the way they dig out basements in the city.

Hoo, boy. Operative word here: You.* 

This would certainly not be Me. I would sit on the back porch and direct You and your buckets and . . . 

It’s not that complicated, Roach reassures: “The engineering is a little like building a raised bed—although you don’t have to actually raise it, but you do have to excavate the topsoil layer to make room for that four- or five-inch gravel base.”

She says nothing, by the way, about the condition of the soil beneath. One expects it has to be . . . Turned? Churned? Improved? Anyway, to continue . . . 

Then you must install a six-inch-tall border, “a perimeter barrier,” she calls it, to keep the rocks in. “…Curb stones, bricks, concrete pavers or even found stones.” My back, my back or,  rather, yours.  

Now that you’ve cleared that top layer of soil, bring in a dump truck full of gravel, “washed hard stone like granite or quartz, not limestone or sandstone,” and spread it over the bed(s) to the aforementioned depth of six inches. 

What kind of rake does one need for this?

Now we get to installing or reinstalling your plants, which should be set about a foot apart. Roach provides a lovely list of candidates, in this case native perennials, grasses and such. Make sure all the soil is removed from the roots before planting to avoid importing weeds. Now, “using gloved fingers, not trowels,” make holes for the plants and insert them. 

Oy, your poor fingers. 

The good part is that maintenance is pretty much confined to clean-up. In late fall, trim back herbaceous plants and remove the debris and fallen leaves and spent flowers: You don’t want to invite weeds. A leaf blower is suggested to get the crap that has dug itself in. 

Unless you have dogs. But Roach doesn’t get into that. 

On second thought. Let’s change the “first thing” to: Install a hot tub Your joints will thank me. Not mine. Mine will still be resting on the back porch with my coffee, feet propped up, leafing through the Sunday Times for something else to ruminate on. 

* I have no any intention or desire to make a gravel garden. As it happened, the article appeared in the Sunday New York Times, right above one of my favorite real estate features: what you can buy for something like 2 million bucks or so in Brooklyn (1,200-square-foot condo, with 55,000 square feet of amenities), Miami (1,932-square-foot 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo with park views), or Akron, Ohio (a 5,643-square-foot house with a 9-car garage on 19 acres). Wonder what it’s like to live in Akron? That was an aside.

Olivia Colman in “The Lost Daughter.” / Courtesy of Netflix / AP.

By Valerie Monroe

I CAN’T REMEMBER how many times I’ve had to look up Maggie Gyllenhaal’s last name before spelling it, but that won’t stop me from making a couple of beauty-related observations about her extraordinary new movie, The Lost Daughter, which can be seen on Netflix.

You can read a grouchy analysis of the film here. I want to say something about two of the film’s faces—faces Gyllenhaal’s camera examines, caresses, and bumps up against in a way that often feels disturbingly intimate and intrusive. Inevitably, this line of thinking will lead me to a point about faces that have not been majorly manipulated by aesthetic interventions, which is by now an old story, but still worth a minute.

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To you in the back row muttering, “Why must we always talk about women’s aging faces rather than their accomplishments?” I offer up first, the man. Seventy-one-year-old Ed Harris plays a guy who’s spent 30 years in the blazing Greek sun blowing cigarette smoke through his nose—and has the skin to prove it. But is he something or what? (I’m also 71 and am grateful not to have his face, but rather a more . . . tended one, as we all know our culture is tougher on women than on men about what’s attractive as we age.) He dances like there’s no tomorrow, probably a good idea considering his chances of developing skin or lung cancer. But he is old—and his face, unblemished by youth, tells us he is full of, I don’t know . . . loneliness? It feels both shocking and refreshing to see a face so ravaged by expression and exposure.

All I want to say about Olivia Colman’s face is: Olivia Colman’s face.

Almost all I want to say. She spends nearly the entire movie with wet hair and the kind of makeup that’s meant to look like no makeup. With the camera two inches from her cheek, she is ravishing—at 47, she’s far from Western culture’s aesthetic ideal and, remarkably for an actress, seemingly untouched by intervention. Yet we can’t take our eyes off her. Why? Because her face, too, tells a story, a complicated story, and in the telling elicits a compelling desire in us to know it. What is that desire but attraction?

I think maybe Gyllenhaal, in an unintentional side gig, is beckoning us toward a beauty culture that—instead of fetishizing youth and sexuality—values and evokes, as great art does, presence, compassion, vulnerability, longing, curiosity, even a search for meaning.

I often urge you to learn to look at yourself without objectification. Bottom-line, that exercise allows and encourages you to let your face tell your stories, to recognize and welcome the character you’ve learned to conceal or obscure with a placid, pleasing expression, or with makeup, or with other, more intrusive aesthetic interventions.

Please take up your mirror now. Look into your own eyes. Can you see the story of a life in your own face? Can you find your own ravishing attraction?

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. 

By Nancy McKeon

I WENT TO Staples on Tuesday and bought . . . staples. No joke. Also a stapler.

What I didn’t buy was a mat to put under my desk chair. I’m sure the mats they had on offer were fine for protecting either carpeting or bare wood under that desk chair with serious wheels or casters. But they sure did nothing to project a sense of style into the whole Work From Home thing. Some were clear vinyl, others wood-look. Nothing in the least interesting.

And really, shouldn’t most things/people at least try to be interesting?

Turns out a few companies and retailers agree. While most of us know about the cute, colorful desktop tools and toys from companies like Poppin, a few companies are targeting the unexplored territory under the desk. (And, for all those ads showing smiling people cuddling with their laptops on cushy sofas, I’d wager that most serious work gets done at a home desk or table.)

Mats for under a rolling desk chair have a few requirements. Sturdiness for sure. And they can’t have much of a pile, so the wheels of commerce can keep turning. The most common size seems to be three feet by four, so some of the chair mats, though sturdy, fold in half for shipping and even moving around the house. The standard height for pile seems to be ¼ inch, but I don’t think you can just choose any outdoor rug with the same height and call it a day: The felt-like surface counts too.

Here are a few examples I found. I bought a wildly colored Heriz-style mat (okay, I’m being generous about the Heriz part) from Overstock; it was about $120. It sits under my lime-green Go-Cart rolling desk from CB2 (pity, these days it comes only in white or black, $179) and looks wildly inappropriate. Which makes perfect sense to me.

Wayfair.com is coming to your home office’s rescue with this talk-about-lively chair mat from Anji Mountain, right, whose pattern looks like American Indian motifs crossed with subcontinent Indian colors. It’s about $145. If it’s a little too lively for you, scroll down the Wayfair page: Anji Mountain has subtle Oriental and geometric  (left, $133) styles as well, plus there are mats from Kavka Designs (some of them round) and Bungalow Rose.

LEFT: The Rug’d Collection from Anji Mountain features lots of color, left, including the au courant distressed look.

RIGHT: Retailer Ballard Designs sells a lot of home-office desks and handsome wall units, so I guess the lightbulb went off and they recently introduced a desk-chair mat. I love the Antelope pattern, inspired by their signature Antelope Rug, but the mat also comes in a more subdued linen-look Heather pattern and classic gray linen-look Chancey pattern.

The one thing most offices have that home work spaces don’t is one of those raised foot rests. You can find them at places such as Staples and Office Depot, but Humanscale produced something a lot more sleek and inviting for one’s home, this Humanscale Ergonomic Foot Rocker. Available in black or cherry wood veneer, it’s $119 at Crate and Barrel. Your back will thank you.

LEFT: I admit I foresee trouble if the Dodecahedron Sticky Memo Ball comes to live in my home. But it’s so darn cute! It’s $14 at Poppin.com. Twenty-five little sticky pentagonal sheets per side times 12 sides adds up to 300 sheets—plus there’s a “fortune” printed at the bottom of each stack so the dodecahedron won’t go to waste after all the sticky notes are stuck all over the room; the 4½-inch-across ball can be a New Age 8 Ball.

RIGHT: Admit it: You can’t find the stapler on your cluttered desk (or am I projecting?). Poppin’s stapler and tape dispenser duo (I can’t find the tape dispenser either) stick out for sure in aqua. But they’re also available in classic white, blush, dark gray, slate blue and a very sexy sage. The pair is $30.

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 cherry tree, in full bloom last year, from the second-floor sunroom off my office. On the front, cherry “mulch”: The tree, past its peak, scatters petals on the path to the garage. / Photos by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

‘THE WILLOWS . . .  leap into the air with tremendous verve, and in five years reached thirty feet.”

Thirty feet in five years. That’s my kind of tree, said my greedy little brain in yet another misguided thought.

Mirabel Osler’s A Gentle Plea for Chaos may be the perfectly named book for me, as chaos is my preferred state of being, and the worst one for me to dwell upon. Her acres upon English acres with their streams and hillocks have nothing to do with the two poor little patches of earth, one fore, one aft, of our unimposing townhouse. So far, in my reading, she’s planted 20 trees, and that’s Chapter One. Such space she has, a gulping wonder for a magpie eye like mine. 

If one tree doesn’t satisfy, the next will. And, oh! Isn’t that one pretty. I’ll take three. 

Meanwhile, I find the only problem with plants and trees too big or too many for the petite garden is that they are too big or too many for the petite garden. But will I ever learn?

For example, it is no small matter to remove a 15-year-old Kwanzan cherry when it has grown (in an I told you so manner) to a scale where one can prune branches from a second-floor window. 

I will say, it certainly makes a statement. 

Wouldn’t virtual reality be a wonder here. A hologram of a cherry in full bloom. As the tree doesn’t really exist, the ground can be planted with all manner of sun lovers, roses tumbling about with iris, peonies, petunias. O! to grow a zinnia. 

And wouldn’t it be grand to revisit that hologram in, say, January, when (if) snow piles up on the porch railings and the garage roof. An explosion of pink in the depth of winter white. 

Meanwhile, the cherry, the real one, is the largest of our gardening misadventures. It was chosen for precisely what it has become, a massive screen between our garden and the townhouses that grew up in what was once a schoolyard parking lot behind our garage. Why, one could romp naked beneath it in midsummer and none but a neighboring gymnast could catch a glimpse, which I wouldn’t recommend, by the way.

Grow it certainly did. Each year the struggle remains to find anything that will flower beneath its mighty limbs.

Luckily, I’ve grown fond of shade, and enjoying the calm of various tones of green and those plants happy to flourish, or at least exist, in severely dappled shade. Ferns, hydrangeas, and the like. I’ve also grown to appreciate pot gardening, meaning plants grown in pots; there’s not enough sun for the other sort. These can be moved to chase the sunshine, sometimes several times a day if I’m of a mind to (usually not). 

In a week or two I can clip some stems from the tree and force the blooms in a vase. Another few weeks and the tree itself will burst into double-ruffled pink flowers— unlike the comparatively prissy petals of the Yoshino cherries that surround the Tidal Basin,* looking like a wedding party with a motley assortment of guests, obese families in a shouting match of plaid shorts and shirts, so they can find one another. Sniff. 

Ours are riotously fleshy, flashy flowers that will last a week or so, depending on how cool the air remains, and will then snow down upon the flower beds in a dense pink mulch punctuated by pink and purple tulips. 

A storybook fantasy, so brief. So pleasurable. 

Perhaps . . . it’s not a mistake. 

*The National Park Service says peak bloom of the Yoshino cherries should be March 22 to 25, 2022. The annual Cherry Blossom Festival, which sometimes coincides with the blooming of the trees, is from March 20 to April 17. Check out the events here.

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. 

iStock photo.

By Valerie Monroe

THIS POST BEGAN with a reader question:

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

Alice: As the hair on my head has turned snow white so has the hair on my eyebrows. They have also thinned as I age. Any thoughts on that issue?

Of course I have thoughts! Here’s what I have had to say on the matter.

And then:

Sad! / MyLittleBird photo.

By Nancy McKeon

I WAS SITTING here yesterday morning reading a story in the New York Times and wanted to look something up. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone. Nothing. Oh crap, where did I leave it now? I picked up the muddle of newspapers in front of me. Nope, nothing under there. I started to get up, to check the kitchen, the foyer, the bathroom, when I realized, of course, that the phone was right in front of my face—I was reading the Times story on it. Yeah. And not the first time that has happened.

This story is usually about you frantically looking between the sofa cushions for your glasses while they’re sitting on your head—I’ve gone searching while I was wearing them! What I was clearly looking for was the 20/20 vision of my younger days.

The classic story generally has the person’s husband or kid pointing out the obvious. That’s where you come in. Thanks. You may laugh now.

Yes, I can do this with my iPad too. / MyLittleBird photo.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

WHEN WASHINGTON GARDENER Magazine posted an item about red-twig dogwood a few weeks ago on Facebook, it opened up quite the box of thoughts.

First of all, I’d never heard of it. It is astonishing how little I know about so much.

This is not the dogwood we’re all familiar with, graceful trees with branches that bear clusters of flowers each spring in shades of red, pink, and white. This is a devil-may-care native shrub, with flaming red canes that can shoot up every which way, growing seven or eight feet in a single season and sporting abundant white blooms.

They’re also simple to propagate. Kathy Jentz, the editor and publisher of the award-winning publication, said you simply take a nice long cane and stick it in the soil to the third node, or pimple, or whatever you want to call the little knobs on the branches, and Lo! It will grow.

If you don’t have a neighbor with this dazzling plant, you can find one at places like Lowe’s, above, or a garden center. / Spring Hill Nurseries image.

This is the kind of plant I’m always taken with. No fancy splicing and fussing and misting and god knows what. You take my favorite gardening tool, a chopstick, stick it in the soil to make a nice hole, insert your twig, and off you go.

Most delightful, when the leaves drop in the fall, the branches retain their blazing red hue through the winter and on again into spring.

If you have a sunny spot, red-twig dogwood is handy as an accent plant and makes a gorgeous hedge, particularly when planted in front of an evergreen background. (There’s also a yellow variety, if that better floats your boat.)

I’ve seen only a single patch of it in my Capitol Hill neighborhood, in a garden in front of Trader Joe’s. Its fiery branches form a brilliant accent among other native plants.

A frustrating series of calls followed, with small local garden centers having none—and no guarantee when any would be arriving. So, I’m thinking, dark of night, mask in place, secateurs in hand . . .

But first I contacted Kathy, who kindly offered me a plant from her Silver Spring, Maryland, home. “Bring a bucket,” she said.

I also brought My Prince, and his little white truck. You never know, you know.
Kathy’s place looks less like a garden than a horticultural experiment, with hundreds of plants underfoot, in pots, and in containers waiting to be planted somewhere. She clipped a few five-foot canes from her largest dogwood, a good 8-feet tall—it’s about 10 years old, she said, and most of the branches are brown, not red.

“I cut a lot of the red ones for an arrangement this winter,” she told me. “The red only appears on new growth.” There’s another happy reason to grow them, they’d be gorgeous in a display mid-winter. Plus, you can plant the stems later.

Handing My Prince a shovel, she pointed out a nice little plant, which came unearthed along with a deep tangle of roots. These, she said, will run underground and sprout new plants. “You have to keep an eye on it,” she said.

The plant went in the bucket, and the shovel was replaced with long-handled clippers, which My Prince used to trim ivy that had grown on her house wall, threatening the gutters, while I directed him to watch his step. Our thanks for the plants and the lesson.

Kathy will soon be pruning the big plant low to the ground, and new red canes will quickly grow and soon be smothered in small white flowers for a spring display.

No doubt their availability at large garden centers will also grow as the weeks roll along, but keep an eye peeled in your neighborhood and maybe you’ll luck into a cutting too.

iStock

By Valerie Monroe

THE OLDER I get, the less I wear. Makeup, that is.

Why? The reason lies in the very point of wearing it—to imitate the appearance of robust health and reproductive vigor. (And you thought you were only painting your face!) A 20-, 30-, or 40-year-old woman with flushed cheeks, a mouth stained to look plump and biteable, and dark lashes emphasizing the whites of the eyes and the limbal ring around the iris—both indicators of good health and youth—is enhancing or flagging attributes she already possesses. Once those qualities fade with age, we’re less enhancing them with makeup so much as replacing them.

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

Think of the difference between real flowers and fake ones. There are fake blooms so delicate, so perfect, and so lifelike that we might think they’re real even after we touch them. But when we go in for a sniff and realize we’ve been had? Fuck me! We’re hardwired to detect genuineness in order to evaluate what’s trustworthy—which is essential for survival. When we’ve been tricked, we can feel deeply uncomfortable. Think about the last time you saw a woman whose face wasn’t quite right. Maybe she was immoderately treated with filler or she was excessively made-up, over-blushed, looking out from eyes darkly lined or heavily shadowed. What’s the feeling you got, underneath the curiosity or aversion? Was it . . . mistrust?

So, as we step and repeat our way along the red carpet to our final big event, we might want to be especially discreet about makeup. One study showed that, when applied judiciously, makeup had a significant influence on reducing age perception (subjects were thought to be around three years younger than their actual age). But when makeup was dramatic or overdone, the subjects were seen as less likable and less trustworthy. Obviously, the winner is . . .

Because you all seem to like product recommendations—and because a friend recently asked me how she could prepare her face for a special occasion (after not having to for almost two years in isolation)—I offer my most recent efforts in that arena. Fair warning: I am very lazy when it comes to making up my face. Looking for the anti-expert? Welcome home. But I did learn the little I know from the best of the best.

I use 10 products, which suddenly seems like eight too many. But anyway:

• Instead of foundation, which can look cakey and emphasize lines and wrinkles (and the soft hair on mature skin), I mix one part Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer with two parts of my regular moisturizer in my palm. Apply as you would any moisturizer.
• A couple of well-blended dots of cream blush on the apples of your cheeks.
• A very light dusting of translucent powder all over, including on eyelids so the eyeliner doesn’t migrate; then Laura Mercier powder black eyeliner on upper lids applied very close to the lashes with an eyeliner brush. Suggestion from the doyenne of makeup artists, Bobbi Brown, about applying liner: Start at the middle of the lid and line to the outer end, then go back to middle and line toward the nose, which is easier than trying to draw a straight line across the entire eyelid.
• Curl top lashes with Tweezerman eyelash curler, then two coats of black mascara.
• Eyebrows penciled in lightly with Benefit Precisely My Brow pencil.
• I still use those Chubby Sticks lip color balm from the Ice Age, which I’ve read have been discontinued and I see are hard to find, so you might try another ancient one I like, for a pretty stain.
• As a final step, if I’m going to a celebration, I set everything with a splash of vermouth.

I use makeup now less to mimic the cues of a potential healthy mate (as long ago I tenderly kissed my reproducing days good-bye) than to be sure my face actually shows up in living color in a photograph.

It’s obvious you won’t find trends here; there isn’t a single new product listed above. But in my defense against trendiness, please see below, from Skin Inc:

A study to find what the top trending beauty and cosmetic searches were for 2020 and 2021 in the UK revealed that eyeliner on guys was the No. 1 search, with a 282.28% increase and black lipstick came in not far behind with a healthy 58.46% increase.

If I had a case, I’d be resting it.

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. 

These phalaenopsis hybrids, from the 2019 Smithsonian orchid show, demonstrate the orchid’s capacity for providing luscious color. The 2022 show, “Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women,” is free and open to the public through April 24.
/ Photos, above and on the front, by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

I KNOW you’re just dying to know what My Prince got me for Valentine’s Day.

Tiny orchids. Three of them—just what I suggested in my column several days before the holiday. Each is a delicate shade of pinkish purple and comes from Trader Joe’s, which I noticed the other day is more awash in flowers than it has been of late. Like a blooming flower show, it is.

These were not the single pots of orchids ($6.99), but the expensive ones ($9.99) that come in little white ceramic boat-shaped pots and sport a small green ruffle of bird’s-nest fern alongside.

 I put them on the mantel, as planned, but first—with some trepidation—removed them from their boats, separating ferns and orchids and repotting them all in silver vessels—a gravy boat, a cigarette urn, a baby cup, a squat creamer—and interspersed antique rabbits, a small copper bird house, a this and a that, along with sprigs of baby’s breath left over from a previous arrangement.

It looked cheerful, springy, but I was, as I said, filled with trepidation. I assumed My Prince was attracted to the sleek little boats as much as he was the orchids and would object to my dismantling the display, which to my eye was glaringly white and had an air of deliberation, of uniformity, of organization, all of which make me itch.

 The boats, as I said to myself, working up an excuse, could be used for something else like, um, horseradish dishes, olive servers, beet dishes—dark red would look dashing in them. I like them fine, just not as planters. I might also point out that they were made in China, which he avoids like . . . the plague.

 As it happened, he said nothing.

 However, as a very late comer to computers, and having recently discovered the wonders of the Internet, and even more recently Google, he took pleasure in instructing me about orchid care. I was, he said, to put an ice cube in each plant once a week and that was sufficient watering, and that they absolutely should not be put on the mantel because with heat from the nightly fires they’ll dry out and die.

He likes to point things out to me, being older and wiser: “I was riding a tricycle when you were still in diapers,” he says.

How true, I smiled and nodded, and left everything in place.

If you can’t get enough of orchids, their myriad shapes and hallucinogenic colors, the US Botanic Garden in DC has an extravaganza for you.

With the greenhouse at the foot of the US Capitol still Covid-closed, the 26th annual orchid show is once again being held under the vaulted glass ceiling of the Kogod Courtyard, the centerpiece of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Hundreds of varieties of orchids are brilliantly displayed—none of them from Trader Joe’s—along with the stories of women who have enriched our understanding of these magnificent exotics through botanical art, science, and exploration. 

“Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women,” is free and open to the public through April 24.

Tiny orchids and other treasures top the fireplace mantel chez Cavanaugh. The silver creamer, cigarette urn, etc., are unpolished. LittleBird Stephanie claims that either Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich said that without tarnish how would people know they were silver? Good (and convenient) point. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

Synthetic grass leads up to a pool in Anaheim, California. / Photo above and on the front from the Synthetic Grass Store in California, octurfstore.com.

This Green Acre column first ran a year ago. We’re rerunning it to give LittleBird Stephanie a well-deserved week off. She STILL doesn’t like fake grass.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

WHEN I WAS a kid I had a globe. It was mostly blue—water, you know—and suspended on a gold metal stand that let me give it a twirl, which I did from time to time, setting it spinning without looking and jabbing my finger at a spot. 

Aha! Outer Mongolia!

Oh ho! Bora Bora!

Oops. Splash.

Why I did this I don’t know. I did no more with the location than identify it. Then I’d go back to whatever it was I had been doing, feeding my white mouse, Willie, or reading about Egyptian burial customs, which held such grisly fascination for me when I was 10. 

When I get stuck with this column I do something similar: cracking open The Essential Earthman, my favorite of garden writer Henry Mitchell’s books, and seeing where I land. Fortuitously, I always land on something relevant. As there is little that is not relevant to something, this is handy. 

A pathway in Anaheim, California, is covered with artificial grass. / Photo from the Synthetic Turf Store in California, ocurfstore.com.

Today the book fell open to “Living Without a Lawn,” which is something I do very well. Mitchell, who could knock the pompous out of the most pretentious garden fusspot, said of lawns, especially small ones: “It’s particularly silly . . . in the minuscule little warrens of Georgetown and Capitol Hill. . . . ”

As I happen to live on Capitol Hill and possess two minuscule gardens, one front and one rear, with neither sporting a blade of grass, this is right on target. 

The notion that “the best people have lawns,” he said, “died about 1910 in the advanced sector of the population. . . .  I can remember quite well when the best people had cows.” President Taft’s wife, also known as Mrs. Taft, used to bring her prize heifers (or whatever they’re called) to graze on the White House Lawn, he noted. 

I could make a joke here but won’t. 

Few people today bother with lawns on Capitol Hill, but of the few lawns a surprising number are fake. These are not cheap fakes, either. With the starting price of homes hovering at around a million bucks and residents with multi-million-dollar egos, they wouldn’t be. They are made of your absolute finest, most luxuriant and costly plastic—the Prada of plastics—magnificently clipped, excruciatingly lifelike, bearing absolutely no resemblance to Astroturf and its ilk. 

So good are these installations that one (meaning me) when sensing a fraud, must bend and attempt to pluck a blade to be sure. This is an unpleasant experience. While one enjoys trompe l’oeil and the occasional bit of witty garden fakery, one does not enjoy being fooled by expanses of plastic dreck. 

I would bang on the door of one of these homeowners and beg an interview but, not being a good liar, would be unable to mask my hostility to their greensward for long—even behind both mask and Ray-Bans—and my angst would spew forth like snake venom. What possible excuse . . .

Instead of such horror, consider Mitchell’s suggestion for a shady spot—a framework of shrubs and such fine woodland performers as azaleas, camellias, lilies of the valley, bluebells and “grand little bulbous things like anemones, crocuses, and the like.”

For a place in the sun, a lily pond would do well, with a spot to sit and contemplate the “toads, fishes, water lilies, and such. With a backdrop of roses . . . there would be no need for a lawn. I am speaking still of tiny plots,” he said.

As am I. 

Fake turf offers a dizzying array of grass types and styles, including Kentucky Blue and Fescue. The Ultra grasses are shorter and intended for putting greens. There’s also a “Pet Paradise” fake grass that’s shorter and more compact. Crazy! / Photos from the Synthetic Grass Store in California, octurf.com.

iStock

For nearly 16 years Valerie Monroe was the beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine, where she wrote the popular “Ask Val” column.

By Valerie Monroe

Q: “I’ve noticed I’m getting more age spots on my face. How can I get rid of them?”

A: It’s obvious that you, wearing that sexy leopard shift and matching slides, are aware that some spots are considered beautiful or stylish while others are definitely not. The beautiful ones—like these on a magnificent feline—evolved for the purpose of camouflage, in an environment, O Best Beloveds, “full of trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows” (said Kipling).

Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.

You, on the other hand, are most likely wearing your fashionable spots for the opposite reason: to stand out and make a statement. There’s a grab bag of explanations for the popularity of animal prints, the most prominent being that they evoke a subconscious combination of fear and arousal, power and eroticism. Not to get too into the weeds (or the bush), but since the spots worked for the leopard, it does indicate evolutionary success, which gives the look a certain power.

My friend Bernhard Fink, an evolutionary psychologist, recently reminded me that it’s never been easy or inexpensive to hunt for animal skins or prepare them for wear. Additionally, if our ancestors had a hard time securing certain goods, they had higher value. In spite of changing cultural attitudes (like those toward fur), many associations relating to status are hardwired in our brains. Hence, our continuing attraction to leopard print.

Right, the spots on your face. They could be any number of things, so it’s a good idea to have them checked by a board-certified dermatologist, says dermatologist Laurel Naversen Geraghty, MD. It sounds as if you’re looking at age spots or sun spots (called lentigines)—and we have good reason not to like them.

A couple of studies (like this one and this one) demonstrate that the facial skin age of women is influenced not only by the appearance of lines and wrinkles, but also by unevenness, discoloration, and a decrease in light reflection (how light bounces off the skin). Researchers found both men and women are remarkably sensitive to even small changes in skin color distribution. The happier news: When discoloration is removed, faces are judged to be more attractive. Speaking of hard-wiring, skin clarity, evenness of tone and a slight blush are all cues to youth, and good health, and consequently a good choice of mate (in case you’re interested).

So how to remove the offending patchy-blatchy? Geraghty suggests topical skin brighteners and especially likes bleaching creams (hydroquinone), topical retinoids (over-the-counter retinol cream or prescription tretinoin cream), or adapalene gel, in La Roche Posay Effaclar Adapalene gel. One of her very favorites, an ingredient that’s been used in Asia for some time, has finally caught on in the US. It’s called tranexamic acid; used topically, it gradually brightens and evens pigment safely, visibly, and without a lot of irritation. Here’s Geraghty’s recommendation for a product with this ingredient.

If you see no fading after around three months of consistent use, you may want to try an in-office treatment. A chemical peel, laser, or light therapy are all good choices, says Geraghty. Intense pulsed light (IPL, broad-band light, or BBL) is an in-office procedure that Geraghty says hurts but is worth it for rapid, noninvasive improvement in skin tone. (I’ve had this treatment several times and it feels like rubber bands snapping against your face. If you have an older brother, it may feel familiar.) She also loves pico lasers for stubborn sun spots. It’s the fastest laser wavelength available and is a powerful but low-pain way to reduce or erase individual spots. (I’ve also had a couple of pico treatments and thought my skin looked fresher for a few weeks. It didn’t hurt; it felt like the sting you get when skiing down a mountain in a light snowfall.)

However, Geraghty points out that none of this will help without strict, consistent sun protection, preferably with a broad spectrum spf 50+ tinted sunscreen containing iron oxide. Here’s a good one. And until your remedies start to work, you can do your own kind of camouflage in the urban (or suburban) jungle. I’ve always loved Bobbi Brown concealers. She has a new line called Jones Road and she was kind enough to send me a box of the stuff. The only thing missing was these concealer pencils, so I can’t tell you how they work—but if Bobbi made them, I’ll try them. The pencils come in 25 shades from fair to dark.

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