The author’s “garden,” leading to the garage, circa 1983, when she and The Prince purchased their Capitol Hill house. COVER: The lush green that now envelops the same space, some 30-plus years later (complete with a charming new garage door). / Photos by Stephanie Cavanaugh..

THIS IS NOT a tutorial for gardeners, at least those sorts of gardeners who are organized and careful about watering and pH levels and plants that prefer acidic or alkaline soil, or who consider pruning, for god’s sake.

Fundamentally, I am very lazy, and would much prefer to direct gardeners to do this and that, not do it myself. But thirty-odd years ago my husband, The Prince, and I happened to buy a house, spitting distance from the Capitol, and the house happened to have an area behind it that could only be called potential.

Here is what was there: dirt. Not particularly good dirt either, just dirty dirt, not soft and turned and rich and lovely and squirming with fat liver-colored worms. It was gritty and dry and heavy with clods of clay.

There was also a stick that the guy who owned the house before us said was an apricot tree. When he left we found a naked GI Joe doll in the attic, with hair glued on in a strategic place, and a hand gun. There was a rare lack of dispute between My Prince and me about the disposition of the doll. The gun was more contentious, though it eventually went. I believe there was some manly Clint Eastwood make-my-day vision involved as the neighborhood was—well, let us just say, to put it calmly, 30-some years ago there were no fancy prams, nannies and $35-a-pound cheeses on Capitol Hill.

But that is neither here nor there.

On either side of the 15-by-30-foot plot of dirt were walls. On the right, between us and the alley, was a six-foot-high wooden fence, which is just high enough for children to pop up and down on some miscreant race or other, little jack-in-the-box faces grinning big-eyed at the steaks on the BBQ.

On the other side was a rough-textured block wall, also six feet, which was just high enough to hide the neighbor’s derelict car and clothesline. This was painted salmon, as was the garage, which brought up the rear and had actual charm, like a little brick cottage with two windows flanking the center door.

So we had walls and dirt and a stick and a straight, if a bit cracked, concrete walk that led from the back porch steps to the garage.

Oh yes,  there were also some tufts of patchy grass-like stuff, like an adolescent beard without the zits, about which there is a story that will be told.

The Prince brought me a soil test kit, which I admired and stuck in my “potting shed,” a jumbled table under the porch. It’s still there under something, I’m sure. Then, as now, my philosophy is: If it grows fine, if it dies it’s an opportunity to plant something else.

Over a winter of daydreaming I developed a plan. Certainly not a plan based in any knowledge of gardening, which previously consisted of several pots of this and that on our apartment’s fire escape in Adams Morgan, and before that a collection of guacamole pits stuck with toothpicks and arranged on my New York apartment windowsill. There was also a hideous philodendron in bondage to a wooden post, but that’s another story.

Chez Cavanaugh some 30-plus years later. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

I worked up my nerve by studying House & Garden, the endlessly amusing gardening columns of Henry Mitchell in the Washington Post (his books  are still available on Amazon and make for a lovely read), and the insanely expensive White Flower Farm catalogue. So armed, I bravely set forth.

Along the ugly path I trompe-l’oeil-ed a brick walk with brick-colored stain and hung lace curtains in the garage windows. The Prince topped the walls with an extra three feet of trellis, which could arguably be called temporary plant supports should the gendarmes that enforced the wall-height code ever catch us going over the sanctioned six feet. And upon these walls would grow vines and various climbing things in splendid profusion.

Two flagstone patios were put in, one on either side of the stick that insisted it was a tree. One would be used for the round dining table that used to live on my parents’ terrace, the other would be set up with the white wicker sofa and chairs we found at a garage sale for a hundred bucks, the first of many coups. That this was the sunny side of the garden had yet to occur to me.

My planting decisions consisted of two words: I want. Some of these rank with my finest irreversible mistakes.

So it was that I observed a neighbor’s magnificent wisteria, perhaps 40 feet of twisting branches hung with what I liked to call “pendulous” of drop-dead purple sweetness across her garage roof,  and I wanted one.

A few blocks away was a ridiculously floriferous yellow rose that scaled a two-story wall, splayed out to clamber along a second-floor railing. I wanted one, or something similar but in pink.

And the honeysuckle that draped a wall on Independence Avenue, I wanted that too. Is there any other plant that so brilliantly announces that it’s spring?

So the wisteria went in the far right corner, where I imagined it draping fabulously across the garage roof to meet a climbing Queen Elizabeth rose on the left. The pale pink rose blossoms would be trained (hoo ha) like a frippily scented umbrella above the dining table. I could pass out at the memory of this thought.

Along the side walls I planted ivy, which I figured would grow thick and fast for a splendid background. And overplanted a honeysuckle, dead center on the alley side, which would tendril along toward the wisteria.

And good lord. I’m hyperventilating.

The garden “bed” or “border”—I use quotes here solely to indicate how delusional I was— would be planted mainly with annuals, since I have absolutely no patience and needed to finish Wonderland the first summer, since in a year or three surely we’d move into something a bit bigger. To this I say again, hoo ha.

I smashed away at the hard-packed soil and dug in a patch of lily bulbs, because I wanted them. Other than they, Eastern Market provided flats of fairy-colored cosmos and frilly cleome, fringes of white alyssum along the edges and masses of zinnias and dahlias. A psychedelic blather of color and texture that needed only a dusting of glitter to resemble a birthday card for a 5-year-old girl. My favorite sort of birthday card, by the way.

I had no space to waste on vegetables, which were easily found at the market.

It’s amazing how well annuals can do growing out of their itty bitty plugs of soil. That you can get an entire season’s growth from so little is simply extraordinary.

If you continue to plant those little plugs every summer for 30 years or so you’ll find you’ve absolutely inadvertently created rich and friable soil out of hard-packed dirt.

And sticks that are said to be apricot trees do grow, eventually. One spring day it will tickle the second-story roof and burst into white blossoms that will in turn drop away to reveal little nubbins that grow round and apricot-colored and continue to fatten and then fall, since there’s no way to pick them, and that rot and drop on your head and squish underfoot, bloated with maggots, and befoul your life until the damn thing up and dies, thank god.

But that’s another story.

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

Next week in Green Acre, Gardener Cavanaugh will discuss the demise of the apricot and what happens when it is replaced with a kwanzan cherry. Hint, a very brief thrill. Stephanie is currently at work on a book about life in a small city garden.

I’M JUST GOING OUT to buy a bra. So why do I feel like I’m headed for a colonoscopy?

Being firmly, though not so much anymore, of the braless generation, I am not totally unfamiliar with undergarments. But the only bra I possess of the non-sports variety (a modest concession to time and gravity) is a hot pink push-up number purchased 20 years ago.

It’s in pristine condition but just won’t suit my Mother of the Bride Dress, a black gown with a rhinestone doodad closing the faux wrap front. It’s a heavyweight jersey and as close as I could get to pajamas.

While The Bride breathed a sigh of relief that I selected something other than black pants, she pointed out that the visible combination of back lines from my ancient bra and the top edge of the essential Spanx just would not do, even if I spent the evening with my back against the wall.

How can this be?! I have no back fat! Whereforth do I bulge? While my thighs and midsection might be well-larded, I have a fine back, or so I’m told by my princely husband. I don’t spend much time looking at it so I gratefully take his word.

But, apparently, if the poitrine, as they so glamorously call it in French, is not hoisted, I look like a Renaissance painting of a mother in waiting. You know the ones, with the hands demurely clasped above the swollen belly–just add jowls, and a scowl.

My friend Kathleen swears that a proper brassiere is a life-altering experience. Make it one of those body-shapers, as they’re so coyly called (a girdle? Heaven forbid!) and the abdominal swelling will be magically diminished as my breasts proudly rise. Clothing will hang sveltely and line-free. I will be magnificent.

So we are off to Nordstrom at Tysons Corner, which has, Kathleen says, the mother lode of foundation garments. A storage room so vast, she assures me, that various hoists and compression agents are stacked floor to ceiling–she caught a glimpse of it one day when the door was left ajar.

Alas, Nordstrom disappoints. While there are lovely, lacy, dainty items in abundance, the selection for the (oh lord) matron is lacking.

Now, let’s be perfectly clear: I am not fat. I am, in fact, still several sizes below the Average American Woman. But getting into the available body-shapers was like stuffing a sausage casing. How are they supposed to get on, anyway? I tried pulling one over my head and my arms were jammed into my ears. A full-length number got stuck between my knees and my hips.

Two gorgeous bustiers were a total bust, even with a foot-on-the-rear maneuver by Kathleen trying to get the little hooks latched. Even if it fitted I’d require a lady’s maid.

By then, I was beyond shame. Kathleen and the saleswoman were no longer speaking to me; they consulted each other as they stripped one thing off and pulled on another, then headed off for larger sizes. Larger Sizes!

On I struggled, staring at the mirror in misery, pushing this bit of flab here, that bit there, and then noticing in horror the sign on the wall informing me that Nordstrom’s staff monitored the dressing rooms. So I sat in a corner, and pondered my mismatched socks.

Who are these things made for? Anyone who can tug one on can’t possibly need it.

And the ones that fitted me? They looked like something my Aunt Ruthie used to fold her pendulous boobs into in the cabana dressing room.

You want mortification? I thought Nordstrom prided itself on its broad array of sizes. I guess that’s just the shoes.

Kathleen finally arrived with a pretty lace thing that would do the job if it were only a bit bigger, and they can order it and I can try it at home, if I can flag someone down in the street to assist with the hooks . . . so I do, and consider myself done.

But I’m not! Macy’s is next. Kathleen is indefatigable in this quest. If she hadn’t towed me out here, I’d have left an hour and a half ago.

Macy’s is, in fact, good! Almost immediately I see something that resembles an armored black tank top with a built-in chest. It goes on, and is not even the largest available size, which could be its greatest selling point besides being 20 percent off. I’m willing to instantly whip out my credit card, though Kathleen insisted I sit and bend and hop around like I’m dancing to make sure it didn’t make a gradual creep up my torso.

It didn’t.

I now almost have two undergarments, but since I’m going on a diet in the morning I’m not removing any tags.

–Stephanie Cavanaugh

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I feel like my face is sucking a lemon.

Per instructions, I’ve pumped two squirts of Allurica Clinical Strength 4 Minute Facelift onto my fingertips and rubbed it in vigorously from chin to nose, then pumped another two to cover my forehead and scowl lines.

Now I’m to sit still and wait for it to completely set and magically lift my face.

Mindy Miller Berg, my pusher, says, “it’s a temporary fix, but there’s nothing like it for special occasions; when you’re going out to dinner or being photographed.”

Special occasion.

Dinner.

Photographs.

Check, check, check . . .

Sounds like a wedding, which I just happen to have coming up, my daughter’s, in fact. On April 18. And, oh man, do I need work.

If Mindy’s name is familiar, by the way, the 51-year-old New Jersey-based marketing pro, editor, stand-up comedian and sometime photographer underwent a physical and emotional overhaul courtesy of “Today” show  nutritionist Joy Bauer and her Get Fit Club last year.

Before and after with Allurica.

Mindy tripped across Allurica when a friend asked her to take before and after photos at a conference, and watched as one after another guest slapped on the product and sat in front of the camera. “I finally got up my gumption and tried it. I said, Holy crap! I don’t buy into hype but . . . ”

That’s four minutes of typing, excuse me while I go check my face.

Well, how interesting! The marionette lines that have etched themselves from the corners of my mouth to my chin are gone. My forehead is, I think, 50 percent smoother.

Since Mindy cautioned me not to use anything too heavy or oily, I can now put on moisturizer, BB cream, a little bronzer, mascara, lipstick and, hey . . .

I look a tad tighter, but not plasticized. Better, though not incredible. I could be deluding myself.

Let’s just go and ask my husband’s opinion, although this is frequently a mistake.

Sidling bravely into his office I say, “Honey, does my face look any different?”

“Than what?” He says, looking up from the paperwork he was shuffling about on his desk.

“Than it did yesterday.”

“You’re wearing makeup.”

“It’s not the makeup.”

“I’m not supposed to notice the lipstick?”

“No.”

“This is a little tricky,” he says warily, suspecting a trap.

“Just be honest. Do you see anything different?”

“You don’t usually have lipstick on in the morning.”

“It’s not the lipstick.”

He studies me in a way he hasn’t studied me in years and says: “You did something to your eyebrows?”

“No, I didn’t do anything to my eyebrows. Do I look at all different?”

“You have color right here,” he says, rubbing the apples of his cheeks.

“Yeah, but it’s not the color.”

“Did you get implants?” (I’m surprised that he says this so calmly)

“No,” I say, resorting to hints. “Does my face look any tighter . . . or less lined?”

“Since yesterday?” A lengthy period of facial study ensues. “Well. Your cheeks look full and firm, is that what I’m supposed to notice?”

“Maybe. How about my forehead?”

“I see furrows in it.”

“Hmmm, okay,” I say with, I guess, a hint of disappointment.

“Was I not supposed to see them?”

“How about my chin?”

“No, I don’t see anything; did I use to see something?”

I laugh a small, aha! laugh and return to my brow. “Do my forehead furrows look the same?”

Another studied pause: “Basically . . . you look less furrowed than you usually do. What is it, an overnight serum?” (He knows from serum since there are bottles of various brands falling off the bathroom shelf.)

“It’s a four-minute facelift.”

“My goodness,” he says. Which in retrospect is an oddly mild reply. Possibly he’s relieved. “So, how long does it last? Four minutes? Walking down the aisle takes longer than that. ” He laughs soundlessly, which for him is uproarious and always an unsettling sight, rather like viewing a silent movie.

Three hours later and the grooves below my mouth are reappearing, although my face still appears softer–like a smear of Old Hollywood Vaseline on the camera lens. Maybe I could make it through the wedding. Mindy says she sometimes reapplies Allurica to trouble spots a few times a day, but the longer she uses it the less she needs. “You don’t have a lot of time to rest in bitch face. Even though it’s temporary, it’s muscle memory.”

At $90 for a one-month supply, one would hope there was some incremental improvement. Well . . . Mindy says with regular use you retrain your face to–not scrunch so much. Used with Botox, she says, the smoothing effect of that powerful injectible, which usually lasts around three months, is strengthened and prolonged.

The Allurica Clinical Strength 4 Minute Facelift was developed by Gregory Kelly, who brought Dermasilk’s Five-Minute Facelift to market in 1994. Dermasilk is sold for $29.95 on Amazon, and has a 3.7 out of 5 star rating.

Is this four-minute version $61.05 better? I have no idea. Kelly was not available for comment.

Allurica is not yet available in the Washington area, and will be sold only by dermatologists and at spas (like a high-end Mary Kay or Avon). The company is so new that the web page is still in development, but more information and lots of before and after shots are available on Allurica’s Facebook page. And they are quite remarkable (which is how I got sucked into trying it).

“It’s truly revolutionary,” says Mindy, whose experiments with various face firmers border on the heroic. “Nothing else does what this does.”

Perhaps I just need better training, but the only lemon I want to be sucking is at the wedding, in a gin and tonic.

–Stephanie Cavanaugh

More Mother of the Bride struggles coming up soon (before the wedding!).

MASCARA? I’VE PLAYED WITH so many. High-end to low. But for maximum drama, I keep returning to the stuff in a cake–perhaps the only thing from the trendy-again ’70s that I can wear without looking ridiculous. My purple suede hot pants come immediately to mind.

A drip of water smudged around to make a nearly dry paste (spit works brilliantly too, but we won’t mention that), and there is nothing like cake mascara for creating the thickest lashes shy of falsies. Uppers and lowers.

Maybelline’s vintage cake mascara. / MyLittleBird photo.

It used to be easy to find, and so cheap! Maybelline had it in a little sliding drawer of a red case. A buck, maybe? Mary Quant was pricier but had the best brush–I still have it. Much like a baby-scaled toothbrush–if your baby has a particularly wide mouth. Tight bristles. Indestructible. Does 1968 qualify it as an antique?

Lancôme had one mascara with a little plastic comb on one side. I still have that too, though all of the plastic bits have broken off (how, I wonder? Was I cleaning the grout?).

Cake mascaras might be hard to exhume in stores, but they’re still easily findable online.

Longcils Boncza has been around for few decades. The Vermont Country Store has it for $39.95 plus shipping. It’s a tiny cake, though these things tend to last forever, so I guess that’s fair, to keep them in business. And it’s French, so add an immediate 50 percent markup. And they say it was a favorite of Marilyn Monroe’s (which goes to show just how far back this goes. MM would be pushing 90 this year).

Vintage Paula Dorf cake mascara, with brushes. / MyLittleBird photo.

Amazon has it too, but the Vermont Country Store is a trove of nearly forgotten treasures and far more fun. Tangee lipstick? Max Factor Pan Stick? White Shoulders Powder? They also have an assortment of flannel granny gowns, perfect for leafing through their website.

Though a bustier would be more appropriate attire for this mascara’s application. Marabou mules too, if you’ve got.

Internet marketer Makeup Mania has bars in black or brown for $8.50 from La Femme, which may or may not be French.

I haven’t tried either one of them, but the buyer reviews are positive.

Mine is from Paula Dorf, bought at Bluemercury in Georgetown at least 10 years ago. I don’t recall what it cost, maybe 15 bucks, but that doesn’t matter since it no longer exists except, perhaps, in a dusty corner of eBay. The .21 oz cake looks to have another 20 years’ worth of use. It came with a feathery brush that was for crap. But deploy my Mary Quant relic and, Hello, Twiggy!

–Stephanie Cavanaugh

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SOME DAYS I WISH bearded women were in. Today is one of them. I once vastly improved a chinless ex by talking him into some pretty lush whiskers. Spotting him recently at a funeral, I noticed he’s still sporting a beard 40 years later. Does his wife know what’s under there?

Meanwhile, I resemble a basset hound in a turtleneck, a situation that is reaching crisis level as my daughter’s April wedding approaches.

To paraphrase Catherine Deneuve, At some point you have to choose between your fanny  and your face. Sadly, what I have are really good ankles, which haven’t been a significant lure since about 1915.

While kvetching about my falling face, I’ve done virtually nothing but study possible solutions for the past 30 years. Perhaps it’s the German in me, this reluctance to Get Serious About My Skin. As if I should be able to keep my chin up entirely through force of will.

Oh, how stupid are the young. Thirty years ago I looked like a nymph. A nymph with nearly undetectable scowl lines, what they call inverted commas between my eyes, no doubt formed from whining about looking older.

That’s when a similarly tetched girlfriend and I started a weekly radio talk show called “A New Wrinkle,” to discuss what to do about our nonexistent problems: Retin-A and Botox and such, then cutting edge. Fortunately, or not, the station (the only one that would host us) had such a weak signal that my husband had to sit in the car in their parking lot to listen. We made tapes, but thankfully I no longer have anything to play them back on.

Now I don’t much care about looking older, but how old I look is another matter. I’d rather not look any particular age at all. Here’s what I want to hear whispered at the wedding:

“How old is she, do you think?”

“I don’t know, she’s just ageless, isn’t she . . . ”

Clarisonic’s Mia power brush.

And so . . . back issues of Bazaar and Vogue and Allure are stacked on the bathroom floor–where occasionally I’ll approach the mirror and try something distracting with eyeliner. I read reviews of every pill, cream and serum on MakeupAlley.com, where followers follow everything and occasionally post something more thoughtful and in depth than, “OMG! I can tell by the bottle that arrived two minutes ago that this is absolutely my HG.* Four stars!”   Then I compare them to the reviews on Amazon.com.

Occasionally I’m moved to try something. Right now I’m more moved than usual.

The issue at hand is I’m cursed with a preternaturally youthful looking Mother of the Groom, who’s just six months younger than I but looks like–a kid. Evidence? When a medical event recently landed me in the hospital and she arrived at my bedside, the nurse leaned over and, I kid you not, said: “Your daughter’s here.”

And you want a photo of the two of us together? Spit, spit, as they say in Yiddish to ward off demons.

Before the wedding threat, and attendant tabs for said event started mounting, I experimented with Botox for the scowl, but the doctor was a little over-enthusiastic, my eyelids drooped, and I looked like a sleepy cow for three months. It was also goodbye to Lancôme’s Advanced Génifique, which I swore was doing something for the $80 or so it cost every six months (I always wait for the free bonus gift to replenish–who doesn’t get excited about another logo make-up bag?).

The keepers include three little purple pills a day of Nature’s Bounty Hair, Skin and Nails, which has 572 positive reviews on Amazon, costs $15.49 for 250 caplets, and gets me to the point where I can use my fingernails as screwdrivers. I’m also yanking hair from some unsightly locations, so I suppose it works for that as well, and several friends thought my skin glowy enough to buy said pills–and agree with my results.

An honest four stars does go to the now-ubiquitous Clarisonic Mia, a power brush that I’ve used semi-regularly for more than a year. My face has never been cleaner and smoother. Of course I wonder if the Clarisonic major, or whatever they call it, is better . . . Maybe Clarisonic wants to send me the high-test model to test-drive?

Then I layer on serums (layering is Very Big right now) from the 50-percent-off, about-to-expire basket near the checkout aisle at Harris Teeter. Who knows if they do anything. They never get a chance to work before the next possible cheap panacea screams, Hey there!

On top of whatever I’m using that day, I slather on Nivea Creme, which has the consistency of Crisco, and which I’m told is all the MOG (that preternaturally young woman six months younger than me; see above) has ever used, and which some people swear is every bit as good as Crème de la Mer. Read the “study” done a few years ago in the UK’s Daily Mail. As Crème de la Mer has yet to appear in the Harris Teeter bin I have no basis for personal comparison–Are you listening, La Mer Corporate?

Right now I’m awaiting the postman, bearing a test drive of a miracle product that’s guaranteed, they say, to hoist the jaw and iron the crevices in four minutes flat and last for at least five hours. Which is about what I’ll need to get through The Wedding, or at least through the photography session. If it wears off too soon, I can keep a drink in front of my face.

*HG stands for Holy Grail, any product–lipstick color, mascara, face cream–that a woman has spent her life (frequently the first 18 years) ISO (in search of). OMG! (Oh my God!)

–Stephanie Cavanaugh