On Flowered Walls

Next year -- is it time for daydreaming about that already? -- I would like the garage to look like this, minus the turret and pointed roof. And the windows. And, since I would have no room for color, the color.

Not that those things wouldn't be pleasant to include...and now that I think of it, the garage does have a door and that shade of blue just zings doesn't it?

And a turret would be very nice.

Not the kind of turret where I let down my hair and the prince climbs up (wince) with a pitcher of martinis and perhaps a cheese platter...but a turret with soggy old arm chair and a hassock where I can hide away and read and snooze--after I haul up the ladder to keep the prince the hell out of my hair.

If it's Saturday, he can call me when it's time to take me out to dinner.

Have I digressed. Right oh...

That's baby in the picture (the one that occasionally snarkles after a blog entry). A  fine piece of work, isn't she?

The floriferous structure she's indicating is at the U.S. Botanic Garden, the greenhouse at the foot of Capitol Hill. The facade is covered with a plastic grid and each of its chambers is filled with potting soil and then plugged with brilliantly colored coleus and begonias and a variety of fast growing vines, some green and some spotted with bits of pink and burgundy.

They've massed and twined into this flowery fairytale. And I want it, which is not surprising as I'm exceptionally greedy. But I'd probably kill it since it appears to need a fabulous degree of watering and pruning; tasks that I'm alternately enthusiastic and apathetic about. And when I'm busy being apathetic things tend to shrivel.



The brilliant ones at the Botanic Garden have several variations on this wall-garden theme on view, including a gate and a totem pole. They appear to be fairly easy to construct by any husband that wants to avoid fixing the dishwasher and/or can be wooed with a peach pie.

Sound sexist? Piffle (she says, filing her nails).


Various greens are then popped into baskets (briskets? triscuts? Something like that) where they'll quickly form a splendid cascade of ruffles and flourishes.

Wonderful, if you like that sort of thing. Subtle, I suppose. I prefer the gaudier stuff at the top myself.

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