And Now! A Matching Backdrop for your Dumpster

Last year, at almost exactly this time, I wrote about a brilliant invention/construction of the divine Diana McLellan (who I seem to be devoting a lot of ink or type or whatnot/words to at present) -- a cunning trash can cover constructed of fake ivy.

Today, peering mournfully at my window boxes (picture Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands, this is just how I looked, minus a few clippers). ONCE AGAIN I have a death, or four to be precise. Five window boxes, four dead spikes. One survives and is so perky despite exactly the same care (or lack thereof) that I suspect it's a succubus (or plantibus) draining the energy from the others in the night.

Halloween is coming.

So, obviously and immediately it occurred that I must sit down at the computer, blast Alejandro, and research fake boxwood.

Somewhere very early on and a down a twisted trail in this blog is an entry about my window box/real boxwood miseries. And something about some wimpy fakes that I discovered and that are now tangled somewhere under the back porch.

How much easier it is to buy new. Isn't it? Besides there's more of a thrill in wresting something from a nice clean box vs wresting it from under a mud encrusted rubber boot.

Anyway, I plonked Fake Boxwood into Google and voila! I find a fake boxwood hedge on the blog of a kindred spirit named Megan who lives in Portland and says she is "afflicted with zone denial," living in zone 8 but planting like it's zone 9, which is a familiar affliction.

I realize this has nothing to do with a boxwood centerpiece for my window boxes. Nor does it have anything to do with Diana's fake ivy trash can cover--other than it all being fabulously and most genuinely fake, of which there is just too damn little in this world.

Anyway anyway, here's herself on her hedge:

 That’s right, a fake boxwood hedge

I’m not a big fan of boxwood, or hedges, or fake plants, but you put them all together, and you have a winner. (?) Or at least the MADesigns custom hedges were put to good use in the May 2008 Domino Magazine story about San Francisco designer Stephen Shubel’s new studio.

So I started thinking about all Stephen (I call him Stephen) and I have in common, and why I too should have a fake boxwood hedge. He buys some things at IKEA, I buy everything some things at IKEA. He has an eyesore chain link fence to cover up, I have an eyesore chain link fence. He is a rich San Francisco designer who can afford custom fake hedges and probably gets a discount because he’s in the biz, I… wait. OK, that’s where the similarities end. But it’s an interesting idea anyway."

 

Megan's very clever site is: www.nestmaker.com

Now back to my research............