Holiday Decking

My prince is getting antsy about the holidays. Promising a full Martha Stewart on the window boxes was a way of getting them back on their ledges, meanwhile suspending what has become a painting DEBACLE (that we will NOT get into) that involves his keeping employed a -- never mind, I did just say I wasn't getting into it and I can feel the blood pressure rising. Suffice it to say, NEVER employ a...writer to paint a house. And that is my final word on the subject (possibly).

So I renovated the window boxes on Sunday afternoon, he hauling down from the attic my cartons of odds and ends, me then playing in the dirt. Little about the the winter boxes is real. If I were more organized I would take before and after photos...showing you in shot after constructive shot how these dirt filled boxes with just a spill of ivy off the sides*, are magically transformed with the help of a pile of fake or once alive crap combined with a bit of glitz and white lights.


You will note the (fake) boxwood ball in the center is one I ordered on-line (while listening to Alejandro) several weeks ago.  It's stuck on a sturdy stick to get it above the rest of the shrubbish and promises to do exactly what I want it to do. Stay green and look alive.

In the front are some fir branches, clipped from Suzanne's trees over Thanksgiving weekend. The red berries that resemble red berries but are some kind of Chinese substance were stuck in last Christmas and never removed. They were too jolly to pull, somehow looking right even in midsummer nestled among the (real) pink geraniums. The rest of it is gilded pine cones, a couple of gold ornaments, and a big purple bow with glittered and wired edges that twist this way and that.  The bow more or less matches the color of the boxes, which are painted the same purple as the front door.

The body of the house, though it looks icy gray, is actually (mostly) a lively shade of spring green with a line of pale pink circling the windows and reappearing in the frieze along the roof line.. or PARTLY doing so because an unfortunate facet of having hired a writer to paint the damn house is that addition to the house itself not being entirely the sames shade (and it will probably always be at least two colors because that's the way things go around here) the damn frieze coloring is all ferkoct --half this color and half that. Idiot. STOP!

And because of this delay -- these months waiting to have one small flat fronted brick house painted and having a snively writer framed in the second floor windows across the hall from my office like a peeping tom jack-in-the-box at whatever time of day he was uninspired to write and more inspired to dab a little paint on the windows (while listening to NPR and chattering on his cell phone)--there is not a damn pansy to be found and I aways have pansies on either side of whatever thing occupies the center.   
 
Of course there are white lights twisted throughout. And it is very pretty at night. It and its four siblings; there's another box on the main level and three upstairs.

Similarly duded up is the berry-free holly (the only kind I can keep alive) that sits beside the front door.

If it's not too cold tonight, and if I remember, and if the camera captures it, I'll post a photo.

*Except the left corner of this one particular box, which due to some tragedy or other lost its ivy last spring. The new branch, which has yet to achieve any significant presence, temporarily commingles with fake.