The NY Times is High on Pots - What are they Smoking?

Stone Urn on a Concrete Pillar

Sometimes, and by this I mean daily,  the design pages of the New York Times provoke me to scream, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS?

And I say this fondly, being an ex-New Yorker, born and raised and schooled and once able to tell at a glance a real Gucci bit on a shoe from a knock-off -- and consider this essential information.


I'm looking here at a wood frame plant stand. It's essentially an open-sided packing crate made of ash, with a built-in saucer. Pop in your pot  and it's off the floor -- Thank God the parquet is safe!

The collection, by "designer" Trey Jones, begins at $550.  I think, I'm in fact sure, there's something like this lurking in the garage, or possibly the basement. Maybe the attic.

How do they write this stuff without snickering?

Now, no one loves pots and planters more than I do -- see various posts on the subject --  but the most I've ever paid for one, and technically it's not a planter but an umbrella stand cunningly redeployed, was a hundred bucks. I considered this a charitable contribution to the legal costs of a couple of guys who got caught selling a miniscule amount of weed, which is neither here nor there.

Cast Iron Pot on Stone Stand

Otherly, every otherly, the plants  that  stud our porches and gardens (that sounds a lot grander than it is) were found -- discarded on the sidewalks, sticking out of a dumpster, or gifts of a sort, as in: Please take this or I'm throwing it out.

An Early Find in Georgetown

Generally, all one needs to do to land free stuff is have knowledge of the trash truck timetable for various neighborhoods; of course the finer the neighborhood the finer the trash.

Where once Capitol Hill  was considered more shabby than chic, and one needed to forage in Georgetown or Cleveland Park, our streets are now littered with Bugaboo strollers pushed along by au pairs and nannies endlessly chattering on their cell phones in French, and Spanish, and Chinese, and the restaurant line for Roses stretches hours down the sidewalk.



Add to that being a rather transient place, what with upheavals of political fame and fortune, and the pickings are rarefied.

Chinese Pot on a Bunch of Put Together Junk

I've found pots and pedestal bases made of stone and concrete and porcelain. A cast iron pot with curly handles, weighing easily 100 pounds and valued at around $350 (triple that in New York) was a moving giveaway. I was very moved, as was my back. It holds a sago palm and summers on the front porch atop another find, this one picked up at curbside, a wonderful stone stand with protruding lion heads that winters in the living room and makes a fine extra seat when magazines aren't piled on it.

I don't know where I found the Chinese pot on the back porch and am, in fact, amazed that it is not broken. This one comes upstairs to my little greenhouse come November.

Furzed Terracotta

Nestling near the pond,  in a collection of ferns, is a gorgeous terracotta number the Prince brought home from who knows where last year --  it's now growing a fine furz of moss, which is a lovely touch.

Furz, I've just discovered, means flatulent in German. It sounds like it should mean a fine spread of soft fuzz. Doesn't it?


Last Sunday morning I toted home three fine pots glazed green. They'll be good on the porch steps, planted with the pink hibiscus and a jasmine that are currently being smothered by elephant ears.

Concrete Pot in Front Garden

I MEAN!? WHO throws this stuff out? But they do.

We have also acquired a pair of these rough concrete pots (at right), both are tucked in the front yard ivy and usually sport something seasonal - pansies or mums, maybe tulips. At the moment they're doing this crumbly thing that I quite admire, and anyway they flank a pot I'm saving for another post that's stuffed with geraniums and lavender and something else that I can't remember.  

The swirly half moon of wrought iron behind it was another trash fine,
I believe it was a headboard. This arrangement of stuffs totally thwarts the tromp of the postal persons, a 30-year goal finally realized.

Happy trashing!

Grown Any Good Books Lately?

Cymrot's Box

On Capitol Hill they're pushing up like weeds, the free book boxes. Some are organized under the umbrella of littlefreelibrary.org, a group I'd never heard of until yesterday but is apparently an international org with on-line maps showing people desperate for something to read where to find boxes in places like Turin and Detroit. They also sell labels and placards and brochures and suggest building plans and materials.

Other boxes are renegades, sprung up delightfully unregulated.

Self Explanatory

All have but one rule in common. Take a book, and leave one, hopefully in the same box. I'm not too good at this - at least the part about leaving books in the same box I took from -- I tend to wander with something half read, that I'm not about to dump (unless it's dreadful) for something new. But I know I'll require something else in an hour or a day and so rummage in the boxes and grab a book for the thirsty time to come.

The first book box I saw was a few years ago, in front of the junior Cymrots jack-o-lantern colored home on A Street, SE -- sitting there like a Lilliputian renegade branch of Riverby Books on East Capitol Street, which was founded by the senior Cymrots (One is reluctant to categorize Riverby as a used bookstore, since it is so tidily kept and carefully edited, and includes rarities).

Capitol Hill Books Window

Riverby is nothing like Capitol Hill Books, near Eastern Market, a 3-story warren of rooms and books stacked dustily in windows or heaving the shelves. The owner (miraculously) knows where what is but for the browser it's a challenge.

This is the granddaddy of the neighborhood's book free-for-all (if I'm wrong, do tell). 

The one around the Corner from Safeway

Outside Capitol Hill Books is a folding table that is frequently heaped with books, sometimes they're the store owner's rejects, a remaindered book's last chapter as it were. Other times, people dump books when they're moving or are simply done reading and don't like the clutter, bless them. The owner, if he's swift, creams the lot, but often they're wonderful finds (if you haven't discovered the mysteries of Francis Fyfield -- bet you can't read just one).

Those were three paragraphs of beside the point. The point being the book boxes,which can now be found scattered about the neighborhood.

Some are sadly utilitarian, like the one around the corner from Safeway. It's quite large, with a  hinged lid, and often filled with the good and the curious and only a rare bodice ripper.

Mid-Century Modern

It's in front of a (I think) commercial building that always looks to be becoming something -- it has looked that way for thirty some years. Except for the book box, it is the kind of shady place one would suspect is a front for some nefarious dealings. This is my favorite box for rummaging, even though one has to prop the hinged lid on ones head when poking about. But then, a bookie constructed it, I suppose. So what do you expect.

More satisfying for the "shopper" is a book box with a normal door that swings open and stays that way as you make your selection. While I'm not fond of the design of the mid-century modern ranch house number above right (it looks like it belongs to a house with an Edsel in the drive), it does it's job well.

More charming in this neighborhood of late 19th and early 20th century row houses are the boxes that play with their host's design, like this simple one on Lincoln Park, with a grey and white color scheme borrowed from the home:

On Lincoln Park

Right around the corner on Kentucky Avenue is this charmer, with leaded glass panes and a tin roof:

 And then there's this wonderful, multi-story construction on 13th Street, nestled in day lilies and zinnias and considerably grander than the home it belongs to -- no offense homeowner:

I should like one colored like our house: celadon, eggplant, and rose. I've long overflowed the living room bookcases, the hall bookcases, my office bookcases, the upstairs hall bookcases, and books are forever piled unsteadily on the floor and shoved under the bed and tossed around the bathroom floor. Occasionally in a fit of neatness, I pick a sunny day and pile a few armloads out by the curb, where the neighboring book vultures pick through them fast -- but I'd like to be able to leave them out in a downpour, instead of scurrying to bring them in or stashing them in the trunk of the car. 

Maybe for my birthday. Right. The only way that will happen is if My Prince sees that project as a fresh excuse for not cleaning out the garage. Please! Let's not get started again on the garage.






 

Lift Up Thine Eyes!

You see it all the time in Europe, but too rarely here, roofs and porch tops lined with tubs and pots, all dripping with greens and flowers to soften the building edges. 

Plenty of our office buildings could use such treatment.

There's a large and boring red brick office building on Capitol Hill that happens to have a fourth floor balcony that runs rectangularly across the front. Its only decoration is a flag hoisted at one corner, that gives a jaunty billow whenever there's a breeze. But when there's a breeze here it's generally accompanied by rain, or a soon to be rain, so the potential observer is most likely jaunting off for cover.

I notice the flag perhaps twice a year, though I pass it most every day.

This is the first time I've ever thought about it, I think. Certainly it's the first time I've ever written about it--or, for that matter, the building, which, to move this right along, would look lovely with boxes along the edge of the balcony, spewing a profusion of something, anything, green.

And maybe a flower or two?