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.

Flitting Right Along

Continuing along on what is becoming some sort of plant + bird theme... 

We (meaning the me's) are off on a damp Sunday morning stroll to Eastern Market, minding our own business: La la la traipse traipse  HALT.

We espy something curious growing in the far corner of this little garden and it tickles our fancy, one might say, because one cannot resist a serious dose of silliness mixed in with the proper.

First we're struck by the multiple colors, unlikely to appear on the same plant.  


Creep a little closer, we say to ourselves...go on...are those what you think they are? Mmmm hmmmm yes! We blurt and punch a self in the shoulder in glee. But it's so subtly done that it might be something else, something that actually grows from a branch -- because the branch is real enough.  

Yes they are feathers- a little bedraggled (remember the damp) -- giving wing to a pocket of early spring boredom, filling in for flowers still weeks from bloom.

Waiting for Kismet

During a get the hell out of the house and stop looking at the computer tour of Georgetown the other day, I was smacked in the eye with this set of curtains, displayed in the upstairs windows of the design shop, Random Harvest. 

While at first glance they might appear to have nothing whatever to do with gardens ... look closely and the pattern is a free-fall blizzard of flowers. Like a bride's bouquet untied and on the fly and absolutely gorgoeus with late the afternoon sun streaming through and dappling the table top. 

A charming way to soften a less than charming view.

In the part of Capitol Hill where I live, parking is rarely much of an issue. Maybe after a late night out we might have to wriggle into a space around the corner; hardly a hardship as we're still spry enough to hobble 50 feet or so.

It's a pretty street, lined with some of the oldest, largest elms in Washington, with neighbors well-trained by tickets to park far enough from intersections to avoid another. Actually, most of these tickets were routinely dismissed, since it seemed the neighbors were better able to calculate the proper distance than were the traffic gendarmes.

So perhaps it was this that compelled our fair city to create another make-work program for our, apparently, overstaffed Department of Public Works and stab in plug-ugly parking/no parking signs at each street corner and alley entry. For some of us -- at any rate, me -- destroying a perfectly lovely porch view of our elm canopy.

And so I was sent into a near swoon -- which was hard to do considering that I was jigging along to Anjulie's "Boom" on the ipod--when I noticed that someone on a near-by block, in a brilliantly passive-aggressive, lemonade move, had planted a twining totem of morning glories to smother the blight.

Swords into plowshares! Take back the streets!

Ah, YES. Next year... with moonflowers mixed in to cover the late shift.

Once in Garbage...

After decades of blowing covers, Diana McLellan, the dowager queen of Washington’s gossip scene, is engaged in a little cover-up of her own.

The former Washington Post columnist, Washingtonian editor, and author has got a patent pending on a “topiary trash-can topper,” a cunning faux-ivy cover-up for those ubiquitous, and wretchedly ugly trash cans, that have sprouted like tacky gnomes amid our geraniums.

The view from the living room window of Diana McLellan’s smashingly bohemian townhouse on Capitol Hill overlooks a pocket-sized brick courtyard enclosed by an ivy draped fence. There was only one problem, front and center was one of the city’s phlegm green trash cans, boldly stamped with the DC logo and the legend, “Keep it Clean” bordered by a postage stamp scallop.

“It was so depressing, darling,” the British transplant gloomed. “We used to put the garbage out back, true of a lot of people in the city. But now they pick up in the front, and you don’t want to drag your garbage from the back yard through the house.”


McLellan’s ingenious solution was to buy a 10 x 3 foot roll of PVC ivy on a strong but bendable backing, cut it to size, and lace it into a feather-light cage.

“Garbage should vanish,” she said dropping the topper over the can with the flick of a finger, demonstrating how quickly it blends with her ivy-covered fence -- faux real.

If you don't have ivy (though McLellan maintains that most people "have a patch") the goods are available in a variety of ever-greenery from a number of cheesy catalogs where it's generally displayed adorning trailer parks. Don't be abashed! This fake is a ringer for the real! At about $70 a roll it ain't cheap, but a single roll is sufficient to cover a can and once done it's eternally yours.

While McLellan would like to make a go of producing her clever covers, and is talking with www.ez-ivy.com which imports the stuff, but unlike many designers that take umbrage with knock-offs, she invites you to steal the idea.

“It’s a tea cozy for garbage!” she trilled. “Anyone can buy the crap from a catalog and do it.”