Gnome Busting

Down the block, the garden of twee continues its alarming and sinister growth. Each month there's something new  -- another fairy on a rock, one more miniature bench -- added to a repulsively sweet scene that I described here and will not go into again, except to point out the chateau (above left) that recently sprouted among the fauxfirs. There's even a bloody gnome at the front door (right). Well, actually, OF COURSE there's a bloody gnome at the front door (right). In fact, the gnome was the first step in this unholy installation.(RIGHT).

Although, I'll concede, that it is a tastefully beige gnome. The Restoration Hardware approved version of gnomehood -- gnomekind?.

Thankfully, Utah State University's agricultural center has issued a video tackling at least the gnomish aspect of this garden pestilence...this frightening creep of adorability. "DON'T BE FOOLED BY THEIR CUTE NATURE," we're warned. If you have a gnome anywhere in your vicinity, take action NOW. Pink flamingos are said to be useful deterrents and small dogs appear promising.... watch here:

Stop COOING. This is repulsive stuff. And I want this man's job.

Thank you once again Diana McLellan for your Utube vigilance.

Creating a Vertically Challenged Vertical Garden

Sometimes being married to a contractor beats being married to a plastic surgeon. This is one of them. Show me a contractor and I'll show you an empty bucket of drywall mud.  And with that empty bucket of drywall mud you can have this!

While this might not be as attractive as this (at least to begin with):

I Forget

I am pondering this plumeria. It is not mine. I was searching for the name of the plant in the following photo:

which IS mine and which is, of course, a bromeliad (though what sort I haven't a clue because as always I didn't save the tag) and while searching for the word, which had entirely escaped my brain, as these things do (the brain meantime was flailing about with helpful hints like -- pink thing!), I went on line and searched under tropical plants, which I know it is, and the photo of the plumeria popped up and I'm wanting it. If you squint hard to make the colors run together it's also the color of the blusher (or rouge, as my antiquated prince persists in calling it) that I have been craving. If I only had that color--if could turn myself that color-- I would be a happy person, I mutter to myself. Rich. Admired.

Now I do own a plumeria. Here it is, in the shade of a rubber tree leaf:

Happy Birthday Vinnie & Shakira

Birthday Birds

Vinnie and Shakira are one. 

Watch it Lula. They're small but vicious.

Holiday's End

Positively Springy

The holidays have been deconstructed. The tree is down, Uncle Jimmy's menorah is wrapped in silver cloth, and boxes of bejeweled birds and shiny baubles have been removed to sleep in the attic.

In the living room, the mantle no longer explodes with glittery branches and ribbons tucked in greenery. It now wears a tasteful and calming tableau of rusty little Mexican lanterns and small blackened bronze objets: an Egyptian dog, a reclining nude reading I suppose not a bible, a candlestick embraced by a dragon, and a bulbous cement item I bought in Georgetown last summer that has no purpose and has been wandering homelessly from floor to table to here.