Each Little World

GBBD: 02.15.11

No flowers outdoors as yet, but we are enjoying a bit of a warming trend that's helping to melt our huge snow piles. There are abundant blooms indoors however, all from a beautiful book on Swedish scarves and shawls sent to us by our friends, Julie and Mats, who spent Christmas with Mats' family in Sweden. Enjoy these colorful bouquets from "Folklig Grannlåt" by Birgitta Farhang and Ingrid Herrdin. 

And be sure to visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens to see what's blooming in gardens around the world.

Back to work

He Said:

Facing the blank page after an extended absence from the studio is always an adventure, and one not without a measure of anxiety. With any new beginning one must choose a place to start. Should it be where one left off? Or start in an entirely new place. Start big, or ease into it?

My choice was to try not to over-think the process. So, a few nights ago, having done a little sketch that pleased and interested me, I went to the basement. I tore an 18 X 24 inch page from an old sketch pad and went back to work.

The focus of my process was not the sketch itself, but a piece of charcoal I bought several years ago. It was about the size of a pack of playing cards and intensely black. The challenge was how to create any sort of subtlety with such an unwieldy drawing tool.

The first effort was pretty disappointing, but it suggested a technique I had used in the past of masking areas with tape to create crisper edges and define layers, suggesting depth. By the time I finished the fourth drawing, last night, I felt that I was on a path that showed promise. 

Here are the four drawings in order of completion:

 

I'll try to keep you posted as the work evolves. All drawings are 14 X 20 inches. Click to see larger versions.

 

Days of the locusts

In a good year, the leaves from our 50-year-old honey locust fall in a brief span of time. They obscure the roof, the pond, the deck and everything else. It's a wonderful moment and one we enjoyed to the full degree this past weekend. We were sitting on the deck Friday morning, picking locust leaves out of our coffee and deciding which chore to tackle first, when Mark suggested scraping the list. It was the kind of day and weather, he said, to be in the moment and our garden. But too beautiful not to share ... 

Stepping stones

HE SAID: Stepping stone portraits shot in our garden after the recent rain. Clicking on the pictures will enlarge them. There's still nothing like black and white!

Selvedge: American special

I bought my first issue of Selvedge magazine (No. 3) in 2004. I was helpless from the moment I spied it on the rack at Borders. I recognized it for what it was and still is: porn for textiles fanatics. Finally it wasn't just the foodies who had a magazine filled with history, trivia, creativity, inspiration and luscious photos about their favorite subject. The only problem was the cover price: $20. Published in the UK, the American edition cost as much as a book. I just bit the bullet and kept buying it — until the price crept up to $30! 

So you can imagine my surprise and pleasure when I saw the July/Aug. issue with a banner saying "American Issue / Special Price $14.95." Of course I bought a copy; the price being even cheaper than when I began purchasing selvedge. And it had an attractive graphic (as always) about cotton, a story on the history of the fiber and one on how the American Civil War affected Britain's textile industry. I had suggested the topic of cotton and the Civil War to the textile study group I belong to as an apt study subject since we are approaching the Sesquicentennial of the War. They agreed, put it on our November agenda and I've been compiling bits and pieces of information ever since — so the selvedge articles are providential. 

But the real happy ending to this story is that the special American price on selvedge was not just for this issue. Rumor has it that they now have the ability to print the magazine here for American readers, thus the price is now more in line with what it costs in Europe. USA subscriptions will cost $40 for 6 months or $75 for a year (making it $12.50 per copy according to the subscription form). Read more about the magazine and how to subscribe here.

A Canovas flower garden

When winter seems endless and I need a breath of Spring, I pull out my folder of Manuel Canovas magazine ads. For years, this French fabric house has run full pages ads that feature little more than a shot of the latest fabric design overlaid with the company's name. 

Now and then there might be a few evocative accessories included; once there was a little blonde girl in the scene. But mainly the fabric is the star. And it is almost always a floral design — though that term has been broadly applied. 

Those early Canovas ads were selling style, history, craft and tradition. I clipped every one I ever saw and squirreled them all away; but not before dreaming about living in rooms devoted to Canovas designs. Imagine my delight when one of the first issues of World of Interiors magazine that I ever bought — April 1983 — had a feature on Canovas' own homes. It was a virtual case study in using his fabrics in interiors. Since many of them were large scale prints, that could sometimes be a difficult task. 

Like British textile designer Zandra Rhodes, Canovas said that he had to start his own company "or give up, because no one would produce my designs," he noted in an article in House and Garden back in the 1980s. "My drawings were turned down for being too colorful and on too large a scale." Thus, at age 28, he opened his own shop in Paris in 1963.

Both articles noted that Canovas was a collector of many treasures ranging from old roses to pre-Columbian art. His rooms were filled with beautiful objects and antiques. But not everything was precious or out of the reach of the rest of us. One photo showed rows of glass storage jars aligned on white shelves. The jars were filled with sand from places Canovas had visited — 120 of them. 

He was also years ahead of the trend of aligning one's books by color. But in his case, Canovas grouped his 3,200 volumes by the language in which they were printed. So he had the books bound in leather or linen in the colors of the flag of the given nation. That way, he said he could always quickly find what he was looking for and, just as quickly, notice and re-shelve anything that was out of order.

Canovas' company is now part of the Colefax Group and the new designs — like the one directly above — are as striking as ever. The only thing that's changed is that I find fewer ads to clip and dream on.

A case for collecting

I've always wanted to try my hand at a terrarium — in part, because the containers they require are so fascinating. Tovah Martin, in her beautiful new book, "The New Terrarium: Creating Beautiful Displays for Plants and Nature," uses cold frames, Wardian cases, cloches and bell jars, outsize glass vases and lidded cookie jars as containers to coddle plants that require mircro-climates. 

    

 

The images in Martin's book convinced me that I should keep my eyes open for the right vessel. But when I found it — not too many days after getting a copy of Martin's book — I realized that a terrarium was not going to be my first choice of how to use my container.

    

    

Like many of you, I've been picking up stones and bones, sticks and shells, leaves and berries and pods for longer than I can remember. When I began, I didn't think of myself as a collector or that I was part of a long tradition. Most of the time these burgeoning natural collections are dispersed around the house: smooth stones on windowsills, dried seedheads in a vase. 

    

    

Many of them lived on a bookshelf where they gathered dust until I periodically re-rranged the display. A few items were rescued from the bookshelf jumble and displayed in a safer fashion: inside the myriad drawers in my antique library card catalog file. Then there's also the little plastic box of treasures I curated as part of last autumn's Arboretum Corps of Discovery classes. But those natural collections had to be very small to fit into the box's tiny partitions. 

    

     

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to find a plain glass case just like the one in Martin's book on Page 14. But the Madison store where I found my case also had one without the partitions pictured. That meant I could fit an object as long as eighteen inches into the box (which is twelves inches wide and five and a half inches deep). Unlike the photo in Martin's book, I set my box down flat, so you lift its lid rather than opening it like a door.

    

    

Now I can bring my collection — which had been languishing in a box — out into the light again. My new glass box will nicely fit on a bookshelf, or the buffet or any number of locations. I can look inside from any direction and I never have to worry about dust again. When I tire of using it this way, it will make a lovely display of scarves or Uzbek hats. I might even stand it up vertically and use it as an orchid terrarium.
     

Chicago Spring Fling redux

For quite a few years my winter treat was a day spent at Olbrich Botanical Gardens at the annual Horticulture Magazine Symposium. It was where I tracked trends, fought attacks of plant lust and worked at becoming a more informed gardener. But mostly I sat in the dark seeking inspiration.

With no snow in the forecast, a brief warming trend and no more Hort magazine symposiums, I decided we should seek inspiration further afield: with Dan Pearson at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Pearson is the wunderkind of contemporary landscape design, working on projects around the world and author of a new book — "Spirit: Garden Inspiration" — which was the basis for his pair of lectures we attended on Saturday. 

    

Dan Pearson watches the auditorium fill up before his talk Saturday.

While Pearson gave us plenty to look at and to think about, so did our walk through the CBG. Neither one of us had ever been there in winter, so we made a quick tour of some of the spots that had captured our attention last May when the garden bloggers descended en masse as part of their Chicago Spring Fling. 

THE JAPANESE ISLAND GARDEN:   

  

   

 

    

THE ENGLISH WALLED GARDEN:  A checkerboard of clipped boxwood alternates with herbs in the foreground while a bright blue bench rests in the shadow of the pergola.

 

 

    

MORE WALLED GARDEN: The sweep of the curved bench against the back wall is no match for the scene-stealing weeping Katsura tree in the center of the garden. Our winter visit gave us a close-up of the severe pruning this tree gets in order to keep it in bounds. We plan on treating our Katsura the same way.

 

 

 

 

    

BRANCHED BEAUTY: Winter is the ideal time to enjoy all the clipping, pleaching, topiary and assorted other pruning techniques that the CBG does so well — and that is one of the aspects of the garden that most appeals to me. 

 

 

 

    

PLANTS AREN'T THE ONLY THINGS THAT GO DORMANT IN WINTER.

 

 

    

WINTER REVELATIONS: Shapes, patterns and a softer palette that would be lost in summer, predominate at this season.

 

 

 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 1.15.2010

Botanical jewels

    

 

 

 

 

    

Gertrude Stein declared, "Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing," in her ground-breaking book, "Tender Buttons." These six 19th Century steel buttons, however, are anything but tender. The mere fact of their continued existence defines them as tough little treasures, showing their years in a patina of fine lines and bits of rust. Nestled at the bottom of an ancient Chinese bowl, they're January's Bloom Day offering; as beautiful to my eyes as any bulb in its glass. 

The first one pictured is the smallest, about the size of a dime; the fourth button is the largest at the size of a quarter. As always, thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens who hosts this world-wide look at what's blooming where.

Update: For all you button fans, here is the store to visit next time you are in NYC. If that's never going to happen, then there is a book that is almost as good as a visit.

Green thoughts in sun and shade

If green is all you see in shrubs ... Open your eyes to a colorful new world

— from a recent magazine ad for Proven Winners

At this point in the gardening year I'm ready for a visual break. Which is perhaps why I found the recent Proven Winners ad for colorful varieties of Buddleia, Weigela, Hydrangeas and roses so annoying. It's true that our garden contains a number of colorful trees and shrubs: blue spruce and a yellow-needled Dawn redwood, purple smokebush and Forest Pansy redbud.  

But by late July and August our garden has few flowers — neither perennials or blooming shrubs. Those that do blossom now, like Kirengeshoma, are subtle, not showy. My spirit craves green: the saturated green of grass; the soft minty green of boxwood's new growth; the yellow-green of twisting strands of willow leaves; Brunnera leaves splashed with white and Begonia leaves backed with red. 

While I've planted many things from Proven Winners, I take umbrage at the idea that gardens must always be about drama; about flowers; about a rainbow of color. The garden and I are both ready for a respite. There will be flowers again before the cold weather arrives; but for now I'm thinking green.

LIGHT:

DARK:

SHINY: 

MATTE:

 

FEATHERED:

RUFFLED:

RIPPLED: 

SPLASHED:

STITCHED:

STREAKED

STRIPED:

CASCADING:

WEEPING:

WET:

Green, green, green and more green.