Each Little World

Midwest Gardening Symposiums

Just a few years ago garden programs were all about ornamentals: pretty flowers, planting patterns and pots for petite spaces. Now our passion is hands-on: workshops that teach useful skills like seed-starting, or a day-long symposium about feeding your friends and family from food you've grown yourself. There are a number of local events on the horizon guaranteed to provide just such useful information while giving us a break from the last of winter's lingering landscape.

    

MELINDA MYERS/PHOTO COURTESY OLBRICH BOTANICAL GARDENS   

    

The second annual Midwest Gardening Symposium, Green Gardening from the Ground Up, is all about  "green," low-maintenance gardening with practical advice from Midwest-focused experts. This event — like last year's — is  co-sponsored by Olbrich Botanical Gardens and Allen Centennial Gardens. The day's topics include "Teaming with Microbes: Your Soil is Alive!," presented by Jeff Lowenfel, co-author of the book "Teaming with Microbes:  A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web;" "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Green Management of Pests and Diseases," by Melinda Myers, author and host of Public Television's "Great Lakes Gardener;" "Natural Beauty: Combining Native and Ornamental Plants," by 

Christine Nye, horticultural manager at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium and designer of "WaterShedd," an exhibit that shows the best ways to combine native and non-native plants; and "Shrubs: The New Perennials," by Ezra Haggard, garden designer and author of "Trees, Shrubs, and Roses for the Midwest." 

Green Gardening from the Ground Up

Saturday, March 13, 8:30 am-4 pm

Registration Deadline: Monday, March 8 

Cost: $119/$99 member, horticulture student, and master gardener

Course fee includes boxed lunch, with a vegetarian option 

    

    

 

Rotary Gardens in Janesville is looking for tree lovers. Their upcoming symposium is designed to offer a practical look at trees in our gardens and landscapes. Rather than suggesting the perfect tree for your garden, they will focus on a number of other aspects of trees like longevity and pest issues. The topics and presenters are "New Tools for Tree Decay Detection," by Dr. R. Bruce Allison, one of the most well-known names in Wisconsin when it comes to trees; "Managing Trees in a Changing Climate," by Guy Sternberg of Starhill Forest Arboretum; "Insect Pests of the Urban Forest: A Retrospective," by Phil Pellitteri, distinguished UW-Extension Outreach Specialist; and "Landscaping for Energy Efficiency" by Mark Dwyer, Director of Horticulture at Rotary Botanical Gardens. The day also includes a silent auction of items donated by Klehm's Song Sparrow Nursery.

7th Annual Garden Symposium

Saturday, March 27

8:00 a.m. -  4 p.m.

Cost: $60 general public / $55 RBG member

Caring for your textiles

My wedding dress has been buried in various closets for the last 20+ years while my husband's christening gown and my First Communion dress have been residing in the basement. We have some Japanese textiles and a few African pieces stored in a bit more protected fashion. But the truth is, I don't know what I'm doing. I've always intended to learn how I should be caring for my textile treasures and pieces of family history.

    

 

Now those of us who live in the Madison area have an opportunity to do so — free of charge — courtesy of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at the UW-Madison. Diana Zlatanovski, HLATC's Assistant Curator and Collections Manager, will show us "practical guidelines" for the care and storage of our textiles at home. You may remember that Zlatanovski was in charge of the team preparing HLATC's textiles for their move to temporary quarters while the collection's home is redone as part of a larger campus building project.    

    

"Caring for Your Textiles"

Sunday, March 7

1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

UW Foundation, 1848 University Avenue

Free parking on site

While this event is free and open to the public, reservations are recommended. To do so, contact Diana Zlatanovski at [email protected].    

    

You can learn more about the two textiles pictured here at the HLATC link in the text above. If you are unable to participate but love textiles, be sure to check out the digital textile collection.

Red room: details

Part Two

Though it was not a conscious plan, I've added a number of different red decorative elements to my room over the years. The result is a richer, more tonal effect than I would have achieved with one shade — or texture — of red. I've also layered objects that draw the eye away from the walls making the red function as a neutral background color. Like the furniture, most of the objects in the room have a story and a history unique to me. They are decorative, but never mere decoration.     

    

 

I've included the shot above as a reminder of the layout of my red room (or at least the east and south walls). The wall above the desk is covered with art. My initial impulse was that all the images would be garden related, since I already owned a Beatrice Parsons watercolor of a garden path as well as a long color etching of views of a garden.     

       

    

Over time the collection has grown more eclectic and includes everything from a photo (printed by my sister from a glass plate) of an American Indian couple at a 19th century world's fair to a 1950's magazine ad that was a gift ("I dreamed I was a lady editor in my Maidenform bra!") to a Japanese print I bought in San Francisco during my student travels, and a tiny brooch sporting a scene right out of the Italian Renaissance. I found it at my favorite Door County gallery in the years when Mark was showing his work there.

    

 

I have an array of textiles that rotate in and out of this room: contemporary pillows in red felt and suede and a rectangular one made from a felt banner from Mark's high school, paisley shawls, and a pair of antique patchwork pillows (one is visible in the photo). Among my favorites is this needlepoint pillow I made as a wedding present for Mark. The design is based on one of his woodcuts, which in turn is based on a photo from the Wisconsin State Historical Society. The embroidered textile draped over the back of the chair is an Indian head covering for a donkey — the holes are for the ears! We found it many years ago on a drive in the country where we discovered a 1903 hay barn converted into a multi-floored, multi-cultural shop.

    

 

I mooned and swooned over this 19th century Spirit House for a couple of years until one day Mark decided that if I liked it that much, I could have it as a birthday splurge. The central display niches have hand-painted details on the rear walls; and the spaces behind the grillwork contain tiny vases with hydrangeas. There are pairs of working drawers and doors behind which I store jewelry. On the top of the house sit two pairs of twins: carved wood figures from Tanzania and Ecuadorian Shigras (bags), made by looping yarn spun from fibers of the Cabuya (Agave) plant.

    

 

This little origami couple come out for Valentine's Day. If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo), you can see that the woman is held in the man's embrace. But she can also be removed from his arms to stand on her own. They were made by local artist and quilter extraordinaire, Rumi O'Brien. She rarely makes anything for sale anymore, so I feel fortunate to have had a chance to purchase some of her origami work and small textile items.  

    

 

The objects with the highest sheen are these lacquered boxes, providing essential storage for small items. I love their glossy good looks and their Crate & Barrel price tag. They hold more jewelry and a collection of holy cards and obituary notices of friends and family, including both my parents. 

    

 

The location of these boxes amidst antiques — the Spirit House, the gilded English mirror and my grandmother's beaded bag from the 1920's — belie their mass market origins. People just assume they are the same quality as the surrounding objects.

          

     

I used to use the top of the black bookcase as a display surface — until it became the resting place for the Spirit House. I switched to playing with objects on top of my china cabinet which is located on the wall opposite the window. There's less room but it still allows me to bring out favorite items seasonally, as in this Christmas display above and the row of Persephone books and other gray-blue items below.

    

    

But most of the time, the top of the china cabinet is the home to more mundane and utilitarian collections, like my eternal TBR pile of books — glitzed up with a crown.

        

     

The china cabinet is actually used to hold china — dishes that I've collected over the years as well as those that belonged to my mother and her mother. It's also home to a few wedding presents and Mark's much-dented silver baby cup. One shelf displays the tea cups that were featured in this month's GBBD post.

    

A room full of red

Part One

I can't pinpoint the moment when I first wanted a red room; one morning I just woke up and knew I had to have a little red sitting room. After years of obsessing over red interiors designed by Mario Buatta and Mark Hampton and Diana Phipps, I finally had an apartment with the perfect space to experiment. It was a tiny bedroom with a window in one corner, doors in two other corners and a long jog in one wall; meaning there was only one wall without a break in it. I painted the room "Cranapple," using a local brand of paint (Klein-Dickert), but I have little memory of how long it took or how much paint was needed. 

    

 

The trim was all dark stained wood, as was the floor. I did the ceiling white and hung white chintz curtains, with an over-scaled pattern of red and cream Amaryllis flowers and bold green leaves, on the window and in place of the door to the closet. I added my china cabinet, a rocking chair and my grandmother's desk to the space. The end result was everything I'd imagined: cosy, sophisticated, with a hint of Brit and unlike anything I'd seen locally. When I met Mark, he offered to build a three-tiered bookcase (painted black) to fit into the long wall jog. That was the finishing touch which gave the room the feel of a library.

    

 

I still have the bookcase, the desk, the china cabinet — and they all reside in my current red roomm (all photos). Mark painted this one and he will tell you that red paint is very transparent and it takes many coats to cover white walls; four coats in this case. The wall paint was "Lipstick," by another local company, Hallman-Lindsey. I decided white trim would demand a lot of white elsewhere in the room, and I'd already done that in the first red room. This time I opted for "Hanging Moss," a dark olive green for the trim. Since red and green are complementary colors — opposites on the color wheel — they subdue each other.

    

 

This room would be a red cocoon, with little daylight to bleed its color away. I added a pair of solid red glazed-chintz curtains and hung them from French swing-arm curtain rods. Alas, I did not plan for the finials at the ends of the brass rods — which meant my curtains had a gap that let sunlight stream through, diluting the color and posing a threat to the watercolor paintings I planned to hang in the room. I solved this little decorating dilemma by adding green chintz ruffles to the curtain edges. They were actually triangles, rather than scallops, and cut with pinking shears to increase the fun factor. They looked like interlocking green teeth when the curtains were closed. 

    

 

The room is my de-facto ancestor shrine. It contains my maternal grandfather's smoking chair and the un-matched footstool he always used with it. I had the chair re-upholstered in Ralph Lauren's "Brant Point Floral" by local legend, Matthew Nafranowicz of The Straight Thread. Next to it is my grandmother's desk with her brass Art Nouveau desk set as well as a brass lamp with peach-colored china shade that belonged to her. On the walls are four oil paintings done by her father (my great-grandfather) and three pieces done by my youngest sister. The china cabinet holds china and silver that belonged to my mother and her mother as well as gifts from my friends and siblings. Not surprisingly, the room also contains a carved wood "spirit house," which is late Qing dynasty (1644-1911), from Fujian Province in China. 

    

 

To give you a sense of scale, this Chinese "spirit house" is 32" wide x 30" high x 12 " deep.

Of course, I had to create a stack of books with red covers including three of my mother's high school texts by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, complete with gilded titles on the spines. They're resting on a 19th-century English gate-leg table — whose legs are lovely barley twists. The gold mirror in the fourth photo is also 19th-century English. Both pieces are from my serious Anglophile period. The antique ivory necklace (below) — one of a number of requisite touches of Chinoiserie that all Anglophiles require — also came from the same Madison shop as the gate-leg table and mirror. 

    

 

The red room is a repository of all my loves: antiques, art, books, china and silver, family treasures, gold frames, lamps, stacks of hats in their boxes and unusual textiles. If you don't have a room whose color is a celebration and a refuge, now may be the time to create one. The picture below shows the red room immediately after we moved in. You can see some of my hatboxes and my grandfather's chair before it was re-upholstered. But mostly what you see is a sad space. Finding this old picture is proof positive that red is a transformative color: warming, welcoming and lusciously liveable.   

Go Big Red — dahlia

Scott Kunst conducts “rescue operations” on heirloom bulbs (and corms and tubers) via his company, Old House Gardens. He notes that his bulbs are “rare, endangered, and in need of your help — since the only way to preserve these living artifacts — and their incredible genetic resources — is to grow them!” As a gardener and history buff, this is one appeal that I can never refuse. I like their bulbs so much that you will note OHG is actually one of the categories listed on the left side of my blog.

Scott's most recent paper catalog came in the mail this week, along with the information — printed right on the front of the mailing envelope — that American farmers grow 85 percent of OHG's spring-planted bulbs. Equally important news for gardeners in these tough economic times is the fact that OHG has kept their prices the same as last year and actually lowered the prices on on two dozen offerings. That's a company that deserves support — which is no problem for me, given that I am in love with most of their flowers.

    

 

 

The standout in this latest catalog is a new and rare dahlia offering, "Wisconsin Red."  OHG notes "with dark stems and ruby-red flowers, this family heirloom is SO easy to grow and store that it's been a pass-long plant in Wisconsin since the early 1900s." You can read the complete history of the "Wisconsin Red" dahlia in OHG's on-line catalog, which also has many more dahlias and other offerings than the print version. You can order on-line as well. No Badger garden should be without this plant. I can picture a big bouquet of these beauties adorning tail-gate parties all over the state next Fall. Go Big Red! Go OHG!

    

TOP PHOTO: VICTORIA DIRST/ OHG. BOTTOM: OLD HOUSE GARDENS

Eric Ravilious & Angie Lewin encore

I am a big fan of the work of British artist/designer Eric Ravilious and feel fortunate to own one of his delightful Wedgewood coronation mugs. I discovered the work of Angie Lewin while searching online for more information about Ravilious. Turns out printmaker Lewin used the same Ravilious-designed mug in one of her prints (pictured below). Alas, it also turns out that I cannot afford to buy Lewin's lovely print, nor can I afford any of Ravilious' work that is still on the market — no matter the media. 

    

 

But a recent Persephone Post alerted me to the fact that there are versions of the work of these two artists available in my price range. They are among the many items of interest for sale at the aptly named Ancient Industries. The business focuses on objects that have a timeless appeal and are made in traditional ways by (usually) long-established companies. Among the items featured are hot water bottles, tea pots and mugs, hand made brushes of all sorts, bike baskets; just a marvelous assortment — including a few Persephone titles.

    

THE PERSEPHONE POST

Ancient Industries also carries Ravilious' Wedgewood Alphabet set of dishes in blue or pink for $60. This charming group includes a plate, bowl and mug with rows of Ravilious' black and white motifs alternating with bands of alphabet letters printed over a pink or blue stripe. And they also sell a 6.5" x 5.5" linocut greeting card with Lewin's coronation mug on it — exactly like the print at the top — for a mere $4.00. There's also a 4" x 8.25" card by Lewin of the Alphabet mug.

The folks who run Ancient Industries, however, are very up-to-date and even have a blog that is worth visiting.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 2.15.2010

Winter continues to hold sway in our garden, with trees and shrubs still bowed down from the first big December storm. Last week's snow merely added insult to injury, and nary a bit of Spring in sight. We're keeping sane with stacks of garden catalogs, accompanied by piping pots of Earl Grey tea, served in my pink lusterware cups and my mother's favorite hand-painted floral designs.  

 

 

 

 

To see who's actually got flowers in bloom, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens. 

Another Heyer mystery

Two big biographies in January required a frothy little read to cleanse the palate before I dug into the February titles. So I grabbed a Georgette Heyer mystery — "They Found Him Dead" — from a stack of them prominently displayed at the Meadowridge branch  library. The placement and the luscious colors on the cover instantly hooked me.  

Last summer, I read my first Heyer mystery, "Why Shoot a Butler,"  which I described as a "romp." But I have to admit that Heyer mysteries just don't have the same spark of life and liveliness as her Regency novels. Both mysteries I've now read have the same kind of broad age span and type of character as Heyer's novels. The mysteries even included romantic pairings, but neither the couples nor the concepts are memorable on the scale of her classic novels like "Venetia" or "The Grand Sophy." 

The mystery is always plausible (though this time I figured out the killer quite early on) and they're never bloody, even when the victim is shot in the head, as is the case in this story of successive heirs to a fortune being murdered for reasons that aren't entirely clear. I need to avert my eyes the next time I spy one of those seductive covers on a cold gray day. They're definitely more entertaining than what's between them.

    

Garden Expo 2010

It's been snowing and blowing most of the day here, and the only thing keeping local gardeners going is the prospect of the 17th annual Garden Expo this weekend. Last year's three day event — sponsored by Wisconsin Public Television — drew almost 20,000 visitors. Garden Expo is a guaranteed cure for cabin fever with its full complement of lectures, displays, demos, new and old friends — and the smell of dirt and growing things. 

The Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society, along with almost every garden group I can think of, will be represented, judging by this year's list of exhibitors, along with Allen Centennial Garden and Olbrich Botanical Gardens, lots of local parks and prairie groups. If you don't know where to begin, I'd suggest a stop at the nursery that got most of Dane County hooked on perennials: The Flower Factory (Friends don't let friends buy annuals!). Owners David and Nancy Nedvek will have the new plant lists and they always are surrounded by wonderful examples of what they sell.

Don't miss Cobrahead, makers of the weeder everyone loves. If you're lucky, the charming Anneliese Valdes, who we met at the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling in Chicago, will be running the booth. Having trouble figuring out this whole compost thing? Stop by Buckle Up Compost for enlightenment. We switched to their buckle system more years ago than I can remember.

And two guys I love will be there: Michael Schael of Rock Eagle Pottery in Cambridge, WI, and Rich Eyre of Rich's Foxwillow Pines in Woostock, Il. We have Michael's pots in the house and garden, one of his huge platters hangs by the back door year-round, and he also makes the best bulb-forcing bowl I've found. As for Rich, his smile and laugh are infectious, and his dwarf conifers will drive you wild. I've actually been known to purchase trees right out of his Expo display!

The Expo exhibitor list has links to these folks where you can find more information about each of them. Have a great gardening weekend!

    

 

Off-trail in the Arboretum

Monday morning dawned cold and sunny for the first meeting of our three-member Arboretum Corps of Discovery (ACD) "pond" group. Our team's assignment is to document the Arboretum's West Marsh which includes Spring Trail Pond, Stevens Pond and Secret Pond. Early this winter, the entire ACD team met and we all picked two general areas of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum where we will study, observe and document biological and habitat diversity during the coming year. Arboretum staff picked specific spots or "points" in each larger area where we will concentrate our efforts.

We only have one specific assignment and that is to take a 360 degree photo from one of our assigned points. After that we can do as much or as little as we wish, and we can decide which formats we prefer: drawing, photography or writing and any combination thereof. Our efforts will culminate in documentation for the Arb as well as a group show of our work in June 2011.

    

 

For many of the teams, their "points" are located right on or adjacent to trails, often at intersections making them easy to find using the specially-marked maps we were given. The points in the West Marsh, however, are generally off-trail and difficult to pinpoint without actually using GPS. So Molly Murray, the Arb's Outreach Programs Manager, took us for a winter hike to locate our points. 

We tramped under trailing vines and bowed-down shrubs and over fallen logs, always skirting the ponds which are closer to marsh, with cattails marking their boundaries. The snow depth varied but I was always able to step into the tracks of the person in front of me so my feet stayed pretty dry and warm. We all wore differing hand coverings and compared notes about what was warmest and whether you could take notes without baring your skin to the elements.

    

 

Our team will have their work cut out for them because much of the West Marsh area has gone from open to very overgrown since the last documentation was done here in the early 1980s. Whether Arb field staff will be able to clear any brush is uncertain, but none of us are counting on it. It was a gorgeous day to explore and, if it was not seriously snowing this morning, I thought it might make sense to go back while our tracks made it easy to find the ten different locations of our 17 points. Alas, they are probably already covered over.

There was something to see no matter where your eye landed. I saw my first robin of the season (snapped by Molly, below) and a cardinal whose plummage was so brilliantly red it looked "photoshopped." Birds were everywhere because of the open water. Lots of animal tracks, including some large ones that might have been fox or coyote. A massive tree, newly fallen, and a huge lacy disc that was the root system of an long-downed tree. Bald cypress trees, a London plane tree, two varieties of weeping Alaskan cedar. And large stands of grassy cattail foliage that had been knocked over by the big December snow, and now looked like a plain of spikey meringue mountains, topped with the plant's vanilla fluff.  

A lovely, lively, inspirational start to the project.

    

MOLLY MURRAY/UW ARBORETUM