Each Little World

A Pattern Language

Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" is a book about architecture, community and design solutions that came out of UC-Berkeley in the 1970s. I own a copy and have skimmed it over the years. I love patterns and recently kept noticing them, no matter where I was or what I was doing. So this is my "pattern language."

No bouquets yet

I did make a tiny arrangement of snowdrops for a friend, but the garden is so wet from the snow and rain that I'm just enjoying it from a distance. A few weeks ago I arranged a display on our pair of Chinese wine tables in anticipation of Spring. This is as far as spring has made it inside the house. 

I first saw this plate a number of years ago on the website of a store called Asiatica in Kansas City. It has been out of stock since the first time I saw it — until now. It is one of the few things in this beautiful shop that I could afford, so I snapped it up immediately.

And I got the bowl as well. You can see that I enjoyed my pots of Muscari until the bitter end. I will plant the bulbs out in the garden very soon. 

I have a small number of Japanese indigo fabrics woven on narrow looms. I don't really have a plan for them, but I couldn't resist the different patterns. Rolling them up and displaying them in this tray from Target seemed like an easy way to enjoy them. 

Despite the fact that this is not a large vase, it will be a while before there are any flowers in the garden that are tall enough not to be hidden below the rim. 

The rain should end today and the forecast is mostly sunny with temps in the 70°s by early next week. That's way too warm for early April, but it is what we are seeing more and more as the climate changes.

IVOM: More pots

The last time I used this little blue and white bulb bowl from the Metropolitan Museum of Art was on Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in 2013. When I saw two small pots of about-to-bloom Muscari at the grocery store last week I couldn't resist. Blue Hyacinths and the similarly colored "grape hyacinths" will always come home with me when I see them.

I pulled the bulbs out of the dirt, washed them off and put them in the bowl. I was feeling very Dutch with this combination of flowers and container! I went looking for my other blue and white container with lots of openings in it. Turns out the blue and white brick is meant to hold flower stems and not bulbs. The bowl holds 5 bulbs, only half of the number I brought home. 

Thus the others got plopped in a little cachepot from the late Johannsens Nursery, once a mere five minute drive from my house. This container is one of 5 that I bought one year at Easter along with a number of different succulent plants to put in them.

All of the flowers are sending up a second bloom. I put the one container right next to where I sit most evening so I can enjoy both the flowers and the fragrance up close. 
As the flowers keep blooming it seems as though the bulbs are shrinking. One fell through the hole and had to rescued before it drowned. Maybe it's just that they're out in the air and not protected with soil. Or maybe it's just a fluke. 

The bulb bowl has lots of small openings perhaps meant for baby bulbs; who knows. It did occur to me, however, that I should try putting big leafy flowers in the bulb openings and fill the small holes with the delicate stems of spring ephemerals. We'll see what I can do come spring when there's more in my garden than snow. 

Remembering Ravilious

During the Second World War, the War Artists Advisory Committee in the U.K hired 300 artists to cover the conflict. On this date in 1942, a plane on a mission off the coast of Iceland crashed into the sea, killing its pilot and 39-year-old passenger, artist Eric Ravilious.  He was the first official war artist to die in active service. I fell in love with Ravilious's work the first time I saw it. He was an illustrator, painter, printmaker and designer of commercial images like the one on this mug. 

This is one of a pair of large cups I have that were produced by Wedgewood to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth the 2nd, the current Queen. Ravilious originally designed this one for her father's coronation and it was reissued in this colorway for Elizabeth. 

I'm not usually a fan of pink and yellow combinations but I think it works in this design. At this time of year, however, my garden doesn't as offer quite as many choices for pink and yellow blooms as it does in the spring. Still I found more than I expected. 

The provenance of the cup is printed on the bottom. 

The two books pictured are "Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield," edited by Gill Saunders and Malcom Yorke and "Long Live Great Bardfield: An Autobiography" by Tirzah Garwood, the wife of Eric Ravlious.

The first is a big, illustrated history of the group of artists who lived and worked Great Bardfield in England and the second is one of many superb books by the great Persephone Press in Bath, England. I am a huge fan of their books and have quite a long shelf full of them. In fact, they are listed as their own category on this blog!

IVOM: Rescued from the weather

Our dangerously low overnight temperatures mean that all my special plants are being protected with bins and boxes. Tonight looks like our last day with a freezing overnight low temp, 32°F.

I have been holding all the plants that have arrived by mail or curbside pickup at local nurseries in a wheelbarrow and boxes so they can be quickly brought indoors at night and returned outside during the day time hours. But yesterday, I gave up and brought everyone inside mid-afternoon when it started to snow. It came down heavily enough that it began to stick to the deck and covered the roof of the fence across the back garden.

The living room is the holding spot for herbs and a few perennials.

The wheelbarrow in the garage has Epimediums, Tricyrtis and Veronicastrums.

The front hall is packed with everything else . . .

including this Rhodie atlanticum that has started to bloom.

Luckily I took advantage of more pleasant weather Saturday afternoon and clipped enough flowers to put together an assortment of vases. 

This Tulip and the Muscari grow in full sun in gravelly soil in the traffic island bed in the street. I plant and maintain this little bed which is directly in front of my house.

I have a trio of white pitchers that Ipurchased because I loved their shapes and thought they would be perfect as vases. But photographing them as a group is always difficult, between finding the room to pose all three together and enough light to show their contents in their true colors.

They are filled with Daffodils, Tulip sylvestnis, Epimedium, Fritillaria, Lamium and a Peony.

I opened the window shutters to increase the light! 

A pair of Tulip 'Schoonoord' circle Paeonia japonica with Hyacinth 'City of Haarlem' in the rear. 

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this lively and lovely Monday meme. 

The "tourists"

The group who visited our garden on August 11 were from the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Last year a two-person scouting team came at a similar time and on almost the same date in August.

When the group came in person, they told us they scheduled our garden as the last stop of the day knowing how restful and contemplative it was. I was impressed to think that not only did they appreciate our garden enough to include it on their agenda, but they recognized the perfect time to visit.

Despite knowing the group would arrive on a bus, it is always a bit of a shock when it pulls up!

We put down a number of non-skid runners to make sure the deck was safe after the morning rain. 

As with most garden lovers, everyone was friendly and engaging. 

Whether you go on a garden tour or host one, it is non-stop discussion about plants. My straw fan with textile accents generated a lot of talk as well.

Usually most of my time is spent answering questions about our garden or identifying plants. This time I made a point of asking visitors about their gardens. It was a treat to see someone else's garden!

Julie Jenny, the Education Programs Coordinator of the Scott Arboretum (left), was our contact person for the tour. She kept us informed every step of the way and from our viewpoint, the group seemed very organized. In addition to visiting public and private gardens, they went to a number of locations in the region including a dairy farm and Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home. 

We put out "before and after" photo albums of the garden as well as some historic images of the house from the family who built it in the mid-1950s. Since the Scott Arboretum group stopped at our house at 5 p.m. we knew their next stop was dinner. So we provided water, dried apricots and a Spanish treat that is a cross between a cookie and a cracker. 

Knowing we had a tour scheduled for August, helped us to do a number of jobs that have been on our garden "to do"' list for quite some time. Now it's nice to have those things done and to know that no more tours are coming — until the Garden Bloggers Fling in Madison next June. 

Winter reading: The Scarlet Pimpernel

A number of years ago, UK author Susan Hill wrote a book called "Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home". I loved the concept behind the volume  — taking a trip through the books that are already on our shelves — though her book itself left something to be desired from my point of view. Reading all those titles at home makes sense especially in the winter when getting to my bookstore or even the nearby library can sometimes be a challenge. Though I never finished reading Hill's book, it did remind me of all the old favorites on my shelves just waiting to be discovered again. 

I have a paperback copy of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" ready to grab when the mood strikes. Like "A Tale of Two Cities" it's a classic tale set during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. It's filled with despair, disguises, daring rescues and romantic reunions. It's never been out of print since Baroness Emmuska Orczy (isn't that a great name?) first published it in 1905. 

At times the book clearly reads like something published at the beginning of the 20th Century: quirky, convoluted and stilted. The movie is another story. The 1934 version with Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon is not bad — until you've seen the one with Jane Seymour and Anthony Andrews (1982, above). No one can play a fop like Andrews and Seymour was made for costume dramas. They're a perfect pair until villain Ian McKellan comes between them.

The title of the book refers to a tiny flower that our mysterious hero uses as his signature (see the book cover at the top). I've always wanted to plant a Scarlet Pimpernel in my garden for the sheer fun of it. I am a sucker for plants with a history and a story behind them, let alone a series of movies.

I can just picture serving tea in Portmerion china cups decorated with Pimpernels and a single flower resting on the table — a subtle sign for those who catch it that nothing is ever quite what it seems.

 

IAVOM: Holiday transition

I am so pleased with this big arrangement that was in my red room for Christmas that I decided to bring it out into the light of day. I don't mind that the berries are fading and the Eucalyptus is drying up, turning pale and papery. The white pine branches are the ones that I clipped from a pile of curbside evergreen debris in December.

In this location, there's room for these big branches to take a visual breath. Plus my new blue and white vase nicely echoes Tom Sargeant's painting on the wall behind it.

I never did manage to get our wooden putti candleholder out for the holidays. Now that we're into the new year he can play cupid until we tire of him and want another change. 

I added two small wooden bowls to this grouping so cupid would not be the only brown item in the display. But then the blue and white vase looked lonely so I grabbed this Chinese bowl that has as much brown on it as blue.

At the other end of the table is another blue bowl with a bit of brown in the interior almost hidden by the white pine branches.

It wasn't until I bent down to get a shot of the blue swirls on the outside of the bowl that I realized the ceramic lamp base, the table and cupid were in their own little swirly world. 

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, stop by Rambling in the Garden. 

IVOM: Seasonal shift

All the browns and oranges and gourds and pods that were starring in this space for the last month or two are back in their hiding places until next year. I decided to go for a completely different look this year for my holiday decor that I display on this pair of Chinese wine tables. I wanted something warm, elegant and glowing without glitter. So I brought together all the myriad gold-toned items that lurk in corners and china cupboards the rest of the year. The first image below gives you an overview. The following pictures look at the items in more detail going from left to right.

I've had this gold rimmed bowl longer than I can remember. I originally bought it because I thought it would go well with my grandmother's stemware that is similarly edged. Over the years I've made orange and lemon pomanders as gifts and to spice up my own closets. 

This heavy brass vase has a different design on each side and a wooden stand that raises its stature. The greens and Hellebore leaf are from the garden.

The black lacquer tray holds a brass box from WWI that was given to UK soldiers that first Christmas of the War. There's also a needle case, a puffy pillow-shaped box, a reproduction antique Egyptian mirror and a brass tea strainer filled with stars. On the right side is a piece of hand-painted jewelry with a gold-colored frame. It's meant to be worn as a brooch but I am always worried about losing it so it never leaves home. I think of all the items on this tray as toys for grown-ups.

Moving down the table is a gold plate that my sisters and I bought for our mom on her 50th wedding anniversary as it matched a vase that was one of her wedding gifts. On the plate are tiny accordion poetry books with gold-leaf covers. The pair of British brass candlesticks were one of the last things we bought when one of our favorite local antique stores closed. The picture frame holds two photos of Mark at an early childhood Christmas. At the far right are a Japanese tea container and a bowl with gold-wrapped candies.

Baby Mark celebrates in 1948!

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase or around their homes this holiday season, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this meme.

In a vase on Monday: Roger Banks-Pye Concept No. 3

As I mentioned last Monday, Roger Banks-Pye of Colfax & Fowler believed "in making flowers an intrinsic part of the smaller decorative scene rather than a louder solo statement." In particular, he liked to chop flower stems really short so they rested "their chins on the rim of the container." I decided to give it a try with this antique china cup and saucer and Astrantia major 'Lars' (dark pink) and 'Buckland' (very pale pink and green).

I don't think I would have created an arrangement where I cut off almost the entire flower stem if I wasn't trying to emulate Banks-Pye. If you are familiar with Astrantias, they have a clump of basal foliage and tall stems with clusters of flowers at the top. This bouquet doesn't give you a clue as to what this plant looks like in the garden. But I absolutely love the way it looks in this china cup and saucer.

I used Astrantias because they were the only flower I didn't mind cutting and I thought the size would be good for the container. I wasn't thinking about how well they'd complement the china pattern. Though it doesn't fit Banks-Pye's criteria, I couldn't resist adding the fern frond whose colors are such a perfect match!

I am going to try to remember this concept of resting the chins of the flowers on the rim of the container. I think it makes a particularly successful arrangement. I will be curious to see how well it works with other flowers. But for now, I don't know when I have been so pleased with my handiwork! 

To see what other gardeners are snipping and arranging in vases this morning, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this weekly meme.