Each Little World

Finding their happy place

As I was walking about the front garden yesterday morning I noticed this clump of Cyclamen that had self-seeded into the gravel path right up against the stone wall. I remember seeing them before and just deciding to leave them alone. Any time I've tried to remove Cyclamen seedlings to replant, I've usually lost them. Maybe letting them alone long enough to bulk up is the answer. 

Seeing the Cyclamen in the path made me wonder how the plants in the nearby bed were faring. Only the original plant is visible and it looks good. Critters, heat and drought mostly likely have done a number on a couple of different varieties that were nearby. They had been doing pretty well but our increasingly hot summers are not helping.

Furter along the path I saw self-seeded ferns, Geranium phaeum and another tiny Cyclamen. 

The first two plants have the same patterning and are likely C. purpurescens. The next one doesn't look quite the same and I'm not sure of exactly which one it is. The last one is the reverse of the first two and is likely C. hederifolium.

I've had enough problems with critters digging these out that I've given up adding any new varieties despite the beauty of the foliage. 

IVOM: Ashes, ashes

Mark goes out multiple times a day to photograph the project on our road. Usually he's just checking to see if they're doing something interesting or something he hasn't seen before. Recently he and a neighbor were watching the excavator when it exposed this stash of old glass containers; possibly an old ash pit. 

Lots of them were broken . . .

but some were still intact. 

When the crew realized the guys were interested in the find, they gave Mark and our neighbor a few of the bottles. 

Mark cleaned them up a bit and left them on the deck where I discovered them.

I cleaned them up some more; mostly just removing dirt. There's a lot of marks that may never come off and we decided to enjoy the patina. 

The greenish bottle in the back left in the photo below had a cork in its neck when it was dug out of the road. The bottle in the center back says "Valleyview Dairy /JJ Collins" while the one on the right says "Lavoris" in raised letters on the shoulder of the bottle. The bottle in the front left is a pint milk container from the old Kennedy Dairy, whose building still stands on West Washington Ave. in Madison. The other two small bottles have no markings. 

It seemed obvious to me from the moment I saw them that these old bottles were perfect Monday vases.

I thought about putting them on the limestone steps outdoors or sitting on a silver tray on the gray pebble paths. Then I remembered this chrome bar cart. 

I liked the contrast between the old and new glass. The flowers include large 'Summer Drummer' Alliums, small 'Millennium' Alliums and an unknown Hosta flower. 

Van Engelen bulbs says Allium 'Summer Drummer' is the tallest and also the latest blooming of the large Alliums. In my garden the paper covering started to come away from the flower heads on July 4th. This is what they currently look like. Very atypical flowers but in a group in the garden they present a light and attractive effect given their size and height. 

Look low

On Valentine's Day Mark and I drove out to Stoughton to the Abel Contemporary Gallery. We hadn't been out to visit and look at art in a while. The openings are so crowded that we've been avoiding them. A Tuesday morning was perfect.

Both the owner, gallery director and a new staff member were all there and with time to talk. After I caught up with everyone, I wandered off while Mark told them about his upcoming photo show.

As always, I am as captivated by the floor as much as the artworks in this 1891 building — originally a tobacco warehouse. Every step you take reveals new marks and changes in the wood. 

Eventually I looked up again and bought myself a necklace for Valentine's day and Mark treated himself to a tea bowl to add to his collection.

IVOM: Halloween

Whenever I get bored, I change up the items on top of this pair of Chinese wine tables. Or on the glass shelves we added on the bottom to provide more display space. Recently I wanted something to punch up this room and bought this pair of lamps at a new antique mall in town. Mark is less than thrilled with them because they limit the size and number of pieces of art that can be put on the wall behind them — which is why I saved the pair of smaller scale lamps that had been residing here. 

I put this grouping of objects out at the beginning of October. I wanted something that felt like Halloween but didn't include typical items. This group showcases a Japanese incense burner, a squash-shaped box of unknown origin and a Chinese ceramic piece that was likely used as a roof decoration. 

I immediately fell in love with this piece when I saw it at an art show at a friend's farm the summer of 2021. It's an actual dried pumpkin covered with lead bullets and sculpt metal. It's called "Pumpkin Mine" and is a comment on the marine mines used to blow up ships. I'm still not sure why I am so drawn to it. I'm not a violent person and neither is the artist — a friend — who made it. But it certainly has that eerie Halloween feel. 

This big wooden bowl full of Honey Locust pods comes out every autumn. When we first lived here, we rarely got pods from our three trees. In recent years, we are buried in them. We fill a lot of big bags with them and send them off to the county dump. 

As a means of turning these lemons into lemonade, I saved the longest, shiniest, most velvety pods for display. They live in this bowl year-round in the basement except for their month in the sun every October.

Wordless Wednesday

Geranium phaeum

I've been hooked on true Geraniums for years. Right now, G. phaeum is having its moment. Many of the flowers are deep purple which seems appropriate for its common name, the Mourning Widow Geranium. But others are so sweetly colored one wonders if she isn't a Merry Widow. 

This is probably the straight species with some G. phaeum 'Samobor' mixed in. Some varieties have plain foliage but those with the patterned leaves provide color all season.

G. phaeum 'Langthorn's Blue'

G. phaeum var. lividum

G. phaeum lividum 'Joan Baker' has a larger and more pale color flower than the straight G. phaeum var. lividum (above). 

This is G. monacense 'Muldoon' which looks almost identical to the G. phaeum flowers to my eye. I have a nice big clump of it growing next to 'Joan Baker' and they look like siblings, or at least cousins. 

The flowers on all of these tend to flip and flop in all directions. So I'm glad that I find the back of the flowers as attractive as the front. 

Speaking of ferns

I did not pay attention to the names of the first couple of ferns I planted in my early gardening days. They are absolute workhorses, producing offsets, standing tall and never being bother by pests or disease. Below are a few of my current favorites to whose names I now pay attention. 

Cheilanthes lanosa 'Mighty Tiday' aka hairy lip fern. About 6" tall and planted in the rock garden in the sun.

Dryopteris felix-mas 'Linearis polydactyla'. This is big, lacy and can take dry shade. I bought one in 1995 and another in 1997. Since then I've cut off divisions to create clumps of this fern all over the garden.

Adiantum venustum aka Himalayan maidenhair (bottom). Fancy Fronds says "rip 'em apart for propagation and that's just what I do.

Adiantum x tracyi. I have had great luck with the straight Maidenhair fern and so am trying others in that family.

Adiantum aleuticum Imbricatum aka dwarf Western maidenhair. The rabbits ate one of the three I planted a year or so ago, this spring. Luckily it seems to be reviving. 

Polystichum makinoi (Makino's holly fern)

Polystichum retrosopaleaceum aka narrow tassel fern

I seem to have the right condition for the basic Japanese painted fern as it tends to seed around the garden. When I am happy with where it plants itself, I let it grow on. This is a moist location with a Larch and new primroses. I am planning on having an almost solid fern ground cover here. 

Holiday decor: On the wall

For the past ten years we've hosted friends for brunch at our house on New Year's Day when the coffee shop that is our weekly meeting place is closed. We use that event, and the winter holidays in general, as the impetus to rearrange our art. Though we will be the only ones at our house this year, we decided our spirits needed the boost that new art and arrangements provide. 

Mark replaced his three photographs above the Chinese wine tables in the living room with new landscapes. I got to pick a trio my favorites. 

This was a fairly quick and easy project as he just used the mats and frames from the previous photos and rehung them in the same location. 

I set up a display on the table surface below the photos with lots of sliver and gray to complement the photos. 

Mark's preference was to leave it just as it is here; very industrial and sparse. 

No way! I intentionally opted for pairs of pots to hold plants. That's heather in the smaller galvanized pots.

The slightly larger pair of pots got red Cyclamen. I intended to get white-flowered varieties but could not get a pair in the size to fit the pots, so I went with red. 

It occurred to me later, that white flowers would not have shown up against the white wall very well. So red flowers made more sense; though I could not find a pair with matching foliage. Normally I put together much more asymmetrical combinations, but I went with pairs since we had so many.

We've been lighting all the candles in the living room (eight of them!) most nights. It has been such a boost to our spirits, that I just ordered more candles so we can enjoy the light all winter.

The bedroom re-do

i always get an urge to do a project over the Labor Day holiday weekend. In 2010, we painted the library walls before the bookcases were installed. Mark and I each picked a quote about books and wrote them in magic marker on the wall where the bookcases were going to go. We loved the idea of someone discovering our messages years from now.  

This year I suggested we repaint our bedroom from deep yellow ochre to gray. Last winter we bought a new silvery gray duvet which was visually at odds with the rest of the room.  Plus it has been this color since 2008. (This image is closer to the actual wall color than the pictures below which look much more pumpkin colored.) 

Mark made a quick foray into the local Benjamin Moore paint store to grab some sample paint cards. That was followed by a curbside pickup of two different gray paint samples. He tried both colors around the window frames . . . 

and on the wall with a black and white photo, since we were considering using all b/w art in the re-painted room. That's the curtain fabric (linen from Purl Soho in NYC, purchased online) spread out on the bed. One paint sample matches the duvet and the other one matches this fabric.

i met friends for a weekly Saturday morning chat while Mark got started painting. 

He is a focused, meticulous painter. When I got home at noon, he had the ceiling repainted and had done all around the windows, the corners of the room and the top and bottom of the walls where they met another color or material. All the really persnickety parts of painting a room. 

I went out to garden while he painted. When I came in a few hours later, I was pooped. He was almost finished and said he was tired out as well. But where I stopped working, he kept going. End result was he took a tumble off our two-step safety ladder, landed on his side on the bed post and broke a rib. 

I was equal parts sympathetic and furious. Mostly I was really scared to have him take a fall for the second time this summer, after rarely even modestly injuring himself in thirty years of marriage. He sat around — medicated — for a few days and then decided he was ready to hang art. We considered b/w prints and photos. 

We've always had a table or bench on the wall opposite the bed. This time we added a pair of upholstered chairs. We were about to hang one of our all time favorite paintings (by local artist Tom Sergeant), when we suddenly went in an entirely different direction. (Note our beautiful silk curtains were falling apart from age and too much sunshine. Very Miss Havisham!)

We opted for simplicity and more sculptural forms this time around. 

The tables had been covered with Indian Kanthas down to the floor. Whether they will be covered again — and with what — is still up in the air. 

On the wall between the bed and the closet are a pair of oyster farming sticks that we've had in various locations for almost 20 years.  

We both thought the color and circular features on this African mask were a nice echo of the sticks. 

Instead of a group of artworks on this wall as we originally planned, we opted for one dramatic piece.

We found this painting on corrugated metal by outsider artist Mary T. Smith in Milwaukee. We discovered Smith and fell in love with her at The Milwaukee Art Museum, which has a similar piece. 

A large African sculpture went on the pedestal that has been in this same corner forever. We both thought she was the perfect partner for Mary T. Smith. 

To add some sparkle and contrast, we brought in our chrome cocktail table . . .

and a pair of glittery pillows. I wanted to add sequins and sparkly bits to the curtains but Mark was not enthused with that idea. 

Last, but never least, Mark added some fall decorative pieces to the table. 

We probably won't be painting this room again because, in another dozen years, we will be old enough that this house may be too much for us to deal with. But that gives us a nice long time to enjoy it in its new incarnation.

The art of transition

We're staying in place, but our art is transitioning. Most of the time it merely moves from wall to wall and room to room. Sometimes it gets sent back to storage in the basement. But last week we transitioned this verdigris finial from indoors to out. For a number of years, it was nestled next to our Craftsman-style buffet in the living room.  

Then it moved into a corner of the bedroom adjacent to this chair by textile artist, Rumi O'Brien. You can sit in it but I tend to regard it as sculpture. 

We took everything out of our bedroom last week in preparation for painting the ceiling and walls. As we hauled the finial into the living room, we decided it was time to move it outdoors after fifteen years of living out of the ravages of the weather. 

We snugged it in the long driveway border where it is visible to visitors coming to the house, but not to passersby. Given that we've never had a Tulip stolen from the curbside garden, we're not really concerned that anyone is going to liberate this piece of architectural art.

We found the finial at the Unearthed store on Old University Avenue near the Blue Moon. They did not know where it had originally come from or what kind of building it had graced. But we fell in love with its quirky "flame" and floppy bow. 

Once our repainting project is complete, I'm sure we'll easily fill the space the finial used to occupy in the bedroom. I'm looking forward to the new color scheme which will definitely require new art.