5.17.2006

a garden grows on booker street

my garden has been flourishing these last few weeks. we've finally started to overcome the rain deficit and the weather has been lovely and mild. spring time in the 'ville is truly gorgeous, when it sticks around for a while. as a result of the last month's climatic perfection, most of my garden glories have emerged from their winter slumbers. thought i would give you an update on what's growin' on.

i uprooted a number of poorly-located rose bushes in the fall of 2005. all but one weathered the disruption of the transplant ahd the winter, and of those, only one is not in bud. i currently have a gorgeous salmony-pink tea rose in bloom. it looks alot like this one called leaping salmon.



i have an amazing white rose - not sure what variety - that is covered, absolutely covered, in blooms. the blooms are unlike tea roses, which are the classic roses, in that they are very loose and amorphous. the petals have little or no strength in them, so when fully open they are very droopy. it's obviously an old garden variety like this one, called frau karl drushki.

i have been transplanting a number of wee clematis paniculata vines along our chain link fence. as you long-time readers may recall, my garden is a veritable oasis of this wild clematis variety. the transplanting and training along the fence worked wonders last summer and fall for concealing the ugly chain links in clouds of green tendrils and thousands of tiny white stars. just like this!

my elephant ears have multiplied (naughty elephants!) and they are slowly emerging from the mulch and unfurling their enormous leaves. i have tried to infill the spaces between the sprouts with wild cranesbill geranium, like this. you know i adore geraniums, of all varieties.

my next project is to root prune two very large flowering quince shrubs, so that i can transplant them to pots or different spots in the garden. flowering quince is my favorite shrub, and i can't believe i was so lucky to find a house with three mature specimen. for that matter, could i have gotten any more lucky with all the variety of plants i inherited from the cary family. a garden grows on booker street, for sure.

knowing is half the battle, part 2

in december i posted knowing is half the battle, in which i came clean of my absolute obsession with furniture. well, my obsession abated slightly (only very slightly) for the last few months - as i was preoccupied with other things - but friends, i confess to you, i am consumed again.


i think about furniture all the time. i am haunted by the pieces i have seen but not acquired. what was i thinking? no amount of money is as dear as the pleasure i get from touching the oiled form of a teak lounge chair and gazing at the intricate weave of a roped seat. or, sigh, the combination of both teak and rope, such as the pair of folding chairs to the left and the little round beauty below.


i will have this round, roped chair if it cleans out my bank account. it is simply stunning in its simplicity of form and complexity of construction. S I G H


chairs are really my primary objets du desir, but the forms and shapes of other pieces attract me as well. vanities (such as the one to the left) and dressing tables are of particular interest, but modern interpretations are hard to come by. somehow i misjudged the market for this vanity and let it slip through my fingers for a mere pittance (i am still flagellating myself for losing it.)

i have been suffering in silence over the last few months as a result of the pieces i have loved and lost. so, in order to keep the memories of them close to my heart and fresh in my mind, i thought i would post images of them here. i hope you enjoy the objects of my obsession as much as i do.

5.16.2006

i fly COACH

i have been traveling a lot lately. and while i generally like to travel, these recent trips (really, the time spent en route) for work have been wholly unrewarding. on my most recent trip to tallahassee fl, i came to the conclusion that i find airports to be the most loathesome environments. take my adventure from charlottesville to charlotte, for instance. i wrote an account of it while sitting in charlotte, waiting for a very late connector to tallahassee. i was forced to wait for a very late flight because i missed the earlier flight that i was scheduled to take. this was due to my flight from charlottesville to charlotte (which originated in charlotte) being delayed for two hours. mind you, it was delayed two hours, but only in 20 min intervals, so it wasn't like i could go home and wait for it.

while i waited in the charlottesville airport for my never-arriving flight to charlotte, i was surrounded by numerous giants of the basketball-playing type. they were high school students and one or two excessively boisterous chaperones who were also waiting on the flight to charlotte. with the stench of cologne, the incessant bouncing of basketballs, the a capella, off-key singing, and the out-right demands of special attention, they were the most obnoxious airport ignorati. this was just the beginning of my bad travel kharma.

so i finally made it to charlotte and was looking forward to sitting somewhere and catch up on some blog reading. with a gradiose name like charlotte douglas international airport you'd
expect luxury and convenience. no chance! i trekked up and down that very spread-out and poorly-organized airport to find a damn wi-fi connection. the only wi-fi connection is in the middle of the f-ing central terminal (i landed in one of the most remote terminals) in a tiny room full of business men. you can not connect to wireless anywhere else in the terminal (umm, WTF?). so, nestled in that little cocoon of wi-fi comfort, i was about as far away from my gate as i could possibly be, with no idea whether my plane was on time, not coming, nor if it even exists. what's worse was that on my many strolls through terminals A, B, C, D, and E, i could find no mention of my flight on the “tv screens,” as the monitors displaying flight info are called by the announcers who implore you to check them for your flight info. seriously people, are we so ignorant as to not know that a monitor showing flight information is just that, a monitor, not a “tv screen”? and, btw - why did you never post the status of my flight? good thing i had the sense to get to my gate a bit early and ask!

but maybe the majority of travelers are that ignorant – i certainly came to that conclusion after even the shortest jaunt through charlotte douglas. i was appalled at the outfits people travel in. what are they thinking? wedges and miniskirts; velour sweatpants, athletic socks and flip-flops; hoochie hot pants and high heels!

now don’t misunderstand, i'm all for traveling in style. i do not advocate for schlubbing around in lounge wear when traveling. however, there is an aspect of travel fashion that demands common sense. when you are hustling through the terminal along with hundreds of others, do you really need to show the world how incapable you are of walking in wedges, or how much of your fat ass is spilling out of your mini skirt, or, god forbid, both!

speaking of ignorance and outlandish fashion sense: the young woman, clad head-to-toe in COACH labels (from sweater to shoes to shopping bag - sort of ironic when you're (i assume)traveling first class), in the queue with me at the starbucks (nope, no wi fi there!) heard me order a tall double latte. she turned to me and asked “what is a tall double latte”? i just about choked. could she be serious? did she just fall of the back of the most remote convent/boarding school pick-up truck? just happen to wander into the starbucks because it looked appealing? i mean, i make no assertions that a starbucks latte actually resembles a real-live, delicious espresso beverage, however i thought the abundance that is starbucks had fully educated the public (every public) of the myriad of espresso and milk combinations. anyway i was visibly flummoxed by her question, and she, sensing my hesitation, worked it out for sherself in her fashion-adled pea brain. is it a latte with two shots, she asked. i could barely muster a yes and a head nod.


i am sure there was much more shock and awe while i was in charlotte, but it has now been supplanted by the lovely time i spent in tallhassee. i stayed in a downtown bed and breakfast called the inn at park avenue with an amazingly lovely hostess and enjoyed wine on the screened porch in a glorious southern afternoon thunderstorm. my time spent in tallahassee more than made up for my misadventures in getting there.

5.05.2006

friday random 10 (i hope this one is better) 5/5/06

  1. banquet (phones disco edit) by bloc party, from the bloc party ep (i heart bloc party)
  2. the green green grass by amanset, from set free (fab song, but they appear every week)
  3. beretta by manishevitz, from city life (finally some variety)
  4. twelve fold chain by the books, from lost and safe (more variety!)
  5. loss leaders by spoon from soft effects ep
  6. seems so long ago, nancy by palaxy tracks from twelve rooms
  7. vanishing point by new order from the best of...
  8. on repeat by lcd soundsystem from lcd soundsystem disc 1
  9. music is happiness by the octopus project from one ten hundred thousand million
  10. these are the fables by the new pornographers from twin cinema (finally some neko)

interesting mix of pop and new wave, albeit a bit unbalanced. not a bad random 10, little pod!

5.04.2006

dear e,
my blog is mussed up. the sidebar is now the bottom sidebar. can you fix it? do you remember my password?

love,
b