You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2011.
MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT to report down in Philadelphia: my son Max and his girlfriend Alexis, who bought an 1870s house in Fishtown in June of last year, now have a beautiful, functioning kitchen.
They’ve been working on it all spring and summer. (Go here to see how the room looked in May.) First, they tore out what was there before, reducing the 120-square-foot room to studs. Then, working mostly on the weekends and almost entirely by themselves, they created a kitchen a mother would envy, with abundant storage space and a slew of bells and whistles.
Max, who is a woodworker, rented shop space and used it to build custom cabinets with those swanky smooth-gliding drawers. The cabinet boxes are birch ply, with solid maple doors and drawer fronts.
Below, century-old brass cabinet handles from architectural salvage emporium Provenance.
Then, both Max and Lexy primed, brush-painted, sanded, and painted the cabinets again (and again, and possibly again — I lost count). They painted the walls, too — Benjamin Moore’s soft Palladian Blue — and installed and painted the tin ceiling.
Left, beyond the stainless fridge with the ice/water thingie in the door and the 8″-wide pull-out pantry that nicely fills otherwise unusable space, you can glimpse dangling BX cable and open ceiling beams for a sense of what remains to be done in the apartment.
Coming next: a subway-tile backsplash above the butcher block counters, below.
Since I haven’t had to personally live through it, this kitchen seems to have come together reasonably fast, though I gather it’s been eons in young-person time. Onward, soon, to the bathroom and the rest of the apartment, much of which still resembles a construction site. But first, I hope they’ll give themselves the luxury of a few weekends off to savor their progress.
GOT BACK TO BROOKLYN late last night and saw too many empty vases.
This morning, on a run to my local deli, these goofy-lookin’ things grabbed my attention and made me smile.
Anybody know what they are? And should I keep them in water or let them dry out?
THIS IS NOT my East Hampton garden’s finest hour. I came back after two weeks in the Big City and a hurricane — no, a tropical storm, but still — to find it looking…well, shvach. That word comes to me from my grandmother: it’s Yiddish for ‘lacking, underwhelming, disappointing.’
The only real color in the front perennial beds is the ligularia, which puts out rich yellow spiky flowers right about now. I was conscientious about my Deer-Out regimen in spring and early summer, but as the season progressed, “SPRAY!!!” moved farther and farther down my list of things to do. So the cranesbill geranium ‘Rozanne,’ for instance, which is supposed to bloom till frost, is bare of flowers.
One of the accomplishments of the season was the extension of my perennial border another 30, maybe 40 feet, to the left of the path below. It’s all mulched [thank you, Barbara!] and ready to go — if only I could think what to plant there. To the right of the path, the shadiest area is home to ferns, Korean boxwoods, pieris, epimedium…green, all green.
It’s not unusual for gardens to lack color in late summer and fall. They needn’t; it’s just that people tend to start out all gung ho and buy out the nurseries in spring, then rest on their mountain laurels and more or less forget about planning for later in the season. That’s not entirely my problem — it’s more about the challenges of excessive shade and deer.
On the plus side, the recently pruned rhodies, above, are happily sending out fresh new growth. Below, the miscanthus are satisfyingly full at the end of their second season. I’ll probably be dividing them before long.
Perennials will be on sale in a few weeks, and I’ll try to pump up the late summer color quotient for next year.
An old clump of chelone, or turtlehead, above, pre-dates my 2009 arrival. I moved it from under my about-to-be-built deck to a spot way at the back of the perennial border, where it is a standout. Ought to get more of that stuff, come to think of it.
Below, still no decision on what to do with the amoeba-shaped island bed in the middle of the back lawn. Ajuga (bugleweed) is colonizing it, and I see no reason not to let that happen.
Then there’s this vast empty area along the western property line, below, a fairly sunny spot where I might create a fenced cutting garden, or plant a variety of ornamental grasses. There’s an baby Eastern Redbud tree toward the back; I’m looking forward to it filling out and blooming pink next spring.
Below, the wrath of Irene. A huge — no, I mean, huge– oak keeled over toward the back of my property. Actually, its trunk was on land belonging to the Town of East Hampton.The first five feet of it fell on Town land; the other 70 feet on my land. I’ve made the phone call and been told someone will “take a look.” Uh-huh.
Trees and shrubs go on sale around here tomorrow. I’ll be exploring the local boxwood selection. Boxwoods are tidy, shade-tolerant, deer-resistant, evergreen, classic. They provide screening and structure. Yay, boxwoods. What could be bad?
Eight birdhouses, $1 apiece. Red and yellow bench, 8′ long, $20.
AT THIS MORNING’S ROUND OF YARD SALES, I made out like a bandita, and I owe it to my friend Ada. She wanted to schedule our Saturday morning walk for 9AM, about an hour earlier than usual, so I had to get my yard-saling ass in gear earlier than usual.
Photos/postcards of local scenes (some repro, some old), $1 each
Normally, to a sale slated to start at 9, I roll up no earlier than 8:45, but today, since there was only one 8 o’clock sale listed in my yard sale oracle, the East Hampton Star, I swooped down on the 9AM openings well before the appointed hour. Thus, I was first, or close to first, at two or three of them (I found only one closed to “early birds.”)
Hand-painted, double-sided, plywood fish, already hanging on my kitchen wall, $1
With grim determination, a steady hand on the steering wheel, and my handy laminated map by my side, I squeezed in five or six sales in an hour, scoring bargain after heady bargain. Everywhere I went, I heard comments in my wake: “Wow, she got a deal,” “Why did you sell them so cheap?” “If only I had dusted that table, I could have gotten more,” “Why didn’t you show those to me first? I would have taken them.”
Signed, framed watercolor of old houses in Rockport, Maryland, $20
Gloat, gloat. From now on, Labor Day weekend looms in my personal mythology as the absolute best for yard sales. I vow to set that clock earlier, down that coffee faster, and skip the lipstick.
Moroccan (or Moroccan-style) painted table, $10
…which have nothing to do with each other, of course, except that both begin with S.
See above for last night’s beaut over Montauk’s Fort Pond Bay, where I ate what will probably be the season’s last lobster dinner. I’m back in my Springs (East Hampton, N.Y.) cottage following a successful August rental. All went without a hitch (for me as the landlady, anyway — the tenants decamped a bit early because of impending Irene).
I’m glad to be back, even though my garden looks somewhat bedraggled and blah, lacking the sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and other things that would be adding color this time of year. I spent most of yesterday chasing deer out of my backyard — need I say more?
As for the fortuitous street find, I’d been looking for a coffee table for my Springs living room at yard sales and in thrift shops, but I got away even cheaper. As I was packing my car in Brooklyn for the trip out here last Monday evening, I saw on the sidewalk, not two feet from where I was parked, the wrought iron and glass coffee table in the photos above and below.We sure have some great garbage in NYC!
This table is not exactly “me” — I might have passed it up at a yard sale, even for $20, as it’s of indeterminate age (could even be vintage Pottery Barn) and I had been thinking “rattan.” But it’s the perfect size and shape, and in tip-top condition, so I walked two steps, bent down, and lifted it into the hatchback of my trusty Honda Fit. I think it totally works on the sisal rug.
I’d also like to call your attention to the sculptural object on the high ledge, above. It’s the contorted remains of a Harry Lauder Walking Stick (Corylus contorta), an unusual deciduous shrub I like to call simply ‘the Harry.’ Planted a couple of years back, it didn’t survive in the ground — not sure why. Conveniently, however, this is a plant that looks better dead (or bare of leaves in winter).
Recent Comments