… this photo in the New York Times, part of an ad campaign for Parachute, an upscale bedding company. (There’s a Parachute store a thirteen-minute walk from La Kid’s trendy DC apartment.) What strikes me is the dirt on the bedroom floor, and on the pants of the person troweling.

In the bedroom. Troweling in the bedroom.

Other elements of the image – washed-out whites, distressed terracottas, and palely flowering plants – are familiar from the hyper-minimalist, organic design world, and UD herself is a paid-up member of that world… Often, when UD visits her neighbors’ houses, she thinks They put everything in. I take everything out…

**************************

Mr UD is fond of this guy… something of a crackpot … named Bede Griffiths, who just kept getting more and more and more ascetic in his spiritual life, and for sure that ain’t me. Like only wearing a loincloth and sleeping under the stars. But I recognize myself, somewhat, in this pallid pictorial. Remember that Mr UD’s father was a noted Corbusierian, so there’s that influence in our (midcentury) house, and its simple pollinator gardens/unrefined forests, as well. We’re definitely on the spectrum.

Anyway, there’s above all the devil-may-care, so-what-if-I’m wearing-white-slacks thing to note in this image. I get the whole bringing the garden indoors trend, but wow. Does this woman not have a cat/dog to gambol in the loam and track it all over the house? Or am I supposed to be too cool to worry about that? Is it bourgeois to worry about that? Croyez-moi, I don’t care when stuff in the house gets dirty and dog-haired, etc.; but I’m thinking I draw the line at potting plants on my bedroom floor.

… UD‘s spring garden.

But not before UD, who does Wordle just as a new game begins, at midnight, played. She had a devil of a time with FETUS, and she usually breezes through Wordle. She got, quickly, three of its letters, but all three kept being in the wrong place; and she had to stare for about fifteen minutes (an outrageously long Wordle time) at the alphabet, and shift letters around here and there in her head, to figure out what the word could possibly be.

She got FETUS in four moves, which is more than respectable given its difficulty, only to be told by her fellow players (there are four of us) that they all got a different, easier word.

ADIEU

QUOTE

ERUPT

FETUS

Not to mention, more modestly and locally, Potomac, Maryland, down the street from ol’ UD, many of whose McMansions house a rich diversity of foreign kleptocrats…

I mean, first they came for the Armenians (starting with A, I presume), and I did not speak out— Because I am not an Armenian. Then they came for the Brazilians, and I did not speak out— Because I am not a Brazilian. Then they came for the Croatians, and I did not speak out— Because I am not a Croatian. Und so weiter.

If my government truly takes the wonderfully named Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Awards Program seriously, expect all those exciting new super-thin luxury towers overlooking Central Park to thin to nothingness, babe. More critically, expect UD’s little house’s price (currently overvalued, by some online estimates, at close to a million dollars) to plummet as all the nearby rich people who are propping the poor thing’s value up go to jail.

Seriously, do you really want to go down that path?

She’s wilded her front lawn, so no lawn guilt. She’s actually not keen on azaleas (too many of them; too pastel), but a lot of her garden is gifts from her mother’s garden, and she’s sentimental about keeping the gifts, even if they’re not what she would have chosen. The above-ground wires you see always make me remember my big-shot developer Uncle Mario, who found this ancient technology shocking.

This is UD‘s front garden; dedicated readers will also be familiar with the back, which features a recently installed pollinator garden plus lots of woodland. Photos of that when it does something interesting.

… dinner before tomorrow’s ceremony awarding Stewart the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The whole thing’s vegan. She snapped a pic of the first course:

… they will come.

Spring, UD‘s garden.

… “perimeter walk,” when Les UDs walk the length and breadth of their property. This often coincides with sunset, but this evening was so beautiful that we took our walk early.

The main thing I wanted to say about this image is that you’ve GOT to imagine the sweet powerful aroma coming off those white viburnum flowers. It says here that the scent is a “sweet, rich, spicy vanilla,” which sounds about right. There’s something of chai tea to it.

… at Quiet Waters Park, along Maryland’s South River. Site of today’s walk.

… a bird (probably a wren or a cardinal) decided to start its nest in our just-bought, obviously too natural, front door wreath. Really hoping our return will decide it against continuing the construction, or we will have to use our back doors to avoid disturbing things.

With the spring come all the paeans to the spring, especially to the spring garden; and while UD – an enthusiastic gardener – likes to read all the regeneration-swoons, she’s also partial to the Bronx cheers — like the above comment from a New York Times writer. Or, you know, the famous first lines of The Waste Land, etc.

I mean, who has not watched Prince Charles sidle among his manure stocks and kind of wanted him to say “Mind you, it’s all rather a stinking bloody mess.”

Here are Mr UD and the dog enjoying our just-mulched layout.

First it makes it sound utopian; then it announces there are no houses for sale.