Regular readers know that UD‘s kid, La Kid, has worked at international consulting firm Hakluyt for some time. What you didn’t know, and what I didn’t know until I saw this piece in Architectural Record, is that their SF office (pictured), and I think all of their other offices, feature well-equipped bars.
***************
Photo © Bruce Damonte
For a Bethesda garden club’s annual tour.
Why pretend to be blasé about this, UD? Admit your excitement that your garden, only one small piece of which was professionally designed, and all of which is maintained by you and you alone, has attracted this sort of attention.
Of course this means I have to fast track the Bonhoeffer meditation garden at the top of the property. Not to mention sniff out the random dogshit, catshit, deershit, etc. The tour takes place in June.
**************************
Will they expect me to walk around with them, chatting in a casual highly informed way about my plants? I don’t tag anything! I’m an old hippie! I grab stuff I like in plant stores, throw it in the ground, and immediately forget – if I ever knew – what it is. I can only identify hydrangeas. But not the type of hydrangeas. And I often call hydrangea hibiscus because they both start with the hi sound.
So the basic narrative, as I sit watching the garden from my bed, is this: One dove bobs pecks and pokes among the stalks I’ve been cutting off to make room for spring growth. Sometimes he finds one that’s too big, gets it almost to the nest, drops it. Mainly he finds the right length, and I follow him with my eyes as he flies ten feet up into a tree bordering the garden and with mucho flutter hands it off to the architect.
While it’s fun to watch the gathering and building and then of course the babies, it’s also true that for a few weeks we will deal with paranoid dive-bombers coming at us whenever we’re anywhere near the nest.
The morning sun lights up the late March greening of UD’s forest.
That’s the top of the MARC commuter train, whizzing through a ravine at the end of UD‘s woods.
UD and her buddy Ellen were doing one of those get there just when it opens and get all the art to yourselves things when, in one of the atria, we happened on a wedding.
A spectacular creekside house built by “world-renowned translators of the works of Søren Kierkegaard” is asking $850,000, which probably means you’ll pay less than that. You can hear the creek from the house.
[It’s] constructed with native limestone, is on 2 acres, and has more than 4,323 square feet. Natural light pours through large windows on the main floor, which has an open floor plan and a walk-out deck. The lower level has stone floors and opens onto a patio.
There are three full kitchens, five fireplaces (a mixture of decorative, wood-burning and gas), a sauna and a hot tub. It contains at least four full bedrooms, along with other versatile rooms.
Northfield (site of St Olaf College) isn’t that far from St Paul/Minneapolis, so urban life is also available…
**********************
Zillow, OTOH, currently lists petite chez UD for over a million, which tells you all you need to know about location, location, location.
… spreads mulch in UD‘s backyard. It’s a fundraising thing. UD graduated from WJ.
Altogether odd and beautiful weather this spring, back and forth from sunny and warm and calm to gray and cool and windy. I’ve tossed Magical Flames and Firestart onto the grate, and on top I’ve piled old woody grapevines that sheared off a tree in one of the windstorms. Mr UD got the black statues when he worked for the UN in East Timor. The tan camels we brought back from India, and to the right is a Corbu-themed quilt that students of Jerzy Soltan made for him.
UD reflects, looking at this fire and also at people/dogs walking on Rokeby Avenue, that though she’s done quite a lot of traveling (as you know if you read this blog), she likes best to be at her peaceful home, whose last owner was Munro Leaf. Ferdinand the Bull’s spirit remains here, decades after the death of the man who conjured him.
Musk vacates UD‘s local mall.
… a pink sunrise with pink contrail. An hour ago, from the deck outside my bedroom.
Yellow, white, and purple wildflowers are everywhere.
