Epic hosta on its way up in UD‘s garden. Its circular formation makes it look like a miniature, green, Stonehenge.
Here’s what it looked like four days ago.
Today it’s at least an inch higher all around and unfurling has begun.
In a quiet corner beside the lower deck, a hosta puts out circular shoots.
… El Patio, an Argentine place we like, claiming that it’s soon going to be National Empanada Day, and they had a celebratory special on them tonight.
First we toasted to the memory of my Argentine Uncle Mario; then we chowed down.
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.
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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.
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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…
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Zillow, OTOH, currently lists petite chez UD for over a million, which tells you all you need to know about location, location, location.