A Life in Rockridge, Beautifully Arranged

From JH:

lilac-tulip-hydrangea heaven

Saddleshoos over at A Rockridge Life is making me reconsider the fabulosity of flower arrangements. Usually, my mind is of the divide-and-conquer kind––I like to disassemble bouquets, put similar species in smaller vases and then scatter them around, like this. It’s foolproof and kind of a cop-out, I know. Because balancing disparate blooms is no small skill…look at the above, for example. And this one by Saddleshoos, too, the result of a rainy day:

peonies and a pineapple!

From her blog I’ve gathered that she’s had some training––she’s worked at a flower shop near her home called Bloomies, which always seems to have the best of what’s in season. (I envy her this; in my Italian-American ‘hood mums rule). So what’s the secret, Saddleshoos? Any tips? Looking at your arrangements, I found myself thinking––Recipes for Fresh-Cut Centerpieces! I’d buy the book.

For more oogling, check out her post on Saipua, in nearby Red Hook. As they say at ARL: So soothing.

Because a Girl Can’t Have Too Many Pairs of Summer Sandals…

From JH:

cynthia vincent delphi sandals

They’re on sale in white here! And here!

And they’re especially good for bike riding. (Those t-straps can be brutal between the toes, no?)

LALiE

From JH:

Marie Riche’s LALiE Designer Textiles take my breath away:

LALiE's moody-blue pheasants

 

so gorgeous!

The Penicillin

From JH:

gourmet, june 2009

I’m not the cocktail kind, but The Penicillin featured in the June issue of Gourmet is good medicine. Smoky, sour, mildly herbal––everything that I like about Bourbon and Amaro, but on ice. Those crazy liquor chemists over at Little Branch made it up. Here’s the recipe, first the simple syrup:

Ginger Syrup:

Mix 1/2 ounce fresh-squeezed ginger juice (if you don’t have a juicer, you can grate the ginger and squeeze and strain the juice from the pulp), 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp honey, and 1/2 ounce warm water. (P.S. You can make a bunch of this and keep it in the refrigerator for, oh, a while.)

The Penicillin:

In a cocktail shaker 3/4 full of ice, combine 1/2 ounce ginger syrup, 1 1/2 ounces blended Scotch, 1/2 teaspoon Laphroaig or other smoky Islay single-malt Scotch, and 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice (I like to add a bit more lemon juice). Shake for 20 seconds and strain into a rocks glass.

Tenugui

From JH:

the ultimate multi-taskers

Tenugui are traditional Japanese cotton cloths. They measure approximately 13″x34″, and in Japan they’re used for just about everything, as hand towels, napkins, handkerchiefs, headscarves. More? How about: Place mats, curtain ties, and tablecloths, too. The point is to wash them until their ends fray and they get super-soft. Really, you can do whatever you want with tenugui…I quartered the hypergraphic purple one on the left to make four dinner napkins:

before

 

after

The new summer patterns at TGS are especially cheerful. (Thank you, KH!)

The Horror…The Horror

From JH:

attack of the marigolds

Dear Readers, 

As a general rule we try to avoid anything negative here at H&O. Why spend our time and yours discussing things we don’t like when there’s so much good stuff out there? That said, in order to give you the full Growth of a Garden report, I’m afraid I must rant a little about the currently sad state of my front yard.

Yesterday, I got a surprise visit from my landlord (without getting into all of my issues with him, I’ll just say that his visits are a.) too few and far between, and b.) ill-timed, ineffective, and always in his best interest). He started by apologizing for letting the front yard go to pot this spring (OK, I’m paraphrasing)…but then, get this, he segued into scolding JB and I for cleaning it up! Apparently, he didn’t approve of our landscaping plan. No, he wanted marigolds. MARIGOLDS! Maybe my least favorite decorative flower, EVER. You say marigold, I think: HOME DEPOT GARDEN CENTER. After all the work that we put into clearing the weeds and refreshing the soil, he came along and littered the place with marigolds! He even threatened to rip out all of the herbs! “I don’t really like the vegetable garden, eating-from-the-ground idea,” said the Evil Landlord, we’ll call him from now on, to JB. Then he rearranged the pots we’d planted with tomatoes, basil, mint, and arugula, so that everything was “more symmetrical.” UGH, so awkward and unnatural:

what the ____?

We bought those pots, dammit. The wooden boxes I purchased with DW at the Brimfield Antiques Fair––I travelled 200 miles and woke up at the crack of dawn for those boxes! It pains me to look at where the EL put them. It pains me even more to look at what he did to the one good thing that our garden had going for it. Remember this: 

before

Now that spot looks like this:

after

I am appalled. I am crestfallen. But what I really don’t understand is why he’s so insistent on it looking this way. I know, it’s his building, he owns it, he can do whatever he wants with it. But, he doesn’t have to live with it. He lives in Argentina, and comes back to Brooklyn to check on this place once, maybe twice, a year. Does he know how cheesy the yard looks now? I mean, he did this:

seriously?

A marigold in the dead tree stump? JANG-kay. There was nothing that I could do to stop it, that was worst part. Even V, the older lady next door who’s lived in this neighborhood for more than fifty years, said it looks cheap. Thank you for your sympathy, V, we know you’ve got our back.

Deal of the Day

From JH:

J.Crew Dauphine sandals

Neon patent leather T-strap sandals? YES and YES! The raspberry Punch ones are on sale right now for $68.00. (The electric Yellow are still at full price…a whopping, well-spent $88.00.) Go to J.Crew. Fast.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

From DW:

the dollhouse

In lieu of a Brooklyn brownstone to renovate and blog about,  I am currently undertaking a renovation project of another sort: The dollhouse. It is actually an architectural model that I inherited from a friend (one of several, Mr. Urffer was an architect). This one was left abandoned in a storage unit for 50 years. SS likes to joke that even the mice are too spooked inhabit it!

Personally, I love everything about it, the brass door hinges, the clapboard siding, even it’s decrepit-ness. All of the tiny details are perfect––it was made meticulously to scale and constructed with the proper materials, even. Notice  the beautiful dormer windows…they are double-glazed and they actually open and close.

This is a side view, and inside the open door is a mudroom that will one day be a tiny kitchen.

the front of the house

I can’t wait to build and plant  little window boxes and install a porch swing. First, though, I have to replace some of the windows and repair the shingles––with the house were a box of  extras. Then, a massive spring cleaning is in order.

a bird's-eye-view of the interior

The roof of the house lifts off so that you can see the diminutive beam-and-board constructed interior of the main room. I am thinking to modernizing the living space by building a sleeping loft in the unfinished second floor, and making a silver Calderesque mobile to hang from the beams.

I like the idea of a cozy cabin aesthetic; a stone fireplace made out of river rocks, a sheepskin rug, a farmhouse table.

My fantasy country home in miniature. Stay tuned!

More Seeds to Sew

From JH:

japanese vegetables

These I purchased at my favorite Japanese general store, Tortoise, in LA. An okra hybrid (canjun delight), Japanese pepper (shishito), and perilla green (ao shiso), which is a common lettuce, all from the Kitazawa Seed Company, the oldest in the US specializing in Asian varieties of vegetables. Admittedly, I like the packaging as much as I do the contents. We’ll see how they do under the Brooklyn sun.

And because one can never have too many herbs:

kitchen essentials

The Handmade Greenhouse

From JH:

recycled bottle" greenhouses"

I know that it looks totally janky, but it works. Simply cut an old plastic bottle in half, fill the bottom half with soil, plant your seedlings, and cover with the top half of the bottle. If you have trouble fitting the top half into the bottom some, just cut a few slits along the edge of either one. Instant greenhouse! Remove the cap for easy watering access, or just to let the plants breathe a little. Above, those are tomatoes that I transferred from the cheap Jiffy box––they’ve outgrown their peat pellets, but they’re still too fragile for the real world. 

new tomato plants

 

austin red pear tomato