Speedwell and the Tiny Garden

Photo courtesy Flickr

Veronica, aka speedwell, is a tiny, low-growing perennial that lives happily in the lawn. So do English daisies, a sign of spring, and clover, creeping thyme (aka serpolet), chamomile, and yarrow. A blend of thyme, yarrow, and clover makes a tough, drought-resistant turf. In the nineteenth-century, a lawn had everything but grass in it. On great estates, “lawn boys” crawled around with tweezers plucking blades of grass out of the green.

Over the last few years, I have shifted my small landscape toward drought-hardy, mostly native plants. The lawn grows ever smaller, receding in the sunny, private front garden to a few paths as wide as the mower that meander through mulched areas of herbs and teen-aged conifers destined for the Christmas tree stand. The turf that is left is more richly textured and significant than it ever was when it was green and lush all year round, and it requires almost no attention.

When the grass fades to brittle straw during summer’s dormant period, green weeds become easy targets. It’s a small matter to dispose of them with a benign herbicide and to encourage welcome low-growing varieties with a few time-release beads of fertilizer. This little landscape faces the sky, and I wonder if it is the source of the "millefiori" or thousand-flower pattern of Murano glass.

Late summer rain and the shifting attitude of the sun bring the turf back to life. It fills out and literally becomes inches thicker. The little plants that compete with the grass provide a constant, every-changing, subtle display that changes as the seasons progress. Living with this turf is like watching cut velvet grow and design itself.

More after the jump.

Quarreling with One's Space

Photo courtesy Flickr

If a room is overcrowded, the space becomes restless. If I have even one side chair too many, I can’t stop arranging furniture, trying create equilibrium in a situation that’s inherently unstable. The instability comes from worrying about knocking things over. It’s easy to forget that we move in interiors.

Using overcrowded space is like trying to play basketball in a strait jacket. Leave two feet of clearance between a dining table and the wall, three feet for a traffic lane, and four feet in a kitchen where more than one person will be working.

A sudden influx of heirlooms can choke a house. I’ve been through the process several times. Fortunately I had cousins to absorb the excess, and I was not hobbled by confusing a bookcase with the beloved relative who had owned it.

A crowded room is unfair to the housekeeper. Keeping a place decent, safe, and sanitary is hard work at its most efficient. Doing maintenance while stressed by crowding is like playing against vicious competition, demoralizing when it happens under one’s own roof. More after the jump.

Porridge Default

Photo courtesy Flickr

A friend commented recently on the dozens of breakfast cereals her market stocks. It does seem like a lot, although the packages are very entertaining.

Sometimes when overload sets in, I revert to the oldest technology I know. In the case of breakfast, the primal choice is porridge. The round cast iron pot, designed to cook over an open fire, was the first product of the industrial revolution (next came hand-sewing needles), and porridge of one kind or another was a diet staple. The twentieth century English cook Elizabeth David included many ancient recipes in her writings. Her basic message was, keep it simple.

A rice cooker makes a fine pot of oatmeal, and if I treat mush like ice cream, it is interesting to eat. Toasted flax seed, honey, a dab of unadulterated sour cream, berries sliced or small, and toasted chopped nuts all add texture and healthy calories to the basic comforting grain.

Porridge ain’t all oats. There’s wheat, known as samp in old cookbooks and in Tibet, a seven-grain blend sold in local stores, and congee, the rice gruel with dozens of variations listed in Chinese cookbooks.

More after the jump.

Hacienda

Photo courtesy Flickr

The Spanish tradition of the American southwest uses the ground floor of a dwelling for production. That's good sense for working at home and for just plain being productive at home, since the shortest line between supply and shipping is to the back door.

When our nest was full, my studio was in a room upstairs, and that layout made it all too easy to ignore my obligations to my craft. We bought this place for the number of cubic feet of work space it afforded, and finally we are really going for it. No longer do we live in a studio masquerading as a house: we live in a workshop that centers on a little sitting room.

Simple changes have made it easy to put the doilies to rest once and for all. There are no poisons in the house, so any project can happen in any space. Storage is centralized on each floor, so nothing is underfoot. Small decorative artifacts live in one glass-front cabinet. The music space, formerly known as the front parlor, contains only instruments. The back parlor, a studio, contains only a big work table. The table can be used for dining with the folding director’s chairs that also serve well for leisurely visits.

At the foot of the stairs is an entry area. Back in the day it was known as a stair hall. Furnished with a few comfortable chairs, it's a landing pad for new arrivals and offers a small welcome when the doors to the parlors are shut to conceal a mess. The stairs lead directly into the sitting room, which is furnished with civilized wood and books. If I want to receive someone away from the grind downstairs, I can bring up a tea tray. People really like hanging around in the work spaces, though.

In an Arts and Crafts oriented class, I learned the classical Greek attitude that there is nothing ennobling about a workshop. Certainly the bias against manual labor persists, although it is easy to disguise it as art, music, science, or medicine.

The modern movement in architecture and interior design tried to bring the efficiency of industrial workspace into people’s houses. The general population did not appreciate the change, much to the disappointment of the designers who were trying to make life easier for everyone. Educated people took up the style. I suppose it’s easier to love a high-tech interior when you don’t have to spend your days sweating in one as well.

Arrange space and furnishings to maximum advantage and you can work easily with any style or period. Whether at home or someplace else, you are probably working most of the time anyway. Go with what you’ve got, store things where you use them first, and leave things ready to use again when you’re done. That’s all it takes to triple the velocity of routine chores.



More after the jump.