HORTENSE WAS sitting on the floor in a corner of the solarium much of yesterday morning. There is nothing to see there, just the grayish-white molding and a scatter of potting soil. She had been sitting on a leaf of the bird of paradise earlier,…

Green Acre #191: Bird-Watching

CAUTION! Gallows humor ahead. Also, puns.
Dirt ain’t cheap. Say you want to construct your own hillock, or fill in a swimming pool (would that you could give that pool to me), or the base for some other Grand Scale Project. Nothing fancy required. No…

Green Acre #190: The Dirt on Dirt

I’VE BECOME newly creative in the kitchen. Living in the city, surrounded by markets and specialty food shops, whatever substance my stomach craves at any particular moment is usually within a 10-minute walk from home. I stop at one place for spices,…

Green Acre #189: These Roots Are Growing!

YOU THINK you have toilet paper trauma?
“It’s been a while since I thought about wiping my ass with leaves,” an ex-military pilot mused the other day.
He’s been through SERE training—an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—a course…

Green Acre #188: Real Green ‘Toilet Paper’

THE WASHINGTON POST’S Capital Weather Gang just announced that peak bloom for the Tidal Basin cherry blossoms has now been moved back five days to March 22nd—with one tree already fully flush with blossoms. If there’s anything positive to be said for…

Green Acre #187: Spray Away the Winter

IF THERE’S anything good to say about global warming, it’s probably accountable for the spring we’re about to have (fingers crossed, bang on wood). They come around rarely, though more frequently in recent years, springs that appear endless, like…

Green Acre #186: Spring Is Early and Right Outside Your Door

I OPENED my office door this morning and . . . WHOOSH! . . . a billow of orange and jasmine perfume smacked my nose, wafting in from the open door to my little greenhouse, a step away from my desk. It is a most delightful, if distracting, way to…

Green Acre #185: Shelving Ideas . . . to Shelve

PASSIONATE ABOUT hydrangeas? African violets? Bonsai? Orchids? There’s a Facebook group, or 10, for that.
Plonk the name of your floral or arboreal obsession into the search bar at the top of your Facebook page and the choices mushroom with…

Green Acre #184: Facebook Flowers

MILD PANIC is setting in.
(Cue ominous music)
Last week was the 10th anniversary of Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, or Snowzilla: However you wish to remember it, that blizzard piled 35 inches or so on the Northeast, burying cars and small dogs, and…

Green Acre #183: Nature May Be Playing a Nasty Trick on Us

STEP RIGHT up! The Philadelphia Flower Show, the oldest and most fabulous garden exposition in the nation, opens on February 29 and runs through March 8 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
This year the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which…

Green Acre #182: She’d Rather Be in Philadelphia

IN THE MIDST of winter there’s nothing like a cozy brunch or dinner to celebrate something—or nothing. But even if you dish up naught but a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, the setting should be spectacular. Or, at least,…

Green Acre #181: Set It With Flowers

AT THE TENDER age of 70, our friend Jill left Washington DC for New York for two years to take a master’s degree in art. She left her ponytail palm, a Dr. Seussian plant that resembles a pineapple with a Rasta wig, in our care. As she’d nurtured the…

Green Acre #180: Babysitting Nature

I’M SITTING on the back porch, toes wriggling in my flip-flops, staring at the wood pile, stacked here for easy access to the living-room fireplace. For the wood we’ll have no use, this week at least.
It’s January 12th.
While the rest of the country…

Green Acre #179: Seasonal Whiplash

IT’S WHIPLASH SEASON. As I write this, the icy wind blows, snow showers, and we shiver our timbers, whatever that means. This weekend, they say, it will touch 70 degrees in Washington DC, the air conjuring a whiff of spring, warm and moist with what…

Green Acre #178: Bring the Spring and Summer Indoors

HAPPY 2020! And welcome back to MyLittleBird. Resolutions may be so last decade and kind of useless, but some of us still make them. It’s kind of similar to deciding on a second (or third or . . . ) marriage: the triumph of hope over experience.…

Resolved?

DESMOND AND AZALEA von Thistle have invited you to cruise the Caribbean for the holidays. Their boat, a 360-foot custom Lürssen is .89 feet shorter than one built for some Russian oligarch, which irritates them so—but that is neither here nor…

Green Acre #177: Mother Nature Has a Gift for Everyone

To mark the kick-off to the hols, here is a reprint of Stephanie Cavanaugh’s potato-pancake recipe. Remember, Hanukkah begins Sunday night, December 22, 2019.
BESIDES THROWING OFF gloriously ruffled vines that grow to fabulous lengths in one’s window…

‘Tis the Season of Latkes

O! WHERE ARE those fabulous magazine holiday displays of yesteryear: the towering trees that need to be hoisted into penthouse living rooms; linen-draped dining tables laden with crystal and silver and bunches of holly; fir-festooned railings;…

Green Acre #176: Holidays? What Holidays?

DECORATING THE HOUSE for the holidays was a debate this year, as Baby and her Personal Prince Pete are cooking my grandbaby, a boy they say, though they haven’t divulged the name—leave them one surprise, they say. Rocky, as we’re temporarily calling…

Green Acre #175: ‘Tis the Season to Be Glittery

BABY’S PERSONAL PRINCE Pete moved her teapot to an upper cabinet in the kitchen the other day.
—-
It’s a MacKenzie-Childs bauble, all black-and-white checkerboard with a cinnabar bobble on the lid, very Alice in Wonderland. Take me to your tea…