Garden Catalogues and Secret Crushes

Thank you so much for your condolences on the loss of my mother. My sisters and I have sometimes floundered after we found ourselves without our beloved parents here on this earth. 

And during this time of mourning people all over the world have entered this frightening era of pandemic. I'm guessing that most of us have turned to the comforts of home and garden.

I struggled to find what topic to write about this first post back. Nothing seemed adequate after reading so many inspiring posts from my blog friends. So I will instead share some pictures that were meant to be posted in late February when I stacked up some garden books I had been reading. 

  
The book on top, Beverley Nichols' Green Grows the City, the Story of a London Garden, was a gift from a dear blog friend, Melanie of Comfy House, who knew I collected his books and generously passed this one along to me after she read it. I loved it so much that I've read it twice!

I have about eight of his books and must admit that I've been a little bit secretly in love with this Englishman from the early mid-century for many years, the same way many of my blog friends are with Monty Don today. Okay, I admit I'm a little bit in love with Monty too, thanks to Netflix. And there's even another home and garden writer from the early mid-century who I have a huge crush on but he's for another post--or a hundred posts.

What one thing can I share with you from this delightful book? I don't have time to tell you much here, not even about his obnoxious neighbor Mrs. Heckmondwyke. Maybe this from the end of his book will strike a connection with everyone to whom home and garden have become so much more important now:

So we will close these pages. And as we do so we both know, you and I, that if all men were gardeners, the world at last would be at peace. 

Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katharine S. White is a classic that anyone whose heart thumps a little faster when the first garden catalogue arrives in the mail after Christmas should enjoy.

Mrs. White wrote garden pieces for New Yorker readers for many years that extolled the education to be found between the covers of an excellent garden catalogue, and they're gathered in this book.

Here's a little from the Introduction, written by her husband E. B. White--and yes, I have a tiny crush on him too. (Mrs. White, on the other hand, would scare the dickens out of me were I to be in her presence.) 

There seems to be no limit to my literary crushes. Here he compares his wife, to whom he is completely devoted, to the English garden writer Gertrude Jekyll:

Unlike Miss Jekyll, my wife had no garden clothes and never dressed for gardening...Her army boots were liable to be Ferragamo shoes, and she wore no apron. I seldom saw her prepare for gardening, she merely wandered out into the cold and the wet, into the sun and the warmth, wearing whatever she had put on that morning...her clothes had to take things as they came.

 And if you want to read more about the marriage between these two extraordinary people, Isabel Russell's account of the eight years she was Mr. White's secretary in their home in Katharine and E. B. White, An Affectionate Memoir, is a wonderful place to start. 

And here is my treasure of a garden catalogue, Dreer's Garden Book 1930. I can't even remember where I got it, I've had it so long. 

Although Baker's Creek Heirloom Seed Company is my current favorite seed catalogue to read like a novel, and I buy at least one thing from White Flower Farm every year just to keep receiving their pretty catalogue that isn't nearly as thick as it used to be, every Spring I enjoy turning the pages of this old catalogue. Aren't those sweet peas beautiful?

Even the black and white photos are interesting. Have any of you ever grown salsify?

 I love the illustrations in this old catalogue!

What are your favorite garden catalogues? I know some of you already have seedlings started in sunny windows and under grow lights. 

And could anyone please help identify this ground cover that RH took a plug from a friend's yard and stuck in a foam cup? I took this picture the other day but it is now full of pretty purple blooms. 

Did you notice the little Golden Guernsey cow in my kitchen window? We rescued her from a yard sale decades ago because that was the kind of milk that used to be delivered to our kitchen door in our early married years. 

One book in my stack of books pictured, Elizabeth Lawrence's The Little Bulbs, I've skipped writing about because it's worth a whole post involving RH driving me around Nashville looking for the house belonging to the woman who had once owned the book and made copious notes throughout. I love finding books that the owner has written in, would pay twice what I pay for a book that's not annotated. And I admit that I write in almost all my books. If they're not written in that probably means they didn't touch my heart.

Do you write in your books? 

Want to share your own secret crushes with us? 

I hope you and your loved ones are all okay during this fight against a mutual enemy. From my heart to yours, wherever you live, whether you are a blogger or one who reads blogs, please be careful, please thrive and flourish. 

On Becoming Serene, and Blogging

Ever wish you had taken computer courses before becoming a blogger? Perhaps you did just that.

But I, I whose ignorance assured her that she who had to be dragged into the computer age from her trusty typewriter could throw herself headlong into the hypnotizing world of blogging, went ahead, understanding absolutely nothing about computers.

I believe in doing things too soon. In striking before the iron is hot, in leaping before one has looked, in loving before one has been introduced.

      Beverley Nichols in Down the Garden Path

Are you like that about a passion? And do you have your blogging degree in passion only or in a tech education?

And if you answer "in passion" do you ever suffer a crise de nerfs when technology comes crashing down around you as it did on me recently?

What do you do about it, pray tell?

Here's how I handled my own crise de nerfs , my faithful, patient friends. That is, after I had taken hours and hours of help out of my son's life, by phone and by text, to fix the major problems.

Every day after trying to fix the rest of my computer problems I would run out of the office that I grandly call My Writing Room and grab one of these books to take to my bedroom reading chair.

I believe that these books I ordered one at a time during January and thus far in February have been sent to me by the Wise Physician who knew so well what I would need during the attack on my nerves by the evil god of technology (and yes, I could name him here but won't), along with his minions Pop-Up-Ads and My-Computer-Keys-Are-Stuck-in-Molasses.

"How slow can I go?

Very Very S.....L....O....W."

  

And there was their pal HaHaHa who signed me out of everything I had signed into for years and then threw away forgotten passwords set eons ago.

And lest I forget another wannabe kingpin, Mr. Scrolling? That function became a test, no, a con-test to see how much time could pass before either the icon stopped spinning or my head did.

"I can't do this, it's driving me crazy," I screeched to BreeBree and James Mason as I stormed away from my desk and out of the room of torture that it sits in. 

And then I sought an antidote. Either I could climb the walls or eat Rocky Road ice cream or grab one of these old four books, House & Garden's Guide to Interior Decoration.

Page by page I disappeared into the world of homes of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Each time I was transported so fully to homes of those years that no LSD trip of the 1960s, if I had ever been someone who did such a thing, could possibly have offered as much mind-blowing happy feelings, such heart's and mind's ease as these four books offered.

 

I studied pages on furniture styles and table setting and terraces and it became as real to me as if I were personally expecting the garden club women to luncheon before showing them around my own Eden. 

And at last I would emerge from that world into my own, a far gentler woman.

And instead of being the woman whose chin is dragging the ground like this poor soul who can so easily become my alter ego...

 [story herehttps://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2013/02/february-faces-white-swan.html]

Instead of her, I would become more like my other more desired alter ego....

 [story here https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2019/02/i-

dreamed-i-wore-pink-raincoat.html]

Thankfully, all at last seems well here in my blogging world, after the mysterious, complicated technical procedure called "Restart Computer" took place.

Who knew?

Now, dear reader, what turns you from a sad frantic maniac into a serene goddess of the hearth? Would you share a secret cure with us?

And what is it that brings on your own crise de nerfs? 

[No, I don't speak French. I'm betting that phrase has stayed in my mind from an old Edith Wharton novel.]

  

I Want One of These

Do you remember Mr. French?

Was there anything he couldn't do?

Actually who I really want is Reginald Arthur Gaskin. 

He was author Beverley Nichols' my man Gaskin.

"He is, among other things, the best cook I ever encountered, and  like all great artists, he seems to achieve his effects with a minimum of effort. He wanders out into the kitchen garden, followed by my Siamese cat, returns with a bundle of spinach--sniffing a rose en route--goes into the kitchen, licks his fingers, and at precisely the right moment there is a spinach soufflé which would have given Brillat-Savarin quite a lot to think about. When he bottles fruit he does it casually, in an off moment, as it were, between puffs of a cigarette; but the result is a joy not only to the palate but to the eye; rows and rows of magic bottles in the larder, that gleam in the semi-darkness like jewels, and keep their summer tang even when the snow is piled thick on the roof. And my house, which is not small, he manages as though it were a three-roomed flat, almost absent-mindedly; he always gives you a feeling that it is really all too simple, that warmth and comfort and beauty are to be had for the asking, or at most, for an hour or two of elegant and agreeable diversion."

                  by Beverley Nichols in All I Could Never Be

Wouldn't it be nice to say to an old friend you run into at the post office, "Come home with me for lunch! It's no trouble. My man Gaskin will whip us up a soufflé in no time."

I could get so used to that. I'd even give my man Gaskin, or Mr. French, his choice of days off, maybe two.

I've Had It With Ham

I've had it with ham. 

Three posts in a row on ham? And a fourth one planned? What was I thinking?

As Faith Baldwin said: "I don't know anyone who irritates me more than myself."

Ever feel that way?

In desperation, here are some pictures I took this morning looking out Dewena's Window, captivated by the fluffy pink North Carolina shrubs in bloom.

To the left and to the right of the kitchen, they were glorious, much more beautiful than my beginning camera skills could capture. (R.H. handed the camera over to me after I made a completely innocent remark about him not getting the picture I wanted, but he is the one who planted these beautiful shrubs.)

"Now if you are going to make a window,

it is obvious that you must first acquaint yourself

with the view which the window will give you."

Beverley Nichols in A Thatched Roof

I think part of my frustration with the thought of publishing one more ham post came from browsing through blogs last night. Blogs that set the bar pretty high. Blogs that made mine seem so inadequate. Bloggers that made me seem like a rank amateur. 

They reminded me of someone Laurie Colwin wrote about in her wonderful Home Cooking:

"Years later, I entertained a newly married friend. This friend had married a goddess and lived in the country. I of course was a slob and lived in the city. The goddess had built their post-and-beam house with her own two hands, raised chickens, milked cows and was a veterinarian as well. On the side she was a glassblower. She had built her own studio. All the glassware, jugs, pitchers and vases in their house were made by her. Of course she baked her own bread, raised her own vegetables and made her own clothes, although she didn't yet know how to spin. At that news I heaved a sigh of relief."

Colwin wrote that in 1988. Can you imagine this woman as a blogger today? I can and she would not be alone. There is so much talent in blogland, women and men who do everything, although it doesn't seem to discourage me so much when I see talented men bloggers. I admit it, I stand in awe (read jealous).

So no ham post today, maybe never.

Instead here is another picture looking out Dewena's Window but one that shows the lampshade I finally found for my Italian fish lamp. In my previous blog, Across the Way, I once showed the lamp and asked advice about whether to buy a black shade or a white shade. Most readers recommended a white shade but one friend stood up for black. The one I chose off eBay is black with white polkadots! 

I'm pleased with it--that is until I start wondering what a style blogger would have to say about it. No, I'd better not go there. I can only stand so much mental anguish.

Here's another picture of favorite black and white kitchen adornment. Milo and Katie Belle were posing so prettily this morning that I had to include them in this post of adieu to ham.

And they don't give a hoot if I'm a glassblower or not.

They already think I'm a goddess.

The Simple Things of Life - # 7

The Simple Things of Life Are the Best…

Like an Old Green Kitchen Chair.

Re: Picasso by Beverley Nichols

"I am equally convinced that Picasso, when he chooses,

can out-draw, out-paint and out-think

any artist in the world today.

"But most of all I am convinced that as long as I live

the prospect of mustaches growing out of violins

surrounded by decapitated frogs…

"will, for some occult reason,

fail to arouse in me the same pleasurable emotions

as are aroused by the sight of a spray of apple-blossom,

"or a face well painted,

or even an honest kitchen chair."

Beverley Nichols in

All That I Could Never Be

[I love this old green kitchen chair. We found it and its twin in the smokehouse when we bought this old farmhouse, abandoned furniture, not thought worthy of being moved by the sellers.  Cleaned up, they were the old "kitchen green" of the 1930s and are now treasured as the work of art they truly are. In lieu of apple blossoms, sprays of Pieris japonica adorn the old kitchen chair.]