Manolo for the Home

The Beard and I spent the weekend jumping from shop to shop, looking for the perfect patio set. What we saw was somewhat dismaying…the sturdy metal chairs had flimsy plastic seats while most of the umbrella-ready tables were far too big for our modest deck. Even boxed, the sets we liked were too big to fit into our car, and we weren’t willing to pay $250 for shipping on a $500 item!

We eventually settled on a white wicker set from Target that received rave reviews from just about everyone who bought it. At some point in the future we’ll be buying an umbrella, but that can wait. All in all, I’m pretty excited and hope it arrives quickly.

Interestingly, wicker refers not to a material, but rather to the act of weaving fibers together. A wicker chair or table may be crafted from rattan reed, bamboo, or paper fibre rush, and a lot of the wicker-style furniture in the world today is made of plastic. Natural wicker is susceptible to the elements, so it has to be covered and brought inside when not in use…or, at the very least, in the wintertime. Unlike molded plastic patio furniture, it won’t last ages and ages.

The good news is that wicker can last quite a while with proper care, as outlined in this NY Times article. Cleaning and sealing are musts!

The house that The Beard and I own — or sort of own, because a goodly portion of it still belongs to Wells Fargo — came complete with a backyard deck painted a sort of rusty red color that burns the hell out of our feet on summer afternoons. We’ve got a power sander and a couple of jugs of deck stain at the ready. What we don’t have is time!

Recently, my MIL was in town along with one of The Beard’s cousins, my own mother, and her partner. Watching our relatives carry kitchen chairs out onto the deck was a bit humbling, to say the least. We’d had two of those molded plastic chairs one can buy at the Family Dollar and a little matching table, which was fine for us. Then The Beard dropped one off of the side of the deck, meaning no more leisurely Saturday morning outdoor breakfasts. For now, at least.

Well, it seems my MIL noticed the lack of outdoor seating because before she left, she presented The Beard with a check for a thousand dollars to put toward a nice patio set. Now I’m wasting precious time scouring the Internet for ideas. I can’t decide whether to buy something chic for two (seeing as that we’ll be the ones using it 99% of the time) or a set that can accommodate larger numbers.

Here are two possibilities:

The Provence garden set would be perfect for those intimate breakfasts mentioned above, but less than ideal when guests were in town.

The Al Fresco teak set, on the other hand, would allow us to play host to at least three other people.

We’re gravitating toward something durable that’s less than the amount donated by my MIL so we can buy a few other things for our home. I’m thinking about picking up this lamp from Bellacor:

It’s lovely, it matches my living room scheme, and it costs a mere $151, which doesn’t seem like a lot when you have a thousand bucks to play with. Would I spring for it normally? Probably not because I like the thrifting game too much, but the rules have changed for the time being!

Ah, summertime, when a young gal’s thoughts turn to margarita parties. Or is that just me? As soon as the weather gets warm — or, as is the case in my neck of the woods, horribly and unbearably hot — visions of backyard parties start dancing in my head. Sure, I could just line any old container with a trash bag and fill it up with ice to keep the beers cold, but where’s the fun in that?

I thought that my parties were poised to be colorized when I happened upon the MacBeth Collection, a set of fun storage solutions designed by Margaret Josephs.

Then I decided to check out the prices, thinking that a tub couldn’t possibly be that expensive. Boy was I wrong! Seventy-five bucks for a container slightly less than two feet wide? Seventy bucks for a pitcher?! I don’t care how stylish they are — I’d rather earmark that money for some nice tequila.

The site’s About Us page reads:

The MacBeth Collection has spread its custom-designed creations to almost every home product and accessory including: storage bins, baby pails, picture frames, flower vases, umbrella holders, clip boards, etc. – all with the mission of transforming the mundane into a stylish expression of personal style.

For now, I think I’ll express my personal style by getting a few metal tubs from the Home Depot and decorating them myself.

Sometimes I feel like there’s a vast unseen conspiracy to make the world much, much creepier than it already is. Why else would there be a movement to give perfectly good trees faces, turning them into horrible rabid monsters that scare passing children and yours truly? I mean, how about we choose one thing and DON’T anthropomorphize it for a change?

Or not. Lee Valley Tools wants to help you turn your garden into a terrorscape of leering vegetables using just a few pieces of plastic. Much like the Bonsai Kitten kit, the Vegiforms kit molds your growing produce into a number of heinous, nightmare-inducing shapes.

At about thirteen bucks, the cost is reasonable, until you factor in all the extra gardening you”ll be doing to appease your veggie overlords. In other words, you better pull those weeds, because they’re watching you…

Available in the form of an elf for shaping eggplant, melon, pumpkin, and squash, or the “pickle pair”, corncob or heart (makes heart-shaped cross sections when sliced) for use with cucumber, zucchini and summer squash.

The molds can be used repeatedly. With zucchini, you can create a new shape every week. They might even encourage children to eat their vegetables.

Or it just might encourage them to wet the bed!

I remember once joshing on trailers and trailer parks in front of some future in-laws. My then soon-to-be sister-in-law was the first to speak up, saying, “You know that mom once lived in a trailer, right?” I lapsed into an embarrassed silence until I remembered two things. One, I have relatives who live in what is commonly known as a double wide, and two, my MIL lived in the trailer to better make use of a huge and beautiful piece of unspoiled land.

Just so you know, I harbor no particular assumptions about trailers or the people who call them home. In fact, I wouldn’t mind moving into my own redneck mansion, provided I could paint it crazy colors and overcharge touristy types who wanted to point and gawk. It is for these reasons that I’m sad to say that this lowbrow manse is actually a theatrical set.

After receiving thousands of inquiries as to the whereabouts and existence of this “mansion,” the mystery has been solved. [The structure] is actually a set at the Openluchttheater in Amsterdam where plays are performed in the summer months. This is from the production of Ivanov.

Nuts!

With apologies to those who live in the southern hemisphere, I’d just like to say thank goodness that spring has finally sprung. I was getting terribly sick of keeping my house hermetically sealed against the cold and dreary weather. Now that I can finally sit outside without risking hypothermia, I’ve realized that my complement of weather resistant furniture is woefully inadequate.

In fact, my entire collection is limited to two plastic armchairs and one tiny plastic table because the only outdoor space I had as of a year ago was a 5′ by 10′ bit of deck hanging in space. Now I have a deck that’s quite a bit bigger and also overlooks an entire yard, which means I’m looking for an upgrade.

In yet another moment of synchronicity, I was on the phone with my gram whining about my lack of weather-resistant seating surfaces when I found Ballard Designs‘ summertime catalog in my mailbox. I wasted the next fifteen minutes losing myself in daydreams of customizable umbrellas, intricate cast aluminum lounges, and faux bois planters.

So, yeah, it’s time to hose off the plastic and shop around for some good deals on outdoorsy accessories because $600 for a chaise isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Right this second, someone, somewhere is thinking about how if they could have anything at all in the world, they’d pick a giant ent face that is poised to vomit half-digested birdseed all over the poor sparrows congregating at the base of the tree.

Sure I only just wrote about these fun forest faces — that’s what the manufacturer calls them — but I couldn’t resist showing you this one, which looks as if it had a rough night on the town with the Birch Boys and is desperately searching for an antacid or a little hair off the dog…anything to wash the taste of birds out of its mouth.

I have a friend who grew up in the wilds of New York City and subsequently cannot stand grass. He feels that it is a useless indulgence and far more trouble than it’s worth. I can’t say I agree with him 100%, because there really is nothing as lovely as stepping out barefoot into a nice patch of fresh, springy grass. But now that I have a lawn of my own — a lawn that has grown steadily more sickly looking as winter has dragged on –I have come to appreciate his point.

While sipping iced tea and watching The Beard navigate our property with a push mower is indeed an entertaining diversion, he really ought to be lazing on the porch with yours truly. In thinking about this, I was forced to ask myself why we even have lawns. While I wouldn’t want to give over the entirely of my backyard space to herbs and creepers and flowers, my front yard doesn’t get much foot traffic. Here’s what I discovered:

Do you know where the American suburban obsession with lawn grass and big yards comes from? European royalty. Status. The idea of having a wide open space that you own but do nothing with except grow grass is part of value system that traces its roots to medevil feudalism, the whole concept of the King’s lands.

So what can one plant in lieu of the usual greenstuff? I found some wonderful suggestions at Hot Gardens and elsewhere:

• Ivy
• Chamomile
• Moss
• A hedge maze
• Lantana
• Mint (grown responsibly)
• Ryder or woolly thyme
• Clover
• Dichondra
• Ornamental grasses
• Alpine geranium

If none of these appeal to you, do a search for “treadable ground cover” or “grass alternatives” for even more pretty, easy-to-maintain ideas.