The best way to get through a period of Mercury in retrograde motion is to change your attitude and expectations. If you anticipate some set-backs and insanity, when those incidents muck things up it doesn’t feel as bad. Expecting the worst doesn’t sound like the best way to live life, so it’s not quite that – it’s more of rolling with the punches – the expected punches that life doles out. And so we see something like this peony, drooping from a torrential rainstorm that comes along in June, but captured from below to show its face to the world. Expected disappointment turned on its head. On with the weekly recap…
After decades of trying to bend the will and shade of these hydrangeas I have finally accepted their refusal to be anything other than light pink, and more than that I am embracing such a choice because that’s what they were born to be. Amending the soil with acidifiers and coffee grounds and rusted nails would momentarily yield a more bluish tone, but invariably they returned to purple and then pink, and appreciating a plant for its natural state in its home soil is another valuable lesson that the garden has imparted.
Forcing things, aside from bulbs in the midst of winter, rarely turns out well, and nature will always work around it. A river bends but rarely breaks. These hydrangeas yearn to be pink, and being pink is part of their basic make-up, their interior soul that always finds expression at one point or another.
It’s so much simpler to enjoy a blooming hydrangea when you embrace whatever shade it deigns to appear as. And who could ever find fault with pink and cream and green?
Second only to the anticipation I felt regarding ‘Cruella’ (more on that later) is the anticipation and excitement I feel about the movie version of ‘In the Heights’ – and some of that glee is due to this Dazzler of the Day, Anthony Ramos. An alum of ‘Hamilton‘, Ramos has also been featured here as a previous Hunk of the Day. Now he is once more set to take the world by storm in what looks to be the movie event of the summer.
Favoring strong and vibrant and super-saturated colors, I’ve always enjoyed the bright and powerful, as found in fuchsia or chartreuse or neon orange, yet as I get older, and seek out calm in atmosphere and all sorts of interiors, I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy a more subdued and monotonous color palette, particularly place and scenes that employ just one or two colors – like ivory and green.
That combination has been in full effect these past couple of weeks, as the Chinese dogwood and the climbing hydrangea combine to create this magical effect or creams and ivories against bright green – all of it backed by the varying blues of the sky.
The bouquets I’ve made of late employ similar monochromatic themes, lending an elegance and simplicity that is easy on the eyes, and calm on the soul.
Nature knows what she is doing. Trust in her. Follow her examples. She will never lead you astray.
Last year Andy and I returned to the world of summer tomato gardening with a couple of potted plants on the patio. They did not all do well, with the larger varieties teasing but failing to complete their fruiting responsibilities. It was the cherry tomatoes that gave us the most substantial bang for the buck, producing buckets of fruit from just one plant trained on a pretty trellis. This summer I vowed to do mostly cherry tomato pants, as the others did not produce as much.
This week they began their blooming, so we may be back in the tomato business sooner than expected. There really is nothing quite as delicious as a simple tomato and mayo sandwich on a sunny afternoon, especially when the tomatoes come from your own garden.
Shattering history and making a strong play for the GOAT, Simone Biles just won her 7th American all-around title in gymnastics, setting her up for a fierce Olympics run, and easily securing her debut as Dazzler of the Day. Theres something awe-inspiring about seeing an athlete at the height of her power and prowess, stalking the vault, balance beam, pommel horse, and more with the grace and formidable focus that makes her the absolute best at what she does.
Our grill likes to act up, particularly during times of Mercury in retrograde, or when we are having guests over for the first time in well over a year. Or in the case of this incident, when both are coinciding in tumultuous fashion. After 2020, Andy and I can roll with the punches, but even this one threw us for a doozy that required a quick decision to be made – a decision with no easy or guaranteed happy ending.
My parents, Aunt Elaine, my brother and his fiancee, and my niece and nephew were due for a family barbecue on one of the hottest days of the year thus far, and Andy was about to begin the grilling. We hadn’t had this much family over since the days prior to COVID, and we were giddy with the reunion. Elaine had just returned from a winter in Florida, so it was doubly exciting, and having the twins over was a much-missed treat, especially when they’re growing up so quickly.
I was finishing the preparatory work on a quinoa salad when Andy came in and motioned for me to follow him, saying we had to make a quick decision. It was his serious voice, and he was keeping it low which meant that no one could know something. He brought me over to the grill, and when he lifted the side cover to the secondary grill section a magnificent but wholly unwelcome finch place stood, encasing five little eggs. The main grill had already been lit and was quickly heating up, so I advised that we take it out and put it on the ground until we finished cooking.
The next day I was conferring with a cardinal about the finch situation as she chirped in the nearby thuja hedge, before we were rudely interrupted by a squirrel. Andy picked up the conversation later in the day – he says the cardinal chirped a bit at him then sang him a little song – a message from his mother that we had done all we could do for the finches.
The third Red Sox player in a row to be crowned Dazzler of the Day, this is J.D. Martinez, in honor of our upcoming return to Fenway Park. Martinez is a designated hitter (I’ve never even been a designated driver) and three-time winner of the Silver Slugger Award. He’s currently in the midst of a five-year $110 million contract with the Red Sox.
Skip has decreed that today marks the unofficial opening of the summer season, as we kick things off with a return to our BroSox Adventure tradition, making the quick trek to Boston to see a game at Fenway tomorrow. He always said that our June games were his signal that summer had arrived, and so we follow his lead and mark this as the start to our summer season at ALANILAGAN.com – we deserve an extra-long summer this year after all that 2020 dealt us. In the past I would wait until the scientific start of the summer solstice, and post our opening summer entry accordingly – that gets upended this year as it’s a new era and a new world. We shall make our own rules, and if that means starting summer now, let us then have the damn thing now, and make it as long and luxurious as we can possibly muster!
As is customary, every summer season must come with a song, and rather than wait until the end of the season to christen it, let’s put it out there now as it’s a classic, and it sets the perfect tone: nostalgic and sweet.
Where the boys are
Someone waits for me
A smiling face
A warm embrace
Two arms to hold me tenderly
Our honorary ‘Aunt’ Elaine visited us with my parents the other day – on an extremely hot and sunny day that felt more like summer than summer itself, and I was reminded that when she mentions us to Suzie she simply calls us ‘the boys’ – a term of affection that tickles my 45-year-old self, and allows me to hold onto the notion of boyhood just a little bit longer. We had several nice pool-side chats, and I’m glad she’s back up north for the summer. Yet another gift of the season.
Where the boys are
My true love will be
He’s walking down some street in town
And I know he’s looking there for me
Our summer scene revolves mostly around the pool and the gardens and the patio – little pockets of atmosphere and oasis that we have created, blending and blurring the outdoors and indoors with a canopy dome and drapes. This year we have also inserted this Scandi attic loft space into one of the summer places to be. It looks down onto a lattice of climbing hydrangea, which reaches up to offer its sweetly-perfumed blooms somewhere between the ground and the loft.
Mostly, though, our focus will be on the water – the closest we can get to the sea – and a happy-enough approximation of what it’s like to float in heavenly suspension, lulled by little waves, sprinkled by the sparkle of a bright sun.
We have thus far gotten off to a jerky start, with stretches of cool and rainy days slowing and stunting the usual trajectory of fast-growth and quick-filling-in of foliage. Our potted fig trees are only just putting out their first leaves now, and the hanging sweet potato vines have just started to peep over the edge of their containers – they’d typically have already leapt by now. Still, nature will correct herself, and with a few hot days she will put us back on track and have everything completely caught up.
In the crowd of a million people
I’ll find my valentine
And then I’ll climb to the highest steeple
And tell the world he’s mine
For now, I’m enjoying the stilted climb – cooler day and nights make for longer flower displays, and the flowers that are appearing now – such as this peony – are some of my favorites.
Lavender is also in bud, and these tiny spikes of purple pungency remind us that our friend Josie will be visiting in a little over a month. Lavender is one of her favorites, and indicative of the peace and happiness our friendship has brought to each of us over the years. We haven’t seen her since well before COVID hit, which means almost two years, so this summer will mark a long-overdue and much-needed reunion. Another gift. Another item for which we show gratitude.
This petunia is filled with the kind of pizzazz that personifies the most electric of summer days. Its smiling face and happy vibrance makes me think of my niece and nephew, jumping into the pool and bursting into every scene with their youthful exuberance and joy, the kind of giddiness that can only come when you’re a kid just out of school with the whole summer laid out before you. Summer sprawls, summer unfurls, summer releases its intoxicating magic…
There are more summer songs to come. Aside from fragrance, a song is the best way to conjure a memory, and we will make a few more this season.
Till he holds me
I’ll wait impatiently
Where the boys are
Where the boys are
Where the boys are
Someone waits for me
Tiny blooms of white have begun to show themselves on the little stalks of lemon thyme that spill onto the pool deck. The hotter the concrete gets, the more they seem to love it. Summer stalwarts, undiminished by her heat and intensity, they are ever-ready to offer a bit of olfactory release in the form of lemony brilliance with a few crushed leaves. Thus our summer season at ALANILAGAN.com begins – quietly, gently, with just the slightest zip of zest. We tentatively embrace the sun… and the water… and it begins again…
Till he holds me
I’ll wait impatiently
Where the boys are
Where the boys are
Where the boys are
Someone waits for me
It says a lot of wonderful, amazing things that this is the current FaceBook profile pic for the official Boston Red Sox account. It seemed like such a matter-of-fact thing, and for a moment I wondered what my younger life would have been like had something like this existed when I was just growing up and learning who I was. When you don’t see yourself anywhere, part of you doesn’t truly believe that you’re even there.
Joining Xander Bogaerts in a Red Sox run of sparkle, Rafael Devers hits his way to his first Dazzler of the Day crowning. Signed by the Red Sox as a 16-year-old (no idea how that works) Devers was considered to be the best left-handed hitter in the world. No comment on what wondrous things I was getting up to at the age of 16, but it wasn’t a $1.5 million deal. Congrats to Devers on that, and this latest honor.
When you have made a space feel light and airy and somewhat minimalist, the simple addition of a plain vase and a large branch of foliage can make an incredible difference. It’s also a design trick used in almost any catalog you get in the mail these days: the single dramatic branch in a vase, backed by the most naturally beautiful lighting you could imagine, and just enough visual crack to make you buy everything on the page. In the end, all you are looking for is that single stupid branch, so save yourself the time and trouble of trying to recreate every exact element of a show-room and focus on what you can do to the living space you already have.
For another corner, I chopped off a trio of oak branches, which was a bit of an experiment as I wasn’t sure they would take well to water. It’s going on day three without showing signs of wilt, so it may be a new happy design element. For all of these ‘bouquets’, I made a long angled cut, then crushed the end of the branch to allow for maximum intake of water. Cut first thing in the morning, they were placed in this cool room with some soft light, and left to put on their show.
There are so many possibilities with what many of us have right in our own backyards that it’s worth an experiment, especially when you want to bring in a bit of the outdoors into a space with a small (or no) window that would otherwise not support houseplants.
If they take well to the water treatment, most of these will last far longer than a typical bouquet of flowers, while looking just as elegant. In simplicity there is beauty and peace.
Gearing up for our BroSox Adventure this weekend, this post marks the debut of Xander Bogaerts as Dazzler of the Day, as my pal Skip recommends him as our first pick of the season for such an honor. Bogaerts goes by a few nicknames – ‘X-man’ or ‘Bogie’ (‘Bogey’) – and has been honored with the Silver Slugger Award several times.
In so many ways, Suzie enjoyed the childhood that I would have liked to enjoy: she had all the Barbie dolls, the Barbie dream house, a four-poster bed with a pink gingham canopy, and a mother who dressed her in hats for all the special occasions. Sometimes, and in the best possible fashion, she got a bonnet for an Olan Mills glamour shot. As this marks Suzie’s birthday, it seems a good time to debut these long-lost photos.
The second one shows off our summer terry-cloth looks, something I am hell-bent on bringing back. I even have that tummy again, and last time we spoke Suzie was toying with the idea of going back to bangs. Everything old is new again, so happy birthday old friend.
This purple clematis is one of those plants I forgot I even planted, until it climbed up and out of the foliage and branches of a climbing hydrangea and sported this big beautiful bloom. To be honest, I’m not even sure where it is located in the ground exactly – I only become aware of it at this time of the year when it blooms, and despite such neglect it still throws out such beauty sporadically throughout the summer. It’s due a little extra care now, and I’ll try to trace its stems and deliver some pampering to its roots.
