A chilly rainy weekend, a driveway circle in transition, and some wonderful things to watch and follow
It is 48 degrees this morning and it is going to rain. Again. Yippee — we need it, so I will not complain. I am sitting with my drinking chocolate, listening to it drizzle, and thinking this is exactly the kind of weekend I was made for.
Yesterday the three of us, Bill, myself, and our landscaper, sat down for what I can only describe as a Knights of the Round Table meeting, except there were only three of us, the table was a kitchen table, and the matter at hand was not Camelot but the circle. Or rather, the rounded triangle that lives in the middle of our driveway and has had more lives than our dachshunds have had treats.
When we moved in, we found the original plans tucked away somewhere. Simple and lovely: a dogwood, seasonal plantings, everything in proportion. What the successive owners left us was something rather different. A ring of white rocks. Some dwarf boxwood. A fountain of small stone children that, honestly, looked as though no one had been feeding them. And grasses — lovely ornamental grasses — that the deer found absolutely irresistible. We have never, not once, seen those grasses flower. The deer get there first, every single year.
We ripped all of it out. Relocated, I should say — we relocated the boxwood and the grasses that were healthy. The boxwood are happily installed in the back. The grasses are, I am pleased to report, still being eaten by the deer in their new location on the side of the house next to the walk.
The new design is smaller, and oval, which means the FedEx and UPS trucks might finally stop treating the circle as a speed bump. There are still a few things we are debating, the tree, the fountain, but the bones are right and I love it. Right now it is filled with wildflowers, many of them low to the ground and beautiful. Bill thinks we need taller wildflowers so the neighbors do not assume we have simply given up on gardening and are growing weeds. I keep pointing out that the deer eat the tall ones and that’s why they never flower.
In any case, it is going to be a chilly, rainy weekend, and I have two new cookbooks that arrived this week and a very large cup of something warm, and I could not be more content. Oh, I almost forgot its Derby Day, will you be watching? Do you have a favorite horse? Or maybe you will be there in person? If so come back and tell us all about it! Kim, Juliet, and I have lots to share. Let’s meander.
One to Follow
This week I discovered Bob Dickinson on Instagram, and if you love homemade food, from-scratch homemade, he is one to add immediately. Dickinson grew up on a family farm in Yorkshire and spent years working as a private chef in the UK and Australia. What he shares now are videos of real cooking: bread, butter, kefir, English muffins, jams, cheese. Â Find him at From Scratch with Bob.
The Real Emily
Are you a Devil Wears Prada fan? Then you will want to watch this video, because it turns out Emily was based on a real person, and she is finally telling her side of the story. Leslie Fremar was Anna Wintour’s first assistant at Vogue in the late 1990s, eventually hiring her own deputy — and then found herself reading an advance copy of The Devil Wears Prada and recognizing herself in the pages. She tells the interviewer, simply: “She’s me — I am Emily.” She had never talked about it before. Fremar is now one of Hollywood’s top stylists, a longtime collaborator of Charlize Theron. The Vogue memories, just like the movie are there, no eating at her desk, no leaving the phones unattended, the whole thing.
Spring at the Table
Butter Wakefield is one of my favorites and this week she is on the Home & Garden YouTube channel, talking about  tablescaping. She takes you inside her colorful, maximalist home and fills the table with spring flowers and vintage plates and cups and other things. It is the kind of video you watch twice, once to absorb it and once to take notes. If you love a beautiful table and a house with actual personality, this is for you.
On the Screen This Week
Three film recommendations this week, and they could not be more different from each other.
The first is Barefoot Empress. A 96-year-old woman in a village in Kerala has spent her entire life without an education, and she decides it is not too late. So she enrolls. First grade. The film was directed by Vikas Khanna, inspired by his own grandmother, and produced in partnership with a nonprofit that uses the film to fund classrooms for girls in underserved communities in India. It is a short film, and it will stay with you. You are never too old. You are never too late. The film makes the case better than any words I have.
The second is Design in Mind: Bunny Williams — Not a House but a Home, produced by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. Bunny Williams takes you inside her Manhattan apartment, her Connecticut home and gardens, and various projects — sharing how she thinks about design, clients, and what it means to make a house feel like a home. She trained for over twenty years at Parish-Hadley Associates. This is the first documentary devoted entirely to her work and her story, and for anyone who loves interiors, it is not to be missed.
A Victorian Seaside Home in Scotland
And then there is this. Jane McMinn lives in a sandstone Victorian house right on the beach in Scotland, with two bulldogs, animal print wallpaper in three rooms, mirrors on the ceiling, and a parrot immortalized in kitchen tiles. The sea is just down the steps. She never gets tired of it. I watched this twice and I loved it. The NOSTALGIA channel on YouTube is one to follow if you love soulful homes and real people — this film is a perfect place to start.
On the Hunt
I am looking for the 2023 documentary The Art of Eating, about one of my all-time favorite food writers, M.F.K. Fisher. If you have watched it or know where to find it, please tell me. In the meantime, this interview with her great-nephew from 2014 is a beautiful place to start, and you can learn more about the film at mfkfisherfilm.com. Fisher wrote about food the way no one else has, before or since — as pleasure, as memory, as the whole point of being alive. If you have never read her, The Art of Eating (the book, the collected works) is where to begin.
On Writing
Anne Lamott needs no introduction if you have ever read Bird by Bird, and if you have not, put it on your list immediately — it is one of the finest books ever written about the writing life. In this interview with David Perell, she is funny, honest, and completely unimpressed with perfectionism. She talks about why writer’s block is a misnomer, how she thinks about the three drafts every book requires, and what she considers the best writing prompt in the world. I could have listened for another three hours. Whether you write a blog, a journal, or letters to your grandchildren, this one is for you.
Now go put the kettle on, find a good book, and let it rain. That is my plan for the weekend. Kim and Juliet are sharing their own meandering this week, links below, and I hope you will visit them.
What are you reading this weekend? And are you a wildflower gardener? I am curious whether the deer visit you too, or whether that is simply our particular cross to bear. Or perhaps you have bunnies that eat all of your flowers?
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