what kind of tree has a hole in it...?

a few posts back i promised to reveal the “tree” that mr. grwhryrpltd was working on this weekend.  he had to take a work trip this week, so progress has been a bit delayed.  since it’s not done yet, and i know how much some of you really wanted to see it (ahem, kylie and maggie…), i hauled it into the garden just for fun.  here’s a view of the process:

plywood cutout

primed

painted

ready to hang, errr, stake

the only thing left to figure out is how to keep it upright.  you see, this little tree isn’t meant to hang from the rear-view mirror of a monster truck or lean against the side of the house – it’s going in the front yard.  where everyone can see it.  nothing like a little lawn ornament humor during the holidays to get the neighborhood talking… i found it very timely that roy blount, jr. has an editorial in the recent issue of garden & gun magazine on the very subject – weird things in your yard, that is:

we don’t believe in gnomes. we aren’t churchy enough for madonna in half a bathtub. my friend ken wells says that when he was growing up in louisiana, he had a monkey outside, living in a hollow television set. we’re not that ambitious.

mr. grwhryrpltd actually got the idea for his lawn ornament from the november ‘09 issue of landscape architecture magazine.  it featured an article about the international garden festival at les jardins de metis.  during the ‘08-’09 festival, the design team rita installed passe-moi un sapin rita, that provided visitors with styrofoam trees based on the car freshener variety to plant themselves.

image: louise tanguay, jardins de metis/reford gardens, 2008 (LAM, Nov 2009: 99)

their installation had 100 trees.  we only have one.  which is plenty, for now…

it’s beginning to smell a lot like christmas…

Garden & Gun / Patricia Lyons

We couldn’t say we were from North Carolina if we had never tried Moonshine.  The particular brand we tried was somewhat of a cross between ethanol and cheap Vodka.  But let’s just say, the bottle we currently have stocked in our kitchen features a cartoonish character running through the woods on its label.  Not exactly something that speaks to high quality.

So when we saw this week’s article from Garden & Gun on the recent rise in popularity of boutique moonshine distilleries, we were intrigued.  Local distiller Chuck Miller of Belmont Farms Distillery has been working to perfect his recipe since 1987, and the result according to G&G is a smooth product, great for sipping.

Belmont offers two varieties:  Virginia Lightning, a white, twice distilled whiskey and Kopper Kettle, a triple grain version that’s charcoal filtered, soaked in oak and apple wood chips, and then aged two years. We have yet to do a taste test, but since they’re located just down the road in Culpeper, VA, it could be a great weekend trip.

Tours are offered Tuesdays through Saturday, from 10am until 5pm.  They’ll be running the tours up until Christmas Eve, but visitors are advised to call ahead to ensure operating hours and availability.

Oh, the sadness I feel as magazines {now Cookie} are still dropping like flies {Domino & WonderTime earlier this year} around me. A relatively new, but a ridiculously quick ascender to the TOP of my list, UPPERCASE, sent vintage postcards with their last issue and invited submissions of any kind. At the time I was working on July’s Feedsack of the Month Club, so my postcard got sewn, stickered, handwritten & letterpressed {i used both uppercase and lowercase U wood type letters} before it was all said and done.

I would love to contribute more to this curious, contagious, creative magazine and many of my other favorites before the era of the printed magazine is gone altogether. Please, Please tell me that won’t happen. Here is my current subscription list:

{1} Garden & Gun {2} Uppercase {3} Seeing the Everyday {4} Martha Stewart {5} Dwell {6} Sunset {7} Communication Arts {8} GOOD {9} ReadyMade … and then two digital zines {10} Plenty {11} Craft

Some of my euro faves are Junior, Donna Hay & Living Etc.. I have also recently discovered Selvedge, …

I’m curious! What is on your subscription list?

Whenever I go anywhere that I’ll probably have to wait, I take along a book to read. Even if their magazines are from the current century,  I don’t often see one of interest.  Magazine editors generally ignore my age group, apparently assuming that AARP Magazine is the Know-, Tell-, and Be-All as far as we’re concerned.

I do sometimes look at the magazines at the beauty shop because the conversation in the other chairs is often too juicy to concentrate on my book.  I’m there for an hour or so each month so that my hair won’t be the color of a string mop.  The shop owner is a magazine junkie and it’s fun to see what he has found every month. There are all the usual glossies,  plus some unusual ones, like  Garden & Gun.  If one can get past that baffling name, it is an interesting magazine.  Good thing I saw it; otherwise, I wouldn’t have known that Southern fried chicken can be an antidepressant.   Forget Prozac and let Colonel Sanders be your pharmacist.  That’s why we Southerners are fat and happy, according to them.

The last time I couldn’t get interested in the book I’d brought that day,  I looked through the stack of glossy magazines with equally glossy people on the covers.  Among them was one of the ladies’ magazines that’s been publishing since Wally and the Beav’s mom was packing school lunches.  (That reminds me, did you read that Barbara Billingsley is in her 90’s now?   I wonder how many times she’s had to have those pearls restrung.)

Back to the magazine:  the article that caught my eye was something like What to Wear to Look Good at Any Age. I turned to it, hoping to see something that wasn’t sleeveless, see-through, or showing cleavage.

What to wear to look good in ones’ 20’s and 30’s?   Why did they bother to start there?  Heck, NAKED looks good at that age.  Besides,  is a 20-something going to look for fashion advice in the magazine she used to see on Grandma’s coffee table?  No, but I would.  I kept scanning. . . 40’s. . . 50’s. . . .  The end.

HUH?

Wait a minute!  What about those of us in our 60’s?  70’s?  BEYOND???   Good grief, nobody is vainer than my mother-in-law.  It’s insulting that we aren’t worth even a mention.  We aren’t all schlepping around in muumuus, Dear Editors and Advertisers.  Are we supposed to roll over in our elastic-waisted pants and sew the white flag of surrender on our butts?

It shouldn’t surprise me.  Don’t let me get started on TV and movie producers, who recruit most of their writers from college frat houses, you know.  Most advertising directed toward my age group is directed at our genitals or bladders.  Occasionally they’ll find a 50’s TV personality  to hawk a motorized wheelchair or supplemental health care policy.

Now I’m not one to turn down a “Seniors” discount anywhere, although I feel a bit fraudulent, since at most I feel like a Jr. Senior.  It’s scary to look down the shadowy road of “the golden years” if everyone over fifty is being written off as “uninteresting.”  Being a senior should not be a derogatory term or render us invisible.  We’d rather be thought of as  prime rather than aged, regardless what our birth certificate–original or certified– says.  We’re still buying green bananas.

Do people respect the wisdom of elders any more?  Then again, I’m not sure that many folks pay much attention to history in general.   (Not that wisdom, dignity, and age are always synonymous.   Where are they finding all those shrill old bats screaming and ranting to prevent discussions about health care???  Acckkkk!!!  I cringe!)

Many of us are stuck in the middle, somewhere between impatience and impotency.

A friend called yesterday to lament that sometimes she feels she’s still raising her grown kids.  “It’s tough when they’re in their 30’s and 40’s.  They ask for your advice, but then don’t take it.”

I feel your pain, Sisterfriend.   Breast or drumstick?

Back to my magazine fetish, there must be some depth to this obsession … as giddy as a school girl the other day, I fished out my first copy of Seeing the Everyday from my PO Box and it dawned on me … not only do I LOVE magazines, but I love magazine editor clients.

I remember walking up to the table at my fave little sip house in Boulder, Pekoe, and finding Joanne + Jake there. The first thing we established was that the theme was : no theme : just a typographical solution to their wedding suite. We explored all kinds of concepts over the next few meetings and ended up with the most simple design. And the journey was loads of laughs, too.

For all you wedding blog readers, Joanne and Jake’s Save the Date was featured over on Brooklyn Bride a couple of months back.

Jake is the editor of Skiing magazine, he and Joanne were incredible to work with, the collaborative vibe flowed so freely. So now, two of my Top 5 clients of all time just happen to be magazine editors (the other is Sid Evans of Garden & Gun), what do you think that means?

oh, no no no! Remember number eleven on my 25 random things??? well it’s about to come crashing down! the world has lost two fabulous magazines this week, TWO of the greats : Domino and WonderTime. I am sad to say goodbye to that monthly mailbox surprise. The rest of my list, i’m almost afraid to mention, I can’t take anymore publishing plummets:

{1} Seeing the Everyday {2} WonderTime {3} Garden & Gun {4} Martha Stewart Weddings {5} Dwell {6} How {7} Communication Arts {8} Domino {9} ReadyMade … and then two digital zines {10} Plenty {11} Craft

I think you can now get ReadyMade digital style too!, maybe I will go with some of my euro faves Junior & Living Etc. to fill the holes in my heart? What is on your subscription list?

A Garden & Gun photo taken at Leidenheimer Bakery in New Orleans

Let me start by saying I’m not a hunter, don’t own a gun, and don’t have much of a green thumb. That out of the way, a new magazine called “Garden & Gun” has really impressed us. Billed as “The Soul of the South,” this publication out of Charleston, SC is a real thing of beauty. Great photographs and interesting short stories about all things Southern. There is also great writing from the likes of Rick Bragg, Roy Blount, Jr., Marshall Chapman, and food critic John T. Edge.  

The above image was part of a fascinating piece on the Caribbean

Learn more by surfing over to their nicely done web site …

www.gardenandgun.com

OMG and now you’re having to tolerate my gushing again.  So Sorry!  But I love this magazine almost better than fresh black-eyed peas over mashed potatoes with ketchup. Seriously!  Try it sometime! (Heinz ketchup only, fyi) 

And in order to realize my new life goal of having a copy of this exquisite tome arrive at my house every other month for the rest of my life, I must share it with you. 

You can click on the cover above to go to their website and get a nifty taste of the pure reading joy they offer.  And, of course, if you’d like to move on over to the Subscribe or even the Give A Gift link, so much the better.

I do have a bone to pick with them this month.  My college writing professor (a man who still haunts the occasional nightmare), is featured.  I knew him for two excrutiatingly long semesters some years back at the University of Alabama as a professor (OH!  YOU MUST TAKE HIS COURSES!  HE’S “PUBLISHED”, AND HE HAS AN AWARD!),  and still remember him to this day as the one person responsible for my not pursuing the dream of being a journalist.  (OK, him and my low, teen-aged-girl self-esteem). 

He’s referenced as the William Faulkner of the New South.  You make your own decisions.  I’m pretty secure in mine.

That aside, please read and eat every single thing in the food section.  Enjoy the exquisite photography and the smoky Southern prose.  And subscribe, if you’re so inclined.  It is truly a joyous thing to hold in your hands.

Celebrating Garden & Gun magazine again.  I hope you share the love!

And please remember to Celebrate Something Everyday!   (in spite of your college writing professor…)

My friends from the South and I have all been excited about the Charleston, South Carolina published magazine called Garden & Gun. It beautifully celebrates Southern style and culture. The new issue has an interesting feature on Quail hunting in Thomasville, Georgia. Having spent quite a bit of time with family in the Golden Isles of Georgia, I can appreciate the sensibilities of that part of the country and the people there. I’m hoping that Garden & Gun will do a summer fashion story at The Cloister on Sea Island for the next issue.

Above: the new issue of Garden & Gun. Note to the editors, that’s a English Springer Spaniel, not a Cocker Spaniel.