My friend Jana says putting in a new garden is like giving birth. Painful and messy at the time but you quickly forget all that once your new pride and joy has arrived. This has been an intense mother of a week with soil, rock and plant deliveries arriving almost daily and several professional crews [...]
The garden project continues in full swing. So full that I’ve hardly looked at anything this week that didn’t have petals or leaves. Except maybe the dirt surrounding our house–specifically, the dirt that surrounds my house vs. the dirt that surrounds my neighbors’ house. Our property is bordered on three sides by open space owned [...]
Let me introduce you to my new pink dogwood tree—isn’t she a beauty? She went into the back garden yesterday along with a bunch of climbing vines and two fruit trees–a Kieffer lime and a “Panache” fig (classy, huh?) I spent a few peaceful moments last night watering everything in, grateful to have some new [...]
Last week a landscape crew ripped out most of the tired plantings and removed all the rocks that made up an ornamental dry stream bed in the upper garden. What’s left is a whole lot of dirt potential. “Things gonna look worse before they look better,” said my handyman Gustavo after shoring up the back [...]
A designer once told me that all greens go together. ”It’s because you see so many different shades of green in nature that your eye is comfortable with a mix of greens,” she said. But do some greens play better with others? “Guilford Green,” Benjamin Moore’s Color of the Year for 2015, would be a [...]
San Francisco designer Tineke Triggs knows that a well-designed rug can become the magic carpet in a room’s design. ”It’s the first thing you see in a room and the foundation for the rest of the layers,” says Triggs who recently designed a bold new collection of contemporary area rugs for California Carpet. Let’s see [...]
Plans for the outdoor spaces continue to evolve as I gather information and consult trusted experts. One of those experts is Berkeley artist and landscape designer Keeyla Meadows. I first met Keeyla twenty-some years ago when I was scouting gardens for a garden tour fundraiser for our kids’ grade school. Someone tipped me off to [...]
It’s been a while since I shared any remodeling news. That’s because most of the interior work we wanted to do on the new house is done and we’ve been enjoying a respite from projects beyond the ongoing purging and organization of stuff. But an early spring is upon us and a wedding party is [...]
This weekend is the Oscars and rumor has it that actress and design enthusiast Julianne Moore is helping to decorate the official Green Room. I’m looking forward to seeing what she comes up with. I’m also excited about taking one more glimpse at the art direction and sets from the past year’s movies. Whether it [...]
Happy Friday the 13th/Valentine’s Day/President’s Day weekend everyone! Wow, that’s quite the mashup. Not sure what image would really capture that — chocolate covered scorpions wielding teeny-tiny American flags? I’ll stick with sparkly sugar cookie hearts and share some other sweet things to savor when you get a moment. The romance of a pink sofa. [...]
