Sounds comforting, doesn’t it?  Pleasant, soft, warm, intimate, relaxing, playful…   We’d like to use the blog for a bit of pillow talk.  Care to join us?  Come on, we’ll keep your secrets!

Doris Day and Rock Hudson – perhaps the most glamorous of mid-century pillow talkers.

Well not exactly pillow talk, you know, that is, not talk over a pillow or in the midst of pillows or under the pillows.  Rather, let’s talk about pillows, which pillows, how many pillows, what color of pillows…  It’s about pillows in the Miller House conversation pit, and what to do about changing them for the season as winter relents.

The interiors of the Miller House have a lot of eye-catching elements, to be sure, but the biggest crowd pleaser has got to be the conversation pit, a 15-foot-square, 2 ½ -foot-deep exercise in below-floor-level decorative decadence.  It’s been touted as the very first conversation pit, but that’s a pretty difficult statement to verify.  There are certainly plenty of antecedents, as well as related interior features in houses of the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Houses of the Victorian and Arts and Crafts eras had inglenooks and similar areas of built-in seating.  And it’s not hard to find mid-century houses that featured floor level changes that also incorporated seating.  Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames created such designs for the Case Study Houses in California in the 1940s.  Whether the Miller House conversation pit is indeed the first is something of an exercise in architectural hair-splitting, but if anyone knows of an earlier pit of the same completely enclosed configuration, we’d love to hear about it.

Interior, Case Study House #9.

The “pit” in the Case Study House above shapes the spatial flow of the interior – down to the embrace of the fireplace and outward at the same level to the landscape beyond.   With interior designer Alexander Girard in the mix at the Miller House, the pit concept does something different.  Functionally, it achieves the goal of providing significant seating without the clusters of furniture that Saarinen so detested.  Being below the floor level, it provided nothing to impede the view to the west through the allée of honey locust trees.  By enclosing the pit on all four sides, with entry by means of a short flight of seemingly-floating padouk wood steps, Girard made the pit into a huge, discrete decorative object that balances the 50-foot storage wall and the marble-topped dining table.  It shouts for the viewer’s attention, rewards it with a lush display of textiles, and offers the novelty of looking down to something other than the floor.

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Filed under: Conservation, Miller House

Snow!!! All I could think when I came out of Meijer last night and saw the roof of my car covered in snow was “Crap. It feels cold.” In the meantime, I have my plants around my desk to remind of a better day to come.

And in truth, it is November. Snow in November isn’t exactly a miracle or a sign of the arrival of the End of Days.

All the same, I was not amused. It had been spitting snow off and on for a few hours but I never figured it would really get to the point of covering anything. When I arrived home, the wind-gathered leaves were heavily dusted with it. Plants in the garden had it clinging to their leaves and spent flowers. My gazing globes were covered with it, though under the full moon they looked rather delightful.

Fortunately earlier in the week I had gathered the last of my tropicals from my IMA gardens. At home, I collected the last of my most crucial plants and hauled them down to the basement on Monday evening. It gets dark so damn early I barely get started before I can’t see where to dig. With only four minutes of daylight after I get home in the evening, I gotta move fast. I only got four minutes to save my plants!

I still have cannas and dahlias to dig. Still have some agaves outside in pots (and one XMangave – Manfreda X Agave). Oh shit. I just realized I left my yellow-leaved fig out. Oh, I hope it’s okay. Damn. I don’t know where I can get another and it was not cheap. Dammit. Oh well. I said I was not going to try to save everything this year. Guess I’m just keeping myself true to my word.

Here at work, we are keeping more plants in the offices since we are trying to save money by not heating the old over-wintering greenhouse we used in the past. We concentrated on the tough stuff that can handle less than ideal conditions. It’s good to have some large specimens to put out so there is a bit of maturity to a design from the get-go.

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Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Horticulture

A recent tweet to the IMA asked the following : @imamuseum are the flower gardens still alive?

Now my first reaction I admit was –Well, what the hell do you think? Was there a nuclear holocaust I missed? But then the reasonable part of my brain kicked in and I figured they were probably really wondering about the annuals and tropicals. Most of these are indeed gone, either damaged by last week’s frost or removed so winter materials could go in.

You will still find a few that were not badly damaged or we simply have not got round to. Don’t let a little frost stop you from coming out to see some “flower gardens”.
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Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Greenhouse, Horticulture

This is the time of year I am furiously working on designs for next spring and summer. It helps to surround myself with memories of last summer.

Otherwise, I might only think about the current weather….

Have I grown tired of temperatures 20 degrees below normal? Oh, hell yes. It seems so ridiculous to have so many nights in the single digits and it is only mid-December. I guess it is weather like this that makes those of us living in more northern climates so appreciative when Spring returns. You are just so relieved to not have that Ole’ Blue Northern pummel you anymore. At the same time, the snow makes a very pretty landscape. Here’s the view from my office window.

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Filed under: Horticulture

Despite record high temperatures last week-end, 88 on Sunday, fall is coming. The low of 39 (with scattered frost) two weeks ago was evidence of impending autumn-ness. And the day length is likewise very telling. Even with idiotic daylight savings time, it’s nearly dark by 7 in the evening and remains dark in the morning until well after 7:30. Not that I have an opinion on daylight savings time. I hear it’s great for golfers. FORE! Anyhow. The point is, it’s feeling a bit like fall no matter what the temperature may be one day or when the sun rises or sets. You can see the evidence, as well.

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Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Horticulture