MacKenzie-Childs Comes to DC

For: mylittlebird.com

FEW HOME FURNISHINGS companies can provide instant pizzazz the way MacKenzie-Childs can. “We leave no surface untouched, ever,” Rebecca Proctor, the company’s creative director, once told me. So true.

While bits and pieces of the line have been available in the Washington area for many years, and of course there’s a mail-order catalogue, we finally have a shop devoted to it: a jewel-box townhouse just outside of Georgetown’s Cady’s Alley design center.

Every square inch of the space is lined and heaped and festooned with a dizzying array of cake stands and candlesticks, vases and stools and over-stuffed poufs. Even umbrellas and eyeglasses don’t escape the painter’s brush—the pieces are hand-painted in the company’s workshop in upstate New York.

Most incorporate the line’s black-and-white checkerboard leitmotif mixed with polka dots, paisleys, plaids and stripes. The upholstered furniture sports swooping curves, painted legs and, frequently, fabulous tassels.

If you wonder what being Alice in Wonderland really feels like, wander on in.

It’s difficult not to smile, hugely. It’s also hard to stop buying the stuff—but you really must.  Drop a piece or two into a plain vanilla room and BOOM! Beyond that, you might pass out from the overstimulation—you can go nuts just looking at the pictures in the 103-page catalogue.

I personally find this stuff perfect for host/ess giving. A spatula with checkerboard handle is $30, a set of jolly canapé knives is $48. That’s the price of a bottle of something nice—but a gift that brings more permanent delight.

MacKenzie-Childs is at 1037 33rd Street NW, Washington DC 20007; phone 202-866-6565.

The Indoor Plant Shuffle

for:  mylittlebird.com

It’s once again time to contemplate bringing your tender plants indoors – or letting them die in peace, or place. With Halloween coming, the sometimes grotesquely charming withering of the fruits of your summer labor is an option to consider.

But first a note about tags.

Some months ago I rhapsodized about the surprising return of the ginger plants, which I couldn’t recall planting in the first place as they emerged in a rather odd location in the front garden.

Baby, adopting a superior attitude which one would not expect from one’s only child --for whom I forfeited my 21-inch waistline, not to mention the labor pains – wrote in the web comments on that piece that they weren’t gingers, but cannas that we had purchased last summer, on a trip to visit her and her Personal Prince Pete in Raleigh, North Carolina, Land of the Fried HoHos. She took three, I took three, and that’s how they came to be (that rhymes).

At the time, I also assumed that the stalks arising from another large pot were bananas, and I spent the rest of the summer fretting over their mingy growth.

How I can write a garden column and be such a lousy gardener escapes me. If I had put a tag somewhere in the vicinity of either I would have remembered that I was wrong about both.

So, Baby was in town this past weekend for the Women’s March – which she attended with My Prince while I was busily atoning for the family sins, being as it was Yom Kippur (an obnoxious and insensitive date to elect for any march relating to inclusivity, I might add).  Baby excused herself saying this is the way she chooses to honor the day (or some such). OK then. Trot your Irish half on down and take a knee for me in front of the Trump Hotel.

I’m getting to the point here, hold your horseradish.

As we were stepping out on Saturday night to break the holiday fast with friends she said something like, “Whoa Mama! Your ginger is blooming.”

And I said, “What ginger?” Since I assumed the ginger had expired (See paragraph 3).

But there, nestled in the pot that I thought was filled with recalcitrant bananas were three brilliant pink flowers nestled among the stiff green stalks.

This was very exciting and I pointed with my cane (which I claim is in use because of a trapeze accident) and said, “Move the ginger to the front corner, and the pot of bird of paradise to the back – I’m positive that they are bird of paradise even though they have no tags and have done precisely nothing all summer but sit in their pot and ask for water.

And she said, “Stop pointing with your cane, it’s obnoxious,” as she waddled across the yard with one pot and waddled back with the other.

The ginger certainly looks perky next to the front walk, a cunning complement to the pink geraniums in the window boxes.

Getting back to the subject of this piece, it is time to contemplate moving your tender plants indoors for the winter. May I suggest a nice merlot and a perch on the back porch steps while you do so. That always works well for me.

With a little luck, someone will show up and do it for you.