Landscape & Gardening

What’s Blooming Now

Society Garlic and Stringy Stonecrop
Society Garlic and Stringy Stonecrop

Society Garlic. The Society Garlic (the variegated cultivar known as Tulbaghia violate ‘Silver Lace’) that you see in the foreground of the above photo is not actually a garlic, but is a “cousin” of true garlic and is more closely related to the narcissus flower. Despite its garlic smell and name, it’s not recommended for consumption. Although usually said to be edible, it needs to be treated with care or it could cause stomach problems. I recently learned not to deadhead these plants with my bare hands. Doing so gave me stinky hands for two weeks, and frequent washing and scrubbing did nothing to help.

Stringy Stonecrop (Sedum sarmentosum). After the yellow blooms fade in a few weeks, this sedum will send out long runners. Eventually, the places where these clumps have been planted will have become solid carpets of chartreuse.

Contemporary Art

Saturday at The Reading Room

'Perpetual Care' (Roadkill Diamond documentation), 2011
‘Perpetual Care’ (Roadkill Diamond documentation), 2011

Tendered Currency, new work by Shane Mecklenburger, will open at The Reading Room on Saturday, April 14 from 7 to 9 pm with a reception for the artist followed by a reading on Sunday, April 15 at 4 pm. The exhibition will continue through May 12.

Mecklenburger’s work investigates American culture and various market functions and transactions, “our internal struggles and contradictions, our national self-perception and the way we are perceived, valued and devalued”. TRR will feature video, sculpture, prints and a live eBay auction. During an election year and while the Dallas Arts Fair is in progress, Mecklenburger will show how he sold The Future on eBay and made a diamond from the script of Superman III.

An intermedia artist working between installation, media art and performance, Mecklenburger holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor of Art & Technology at Ohio State University’s Department of Art. His work has exhibited at Hoxton Gallery/London, The Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music/Amsterdam, Ubersee Museum/Bremen, Centro Cultural Paso del Norte/Juarez, The El Paso Museum of Art and Dallas Museum of Art.

The Reading Room is a project space dedicated to the intersection of visual and text based culture located at 3715 Parry Avenue, Dallas. For further information Karen Weiner 214 952 4109.

Since I couldn’t embed Mecklenburger’s relevant video, you can go here to watch it.

Landscape & Gardening

The New Front Garden

The front bed is deeper now.
The front bed is deeper now.

Larger planting beds and less grass means less maintenance. With the exception of three Turk’s Cap shrubs, the front garden is now complete. Because of the newly extended beds, the removal of the not-so-hot-looking plants, the transplanting of some of the original perennials, and the addition of shade tolerant perennials, I’m hoping that I won’t need to be putting in the insane amount of maintenance hours that have been required over the last few summers. Looking at the above and following photos, you may think that things look a bit tiny and insignificant. Just you wait. In July or August, I’ll be taking new photos, and you will definitely see a big difference.

Interior Design

The Fourth Wall

For some reason the wall color reads correctly in the larger version, and in the above smaller version, the color is too intense. The smaller it is, the more saturated the color.
For some reason the wall color reads correctly in the larger version, and in the above smaller version, the color is too intense. The smaller it is, the more saturated the color.

And the last wall to photograph in my bedroom. Now that the sun has returned, I’m photographing portions of my house that hadn’t been shot before. And tomorrow, I hope there will be at least an hour of quality morning light to photograph the newly installed front garden. All of these shots are needed to complete my redesigned website. The details are driving me crazy with endless hours of photoshopping and uploading, and I have yet to write the copy. Most of this work occurs at night, since my day hours have been monopolized with real work and continual domestic problems that need fixing.

Interior Design

You Are Now Entering My Office

Come on in!
Come on in!

Finally I was able to photograph my newly decorated office. For several weeks now I’ve been waiting for the sun to stay consistently bright from 1pm through 2pm in order to take these photos. Unfortunately, while waiting, the oak tree fully leafed out causing the light to not be as bright as it would have been while the tree was dormant. The sun wasn’t my only problem. With two other very different light sources, incandescent and fluorescent, I ended up having some strange color issues, which I will gladly point out to you in the following photographs.