Month: February 2008

Winter work

February begins the quest for that hopeful time of year memorialized on innumerable seed packets: “when the ground can be worked.” A shovel full of rich Virginia clay faithfully amended with leaf mold and compost will crumble like cake when the moisture’s just right, but wet soil with meager organic matter renders mud more suitable for bricks. If there’s a patch out there where you grew tomatoes last summer, it needs just a bit of digging and amending on a fine winter day to be ready to receive a few handfuls of seeds the first week of March.

This unusual mature variegated English holly graces the entrance of a home on Blenheim Avenue. At this time of year, don’t shear holly; instead, clip.

You say you don’t have a double-dug garden bed raked smooth, high in organic matter and the best of humus? Use potting soil instead in a 12" diameter container. Scatter the seeds, sift 1/4" more of soil over them, tamp down lightly with your knuckles and soak with a fine spray.

Keep it moist in a cool room until the seeds germinate. In a week or two, after the plants are up, they will need bright light, even moisture and occasional feeding with a high nitrogen liquid fertilizer. Sea kelp is a good organic. Once the seeds have sprouted, you can put the pot outside, bringing it in overnight when temps drop below the mid-20s.

Classic French mesclun produces a variety of greens all at once: a pre-mixed packet of leaf and head lettuces, arugula, kale, chervil, radicchio and the like. Sow heavily and as the little plants begin to grow all jumbled up together, harvest the outside leaves and thinnings for the most delicate, succulent salads you will ever eat. You’ll know where they came from and how they’ve been grown.

Along with planning for edibles, February is the time to get the hollies in shape. Valentine’s Day is the traditional starting point. Wait for temps above 40 and take the hand shears and loppers to any shrubs that have gotten out of hand. Cut branch by branch, thin out the middles for air circulation and reduce for height, thinking in terms of one-third.

This is not the time to shear. Save the electric trimmers for summer when you can cut active growth and thicken up the shrubs. Many hollies—the Chinese Burfords, the blue-green Meserve hybrids like Blue Prince and Blue Princess, and the Japanese Helleris—take well to hedging or clipping, along with periodic thinning, but an attack of geometry now will leave you ugly stubs to live with until new growth starts in the spring.

Do not starve the hollies. They do not thrive on barren ground. Apply compost, leaf mold and slow-release organic fertilizers like Holly Tone each fall or in very early spring to keep a lively soil. There is nothing like sunlight glinting off a mass of glossy holly leaves to brighten a winter day. If you don’t have any, get some.

Check out piedmont-landscape.org for an annual day-long seminar, February 14 at the County Office Building on Preston Avenue. Plantspeople, master gardeners, landscapers, designers and sundry others congregate to hear the best in their fields. This year features Rick Darke on “Grasses and the Design of Mid-Atlantic Livable Landscapes.”

It’s also time to bring branches inside for forcing. Forsythia, witch hazel, honeysuckle bush (sweet-breath-of-spring), quince, pussy willow and red maples unfurl their flowers in the warmth of indoors. Mash their stems and change the water every week. It’s a treat to have them close to the eye while it’s still bare outside and they make an instructive project for children, illustrating the magic of dormancy and the intricate beauties of nature’s designs.—Cathy Clary

Garden questions? Ask Cathy Clary at garden@c-ville.com.

Raincatcher

Part of the pineapple family, the funky bromeliad hails from South America and makes an excellent indoor plant. There are a multitude of varieties, all of which share vibrant hues and waxy bowl-shaped leaves intended for catching rainwater. The larger varieties hold several gallons of water and, in the wild, support mini-ecosystems for small frogs, snails and amphibians.

All bromeliads have fairly shallow roots so smaller pots are adequate, but the key is that they need to be well stabilized. Otherwise bromeliads are quite reasonable in their demands; no extreme temperatures, consistent moisture, good drainage, not too much soil, and no sudden movements from light to shade. Their only trick is that they reproduce consistently and rapidly, so over-fertilize (especially in winter) and you’ll have an outbreak on your hands. Each bromeliad will bloom once in its lifetime, then will create a “pup” growing out from the base. Cultivate this for a year, and it in turn will bloom.—Lily Robertson

February in the garden

-Work the ground

-Sow greens indoors in a salad bowl

-Tend the hollies

Off the table

Question for Gordon Latter at Kane’s Furniture: How can I protect my wooden dining room table when my kids use it for arts and crafts?

Answer: Latter tells us there are two main tactics for keeping glues, paints, inks and all manner of liquids from marring the centerpiece of your dining room. First, there’s the table pad, custom-made to fit your furniture. “The table pads are about 3/8" thick,” he explains; “underneath is felt and on top is vinyl. It protects and absorbs heat” and won’t let liquids through. Table pads aren’t long on good looks, though, so you’ll want to pair it with a tablecloth—“When kids are using it, [use] a cheesecloth tablecloth,” says Latter; it’ll wipe up easily. For entertaining, replace cheesecloth with linen or just remove the pad altogether and let the wood be itself. Pads fold up for storage and cost in the neighborhood of $240.

The other option: polyurethane, the shiny coating painted on with a brush. “If it’s an old farm table, that would protect it against the elements and if anything drops on it, it blends into the character of the wood,” says Latter. However, he calls this option “less desirable aesthetically,” explaining, “When you put a layer of polyurethane on top of wood, it takes you one step further from the natural surface and gives it a more commercial look.”

If you do find a puddle of some art supply or other on your tabletop, assess the situation. “Some things can blot up,” says Latter, “and if you apply a furniture polish it’ll take care of the problem.” More serious cases will require a trip to a refinisher.—Erika Howsare

Piece work

Everyone can appreciate a quilt; they’re fun to look at and they’re also an art form in their own right. That’s why we like Anita Zaleski Weinraub’s volume, Georgia Quilts: Piecing Together a History, which concentrates on the rich quilting tradition in that state. Here you can glimpse detailed information on centuries of quilters between long gazes at some truly amazing quilts.

These are special creations; they go beyond familiar patterns (forget Log Cabin; ever heard of Circular Saw?) and display stunning variety, from the stylized to the expressive. There are quilts made from feed sacks, quilts pieced for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and quilts that illustrate connections to the histories of slavery and the railroad. Pure Southern Americana.—E.H.

Tea is for tall

Local potter Jan Crowther, who calls her business Frog Moon Pottery, wowed us with her teapot’s daring stretch and delicate ornamentation. We spotted the Palmyra-based artist’s work at Downtown artists’ co-op C’ville Arts; Crowther can be reached at 589-4295.

We see hundreds of them every day. Houses are everywhere, just like cars. Yet most of us are better at identifying Subarus and Chevys than we are at figuring out whether that place on the corner is a bungalow or a Cape. Which is ironic, since it’s the houses we live in, not the cars.

Well, just like your older brother who schooled you in the finer points of Camaro identification, UVA professor of architectural history Richard Guy Wilson is here to help. ABODE took a spin through several Charlottesville neighborhoods, with Wilson as our guide, and got educated on five of the house styles that are most common around here. Which one looks like home to you?

Style me this

Houses, like the people who live in them, are tough to categorize. “The idea of a purity of style” rarely shows up in the real world, says Wilson. The definition of a “colonial” house, for one, has changed over the years and is now an umbrella term that covers various styles characteristic of the early American years. (Cape Cods, which have their own place in our story, are actually a subset of colonials.) That’s technical talk, though. In common usage, a “colonial” house has a fairly recognizable look—and one that’s widely copied in houses being built right now.

Richard Guy Wilson

Meanwhile, the lines routinely blur as styles borrow from each other and the origins of certain architectural elements are lost over time. For example, Wilson explained to us the difference between various classical orders of columns–Doric, Ionic, Corinthian—before acknowledging that, to most people nowadays, classical columns are more for “decoration and pretense” than about signaling the qualities of strength, beauty and wisdom those orders originally represented. Classical columns might show up flanking the entrance of a ranch house built in the 1960s, functioning purely as ornament.

Another example: Wilson teaches his students that “Victorian” refers to an era, not a style. Yet most Americans, when they say “Victorian house,” mean the type of Queen Anne confections that line the streets of San Francisco.

Identifying a house style means asking many different questions. What are the proportions of a house’s façade and how do its windows and doors relate to each other? Is it symmetrical? How many stories does it have? What’s the shape of the roof? Does it have elements like porches, dormers, chimneys? Is it oriented more toward the front yard or the back yard? Is the kitchen in the front or back? What is the layout of the rooms inside? Does it feel formal or casual? Are the details more classical or contemporary?

Colonial

“Most Virginians are more comfortable with traditional buildings,” says Wilson. If you doubt that statement, just notice the number of colonial-style houses around town. Traditionally, colonial houses were laid out with rooms opening off a central hall; those built more recently might have less formal plans. In Charlottesville, look for colonials in nearly every neighborhood, from traditional examples in the University area to contemporary takes on the style found in the newest developments.

• Symmetrical and orderly façade, with windows arranged around the central front door

• Often, ornamentation has classical origins, as in columns and pilasters

• In Virginia, very often made of red brick with white trim

Foursquare

This American form, says Wilson, “began to appear very early” in the country’s history. “It has carried many names,” he says, but is “ubiquitous” in Virginia and elsewhere. It’s a solid, familiar, basic-looking form. North Downtown and Belmont include lots of examples of foursquares, often built from brick.

• Square footprint
• Two stories
• Hipped roof sloping down to eaves on all sides
• Often, full-width front porches

Cape Cod

Technically a subset of the larger “colonial” umbrella category, Capes are simple, humble, appealing homes with (as their name suggests) New England roots. In their most traditional form, Capes have very little ornamentation on the exterior, but—as with most styles—they’ve been adorned in various ways since they began to be mass-produced around the United States. Both prewar and postwar Charlottesville neighborhoods include Capes, as they were built for middle-class homeowners through much of the 20th century.

• One or one and a half stories
• Strongly pitched roof with little overhang, sometimes with dormer windows
• Often, symmetrical façade
• Large chimney

Ranch

“If there’s a revolution in American housing since World War II, it’s the ranch house,” says Wilson. The now-ubiquitous ranch was innovative for its indoor/outdoor connection, its orientation toward the back rather than the front yard, and its informal interior layout where dining and living spaces often merged, and the eat-in kitchen became common for the first time. It’s the iconic house of the American suburbs. Charlottesville’s outer neighborhoods, built in the 1950s and ‘60s—think Greenbrier Heights—are the place to find ranches.

• Low-slung, horizontal profile
• Picture windows
• Usually, one story (though split-level ranches and raised ranches are common, too)
• Often, a side door or garage functioning as main entrance, with the front door more for show
• Often, flanked by carports (which in turn have sometimes been converted to indoor rooms since the houses were first built)

Bungalow

The term bungalow, Wilson explains, has changed considerably in meaning since 18th- and 19th-century British colonialists used it to describe the single-story structures with huge verandahs which housed them in India. When the term arrived in the U.S. in the late 1800s, it was applied to seaside cottages and connoted resort homes; it caught on as a style of inexpensive primary residence—a chance to enjoy “summertime delight,” as Wilson says, year round—in the early 20th century. Designer Gustav Stickley’s patterns, published in his magazine The Craftsman, established many of the details we now think of as typical of bungalows—banks of windows, flared porch columns, shingled exteriors.

There’s no Charlottesville neighborhood primarily made of bungalows, but they are sprinkled throughout town in areas like Belmont and Woolen Mills.

• One and a half stories
• Low-rise roof, often with a prominent central dormer window
• Often, a large front porch
• Unassuming and casual
• Interior plans often feature a tight foyer and an open flow between living and dining rooms