Hazy Shade of Winter

Just got back from business trip to Chicago, where I noticed that some kind of vine is planted along the concrete retaining walls on the freeway leading to the airport. Now that it’s winter and their leaves have gone, these vines make the most beautiful pattern on the concrete, like an engraving or a grisaille painting, the monochrome technique Renaissance artists used for decorative ceilings and walls. There’s something to admire in northern climes' elegant winter spareness that we don’t really get here in Austin, with our liveoak, mountain laurels, and other deciduous evergreens.

The Chicago retaining walls reminded me of interior designer Rose Tarlow’s house in Los Angeles. She lets some kind of vine actually grow into her windows and climb up her living room walls. Apparently she periodically tears off parts of the vine, leaving the vegetal sucker material as a ghostly tracery on the walls. (Anyone who has ever torn English ivy from a wall, will know a similar residual pattern.) Amazing, yet I'm not sure I'd want to endanger my property value by “trying this at home.” Also, I have a hard enough time just keeping a pot of ivy alive indoors.

Meanwhile before I left for Chicago, I took all the tender babies into the shed.