Outside, it’s bleak and brown.

Inside my house I’ve created a mini-version of the Minnesota Zoo’s tropics trail. My kitchen hutch holds clusters of striped green  dracaena. Potted pothos trail over the edge of the coffee table.  And a plant stand near a bay window holds my favorite cure for the winter blahs —  the jungle-like Peace lily.  It’s one of few houseplants that blooms consistently even when there’s little light. Spikes of milk white spoon-shaped flowers shoot out of the deep green glossy foliage.  The Peace lily droops when it wants water,  and within a few hours,  perks  back up.

Fill your home’s empty corners, shelves and tabletops with lush green plants. I was at a friend’s house and pointed to a spacious landing at the top of the stairs. “That’s the perfect spot for a Chinese evergreen on a cute little table,” I said.

 Why not? Houseplants are pretty cheap and easy to find at local garden centers and even home improvement stores like Home Depot. Don’t worry about a chosen spot not having sufficient light -- many varieties thrive in low-light conditions typical of Minnesota homes in the winter. Good ones are pothos (variegated vine), philodendron (shopping mall staple with heart-shaped leaves) and zeezee plant (fleshy succulent).

These green energizers are undemanding and pretty indestructible — if watered regularly. Heck, they even clean indoor air by absorbing toxins.

 To help with your plant picks, the Better Homes and Gardens website (www.bhg.com) offers sumptuous slide shows — with detailed descriptions — of dozens of different houseplants.

What are your favorite houseplants?  Do they help tide you over until spring?
 

How often do you clean your shower curtain? Not the vinyl liner, but the outer fabric one? That loaded question, directed by a coworker to the group at large, drew mumbled responses to the effect of: I don't know, it's been awhile, and spread into discussions of how people cleaned the liner curtain, a subject on which we seemed to feel on more certain ground and could trade tips.

My coworker's question was prompted by a discussion with her mother-in-law, who said she should get shower curtain hooks that were easier to thread into the curtain. My coworker maintained that didn't really matter much, since she never took the fabric curtain down to wash it. That's when she found out her mother-in-law had been taking it down to wash it every time she visited. Oh.

I have been known to throw the fabric curtain in the wash, but honestly couldn't remember when it had last happened. It's on a shower that's only ever used by sporadic guests, so it doesn't get much actual use. (The shower door in the master bath is a separate ongoing cleaning battle.) So I took a look when I got home. Looked fine, still, I thought. Then I took a closer look and decided hmmm, maybe it was not so fine after all in one corner. So I did laundry  -- and gave thanks that my mother-in-law doesn't make extended visits to discover my cleaning shortcomings for me.

How often do you clean your fabric shower curtain? And what cleaning sins have guests, well-meaning or otherwise, uncovered for you? The same coworker also now knows to clean the top of her refrigerator before her not-tall mother-in-law visits for inspection.

When I was a kid playing with Barbie dolls, I thought canopy beds were the ultimate in elegance and sophistication. I had one in my Barbie Dream House, a white one draped in pink ruffles -- as sweet and sugary as a gumball. I loved it then, but I'd gag if I had to sleep in that bed today. 

I've outgrown my taste for pink ruffles but not canopy beds. We actually have one, a massive king-size model with spiral-cut bedposts as thick as young tree trunks. We bought it about 15 years ago when we moved into our current home.

Our bedroom has one of those high vaulted ceilings so popular in new homes of its heyday (1990). But the room was so tall and cavernous that I decided to bring in some vertical height -- hence the canopy bed.

Our bed is huge -- almost a room within a room. I like that cloistered feeling -- like a cozy retreat from the cold cruel world, not to mention our cold, cavernous bedroom.

At the time we bought our bed, it was popular to loosely drape canopy bed frames with swaths of filmy fabric. It was supposed to look casual, like the wind happened to blow the fabric there, and there it stayed. That lasted a couple of years, but I soon got tired of those droopy dust-catchers and yanked them off.  

I was curious about the history of canopy beds, so I did a little research. Apparently they once served a practical purpose, adding an additional layer of shelter between the sleeper and his or her leaky thatched roof. Later, European noblemen favored curtained canopies that could be completely closed, so that they could create a cocoon of privacy from their servants, who often slept in the same room.

You don't see a lot of canopy beds these days. They always seem sort of old-fashioned and baroque -- at home in over-the-top traditional bedrooms, but not in a sleek, modern boudoir.

But there are actually of lot of stunningly modern canopy beds still being made, in futuristic shapes and artful  metal, like sculptures.

How do you feel about canopy beds? Have you ever had one? And what did you do with the canopy -- drape it, curtain it or leave it bare?

Sorry! I should have had this blog post up awhile ago, but there are so many distractions these days. Deadlines, Pinterest, answering emails, Pinterest, returning a reader's phone call, Pinterest, writing cutlines, Pinterest.

If you don't know what Pinterest is, then you were someone like me up until about 10 days ago when my college-age daughter texted me saying that I needed to get a Pinterest account.

Huh? I had never heard of this thing, so she sent me a link to peruse, which looked for all the world like a particular well-organized bulletin board to which people had "pinned" things they like. The first thing I see is a kitchen "chandelier" made of big wire whisks. Cool. Then a recipe for roasted cauliflower. Hey, I've been on a roasted cauliflower binge this winter (I know, I know - hold me back) so this post felt familiar and, well, supportive.

I was hooked. Me and a rapidly swelling group of millions.

According to a report on CNN, Pinterest is the breakout social network of 2012 that took everyone by surprise. It was launched two years ago using a nontraditional strategy: Instead of wooing technies to create buzz, it went straight to the cooks, crafters, fashionistas, readers -- in words, users -- and let them start pinning all the things they like to this virtual bulletin board.

Did it work? Consider: In the final four months of 2011, unique visitors to the site grew by 400 percent. One big reason is the highly visual nature of the site. Call up the home page at http://pinterest.com/ and check out the crazy quilt of images. If you're intrigued, you click on "request an invite," which is all marketing. No one is denied.

What I've found fascinating is who has since signed on to "follow" me on Pinterest  - women AND men of all ages. My first impression of this as a crafters' site quickly was disabused. My daughter says the site is huge on campuses.

I'm just getting started; my boards are few and links scarce. But I already know what I'm liking about this. For starters, it's all about "like," instead of the "what's hot, what's not." There's no bashing of weird crafts or bad fashion. You don't like it? Move on.Think positive. Post positive.

I'm not really on it as much as I may have indicated in the first paragraph here. (My boss reads this, too, you know.) But it's a nice way of winding down at the end of the day, or giving a little love to things or places or recipes or whatever that deserve some attention.

I mean, look at the photo posted here of tiny cheesecake-stuffed strawberries. Crazy? Maybe, but so cuuute!

Some friends say that Pinterest could replace their Facebook fascination, mostly because it's not about people, but what people like --which is FAR more fascinating, right? And trolling the boards gives you a sense of accomplishing something, however virtual, because you're getting concrete ideas that just might improve your live, even a little.

In any case, "pin" now has entered the language as a positive verb.

Which adjective best describes your housekeeping: Neat? Clean? Organized? All three? None of the above?

While I put forth a good faith effort at tackling all three, I know I'm better on some of those fronts than others on any given day. I suffer from a malady I refer to as "surface tension," as in, if the surfaces aren't clear of extraneous items, I'm likely to be tense, so I put neatness at the top of my list. It doesn't quite rise to OCD levels, but I can't imagine attempting to clean the house if I haven't cleared off the surfaces so I can get at them to clean.

To me, it's not a chicken and egg concept; one clearly has to come first. But my sister, who rightfully prides herself on her housecleaning chops, somehow manages to have an immaculate home filled with piles of stuff that need to be filed, etc. She once referred rather snottily about my housecleaning (OK, so I hadn't gotten to ALL the dust bunnies skulking in the corners before that visit) but said dismissively that I did seem to be better about "dealing with all the piles." Harumph. Neatness counts, but we know what cleanliness is a close second to.

Then there's organizing home chaos. Today's article on 20-minute projects to an organized house www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/138420359.html  raised an interesting point about the potential difference between being neat and being organized. The professional organizer posits that "neat" is getting things stacked and put away, while "organizing" is having homes for items so you can find them when you need them. She maintains that a home can be organized without always being neat. (Of course, this is from the woman who labels EVERYTHING in her refrigerator, which made me think: Trained professional organizer. Do not attempt at home.)

I do attempt organization on the home front, with varying degrees of success. My spices are alphabetized, my tax paperwork is carefully corralled and my books arranged chronologically by genre. But I've got a few closets I wouldn't want anyone else to see, places where random acts of stuff are flung "just for now" so the house looks neat when guests loom, the step just before the cleaning frenzy.

What's your style? Are you cleaner than thou? Neater than Felix Ungar? Able to teach professional organizers a thing or two? If I ever manage it all at once I'm going to take a picture and frame it.

Photo by Linda Davidson of the Washington Post