home + garden
Welcome to Homegirls. You'll find a sassy sampling of décor and design tips, frank conversation about everything from holidays and homekeeping to home improvement and our picks and pans of new products, stores and events.
Contributors: Kim Palmer, Lynn Underwood, Connie Nelson, Kim Ode and Nicole Hvidsten.
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Posts about Gardening and landscaping
Homes of the 1 percent
Posted by: Kim Palmer Updated: December 11, 2012 - 12:05 PM
As a reporter who writes mostly about homes and gardens, I don't get a lot of hate mail or angry phone calls. Nothing like the days when I covered city hall and could expect at least one or two a day.
Life is calmer, but I have sometimes wondered if anyone -- other than my mother -- is reading my stories at all, or just glancing at the pretty pictures.
But homes, in this economy, are a lot more controversial than they used to be. Just this week, the Star Tribune published two letters from readers critical of the Homes section. Here's today's: "Opening this section makes me sick. I am usually not a bitter person, but I can only wonder how anyone can afford this stuff." (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/182904101.html)
I also fielded a few annoyed phone calls last month when we published a story about pianist Lorie Line's $4 million lakeshore mansion, and then, three days later, a story about it heading into foreclosure. (www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/179217631.html)
Featuring rich people's houses is "rubbing it in readers' noses" that they will never live like that, one caller told me.
For what it's worth, we do try to feature a mix of houses -- big and small, expensive and modest -- as well as overall home-related trends that affect everyone. When we do have a grandiose home in our section, we try to balance it with another story about something more accessible.
Before the recession, big, expensive homes rarely generated comment. And their owners were, on the whole, happy to share them with readers.
The faltering economy changed that dramatically. Affluent homeowners got a lot more reluctant to showcase their affluence when so many others were struggling. When we did feature a big, expensive house, we got a lot more negative feedback.
Last week, I had lunch with a freelance writer who told me she's changing her focus. "I can't write about rich peope's houses anymore," she said.
Me, I'm still fascinated by all the spaces we call "home" and the people who create them. I love the quirky starving artists' homes and the freedom they feel to glue rocks to their woodwork and paint murals on their ceilings. I love the elegant old mansions, and the sleek modern dwellings. I even loved the "punk house" I wrote about a few years ago, where a bunch of young musicians were staging shows in their filthy basement.
How about you? Are you sick of seeing homes that you can't personally afford? Or do you like peeking inside all kinds of homes?
Year in review, home-improvement style
Posted by: Nicole Hvidsten Updated: November 28, 2012 - 8:13 AMWith the end of the year quickly approaching, we're constantly reading about the year's best this-and-that. At the Star Tribune we're talking about our year-end stories, and the Christmas letters are starting to come with everyone's annual wrap-ups.
Me? I'm starting to take stock of the year in terms of home-improvement projects. And, in the spirit of the season, I'll do it holiday-letter style:
Dear friends,
It's been a wild ride at the Hvidsten house this year. Believe it or not, we had another sump pump incident this spring. I know, right? I've 
sworn off carpet in the lower level, and we're still missing half of a wall on one side of the basement. Baseboards need to be restained and put up again, but at least we're getting good at disaster recovery!
For those wondering if I've decided which color to paint my accent wall in the living/dining area, the answer is a big no! Yup, there are still swatches painted on the walls, now going on about three or four years. I've lost count! We've grown to love our eclectic look, but this still remains near the top of my wish list of things to accomplish. But now the surrounding walls need to be painted, so we just upgraded the project from minor to major. It's good to have goals!!
The kids are busy with all of their activities, but thanks to Papa, we now have cubbies in the garage for all the sports equipment (which are sadly ignored most of the time). I've attempted to hang hooks alongside the shelves, but have yet to find something that can withstand the weight of a softball or hockey bag. Something to work on for 2013!
Our year was also filled with accomplishments: I finally cracked open my electric sander; the tree we planted THISCLOSE to our house when it was a seedling was finally transplanted; the clematis now have real trellises to climb; the clothesline was restrung; the piles in the office are gone and, thanks to my love of all things organizational, are neatly filed. I could go on!
I hope your 2012 was full of home-improvement successes. Looking to next year -- can you believe the year's almost over? -- we hope to do some landscaping projects, tackle that basement, experiement with beadboard and perhaps choose a paint color or two.
May your holiday season be filled with fun and fan decks,
Nicole
His chores, her chores
Posted by: Kim Palmer Updated: November 13, 2012 - 11:06 AM
Last Saturday -- warm and sunny -- was a perfect day to get those last outdoor chores out of the way before winter descended on us.
So I rented a chainsaw and went to work on the buckthorn that stubbornly continues to erupt in our back yard. My husband spent the time cleaning out the cars.
Chainsawing has become my wifely duty, mainly because I'm the one who cares about eradicating buckthorn. The first time I rented a saw, a couple of years ago, I was nervous that I wouldn't be strong enough to control the machine -- without slicing off one of my feet or fingers. I was game to try, but slightly annoyed that my husband wasn't rising to the manly challenge of battling invasive species.
But as I've gotten more comfortable wielding a chainsaw, I've also found it increasingly satisfying to buzz through unwanted shrubs in a fraction of the time it used to take with a handsaw.
When I was finished Saturday, my husband offered to return the saw while I treated the freshly cut stumps. When he got home, he was chuckling. "The guy asked me how it had worked for me," he said. "I told him I didn't know because my wife had done all the work. He just looked at me, raised his eyebrows and said, 'How'd you manage that?'"
The comment got me thinking about household chores, who does what and why. Apart from my chainsaw fetish, our division of labor falls into pretty traditional patterns. He mows the lawn. I do the cooking. He does more of the shoveling and raking, while I do more of the laundry. We've never really planned or even discussed this chore allocation. It just sort of happened.
The icky chores that neither of us likes, say cleaning the bathroom or the refrigerator, are the ones we tend to share and tackle together.
The "chore wars" got a lot of press back in the '90s, when worn-out working wives were urging their hubbies to step it up on the homefront. But years later, many of us are still grappling with chores and gender, judging from recent studies.
One study earlier this year claimed that couples who share household chores are more likely to get divorced (!)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/28/divorce-rates-couples-who_n_1923623.html
And another found that women, on average, spend three hours each week redoing chores that their husbands supposedly "completed."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/women-spend-3-hours-per-week-re-doing-chores_n_1371047.html
What's the story on chores in your household? Who does what -- and why?
Container conundrum
Posted by: Lynn Underwood Updated: November 9, 2012 - 1:04 PMI always feel a little melancholy this time of year. It’s not because of the impending blast of winter.
My outdoor pots are filled with dead plants, their beauty destroyed by frost, and I can’t bear to look at them any longer.
Either can my neighbors. So I store my cleaned-out pots in the garage over the winter. But my co-worker, and lots of other laid-back container gardeners, store their urns and vessels in the same spot where they sat all summer - on the patio, deck, and front steps. With the dead plants intact.
Last spring feels like eons ago when I was agonizing over the medley of plants that would fill my nine outdoor containers. What are my thrillers, spillers and fillers? Coleus or caladium? Should I stick with purple fountain grass or try variegated agave? Wouldn’t those mini cascading petunias look really cute in my patio planter?
But it only took a half hour to dig out the plants, toss their sad carcasses into a wheelbarrow and unceremoniously dump them in the wetlands (also known as the dried-up swamp) behind my house. I left the black dirt in the pots -- those bags of premium potting soil are pricey — ready for next spring’s garden center booty.
Then I dutifully followed the cardinal rule: store terra-cotta, ceramic and cement planters in a protected place. Freezing and thawing can cause them to crack and break. So like Hulk, I lugged and lifted the super heavy pots into the garage. New patio planters aren’t cheap.
My co-worker was likely watching an episode of “Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo” while I was cleaning and protecting my pots from Armageddon. Her home’s twenty or so planters, chock full of bedraggled begonias, drooping spikes and other expired plants, sit outdoors all frozen winter long. Their dead brown form have an organic appeal and blend with the bleak November landscape, she said. And in May, sometimes the moneywort makes a comeback and sprouts among the devastation. The neighbors must think my co-worker flew to Florida for the winter and simply forgot about her pots
Do you follow the rules? What do you do with your summer container gardens over the winter?
Unmentionables from the Easter Bunny
Posted by: Kim Palmer Updated: April 3, 2012 - 1:34 PM
Easter is only a few days away, but I hadn't given much thought to Easter baskets. With two kids in college, we're not exactly flush with cash for goodies and trinkets.
You might think it odd that someone with college-age kids is thinking about Easter baskets at all, but they're a long-standing tradition in my family. My parents hid Easter baskets for me and my two sisters until we were well into our 20s.
The contents of the Easter baskets changed as we grew up, from candy and little toys to candy and makeup. But one item was in every Easter basket, year after year:
Underwear.
Yup. My mom bought each of us a pretty pair of pastel undies and tucked them into a basket, surrounded by jelly beans and foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. I think the original idea was that we would wear the Easter underwear to church that morning, along with all our other new Easter finery, which in those days included ribbon-trimmed hats and little white gloves.
My kids never dressed like that for Easter, but I kept up the Easter underwear tradition -- although I did update it a bit to account for modern underwear preferences. Instead of the lace-trimmed Granny panties my sisters and I received in the '60s, I always found some colorful boxers for my son and some cute bikini briefs for my daughter.
Both kids now think it's hilarious that the Easter Bunny brings underwear, and joke about it while hunting for their baskets.
I haven't bought this year's Easter underwear yet. But I've got something to go with it -- homemade sachets for the underwear drawer. I made them last night on the spur of the moment. I was cleaning out my patio pots, ripping out the dead stalks to make room for spring planting.
I was just about to rip out one plant when I remember what it was: lavender. The leaves were withered and silvery, but still amazingly fragrant. I couldn't throw away all that perfectly good lavender. I had to do something with it. But what? Then I remembered the little scented sachets that my English grandmother used to place in her dresser drawers.
There were some tiny fabric bags with drawstring tops in my gift-wrap stash, so I dug them out of storage and filled them with lavender. One for my daughter, one for my mom and one for me. (I don't think my 19-year-old son is ready for lavender-scented boxers.)
What do you put in Easter baskets? Do you have any odd family traditions?
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recent posts
- Organized exercise
- 2013: A year of possibilities
- Can we be done decking the halls now?
- Learning to let go
- Defying tradition
- Decorating rebel
- Taking Christmas lists to new heights
- Homes of the 1 percent
- Green chic
- Holiday push
- Cast-off couture
- Fix your own stuff
- Five-minute holiday decorating
- Year in review, home-improvement style
- Memories make odd ornaments precious
- Deck the halls, eventually
- Holiday entertaining: The clean before the storm
- Let there be light
- The curse of an open floor plan
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