Category: architecture

Tuinhuis garden

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The tuinhuis or ‘garden house’ (shown in the fifth slide above)  is a small cafe on the grounds of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The surrounding garden was a very pretty place to rest after a long ramble around parts of the city center and the Museumplein, during a one-day travel stopover last week.

About half the area is composed of wide gravel paths around a simple boxwood parterre — which is filled with cottage annuals like variegated nasturtium and lime green flowering tobacco.

On the other side, white marble (I think) outlines the narrow planting beds.  Currently, you can see a free exhibition of Calder sculptures in the garden, as well.

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The Sunday porch: rooftop retreat

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As the summer heat comes to an end,* I thought you might enjoy this repeat porch from July 2012.

This sleeping porch for hot summer nights was added to the roof of the White House during the Taft Administration (1909 – 1913). Photo by National Photo Company, via Library of Congress.

It’s a little funny to think of the country’s first family climbing up to the roof to bed down in what is basically a shed with screened sides.

Click here to read more about sleeping porches.

*Fall officially begins on Tuesday in the northern hemisphere.

The Sunday porch: Mobile, Alabama

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The Sunday porch:enclos*ure- Tom Riley Hse., 1936, Mobile, Ala., HABS“Tom Riley House,” 256 North Jackson Street, Mobile, Alabama, September 1936, by E. W. Russell for an Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Decaying. . . but still elegant.

A Google street view for this address shows an empty lot, but the house next door is still standing.

The Sunday porch: the peacock

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The Sunday porch/enclos*ure: Federal Hill, by FBJ, Library of CongressFederal Hill, Fredericksburg, Virginia, between 1927 and 1929, Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Peacocks are probably the ultimate garden ornament — if you have the room and patience.  (It takes several years for a male to grow a substantial tail covert or “train.”)