Category: nature

The winter garden: diplomatic cacti

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Mexican Embassy cacti, Library of Congress“Mexican ambassador Don Manuel Tellez standing amidst potted cacti in the embassy’s conservatory, Washington, D.C.,” ca. 1925, by National Photo Company, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Amb. and artist in cactus garden, Mexican Amb.'s residence, via Library of CongressR.G. Gunther, a Mexican artist, and the Secretary of the Embassy, M.Y. DeNegu, among the cacti on May 28, 1929, also via Library of Congress.

More winter gardens are here.

After she left he bought another cactus
just like the one she’d bought him
in the airport in Marrakesh. . .

Next week he was back for another, then another. . .

— Matthew Sweeney, from “Cacti“

Vintage landscape: country home

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Country Home, 1904, Library of Congress“Bird’s-eye view of a new home in the country, with formal and vegetable gardens, carriage house, windmill, and farm animals,” ca. 1904, by H.M. Smyth Printing Company (Saint Paul, Minnesota), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Early 20th century farmhouse chic, only $$2,500.

Detail, The Country Home
Detail

I’m wondering about the white shapes in rows to the right of the house. What are they? Beehives?

The Sunday porch: St. Mary’s County

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“Lynch Farm, St. Mary’s County, Maryland,” 1936 or 1937, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

You can scroll through over a year’s worth of Sunday porches here.
Continue reading “The Sunday porch: St. Mary’s County” →

Vintage landscape: yellow plums

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Yellow plums inside the conservatory at Blizhniaia dacha, Kyshtym, Russia, by Sergeĭ Mikhaĭlovich Prokudin-Gorskiĭ, 1910, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Prokudin-Gorskiĭ made early color photographic surveys of the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1915.