The Sunday porch: the frame

Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

Oatlands, Leesburg, VA, Library of CongressA view from the summer house at Oatlands, Loudoun County, Virginia, in the 1930s, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Oatlands Plantation was established in 1798 by a member of Virginia’s prominent Carter family. In 1903, it was sold to William and Edith Corcoran Eustis, and  Mrs. Eustis began to revive the old gardens in the Colonial Revival style. Since 1965, the property has been a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is open to the public from April 1 to December 30.

Vintage landscape: three deer. . .

Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

deer in cemetery garden, Japan, 1910, U.ofVictoria, flickr“. . . standing on road in (cemetery) garden [in Japan]; large flowering cherry trees, evergreens and stone monuments,” ca. 1910, a hand-tinted glass-plate slide, via University of Victoria Libraries Commons on flickr (both photos).

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

A commenter on the flickr page thought this was the pathway to the Kasuga Shrine in Nara.

deer in cemetery garden 2, Japan, 1910, U.ofVictoria, flickr“Group of deer feeding on lawn in wooded garden; stone monuments and summer house in mid-ground.”

March goes out…

Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

First primroses, Stuttgart, March 31, 2016, enclos*ure

Yesterday was chilly, damp, and brown. Today, it’s warm and sunny, and I found primroses in the woods.

Wagtail smart in his belted blue,
Primrose paying her gold ere due,—
(Out upon Winter! Down with Sorrow!)
These are the things that I know are true.

— Louise Imogen Guiney, from “Firstlings“

Life in gardens: blossom time

Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments

Under cherry blossoms, H. Hyde, via Library of Congress“Blossom time in Tokyo,” ca. 1914, a woodcut print by Helen Hyde, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Helen Hyde grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and studied at the California School of Design and in Europe. While in Paris, she was influenced by Mary Cassatt’s early works, which made use of  Japanese perspective and pattern and featured the intimate lives of women and children. In 1899, she moved to Tokyo, where she studied woodblock printing techniques. She lived there until 1914.