A little Heaven in Kigali

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I was really taken with the cover of Josh Ruxin’s recent book, A Thousand Hills to Heaven.  The illustration by Emily Robertson depicts a table set for two in an idealized garden setting among the patchwork fields of Rwanda.

A Thousand Hills to Heaven

Inside, the book is a thoughtful and engaging memoir of expat life and development work.

The actual restaurant, Heaven, which was created by Alissa Ruxin,  Josh’s wife, is one of our favorites.  Of course it’s not in the fields, but in a leafy old Kigali neighborhood, in a building completely open to the view on two sides and shaded by old ficus trees.

We had Thankgiving dinner there, and you can see pictures of that evening and read more about the book here, on The Atlantic’s website.

Vintage landscape: repetition

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Haycocks in apple orchard, c. 1910, by Albert henry Barnes, via University of Washington Digital CollectionsHaycocks in apple orchard near Parkland, Washington, c. 1910, by Albert Henry Barnes, via University of Washington Commons on flickr.

I feel like this picture could inspire an interesting ornamental garden.

Here is a little further inspiration with another repeating shape.

The Sunday porch: Georgia

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Photo from W.E.B. Du Bois collection for 1900 Paris Exhibition, 1899 or 1900, via the Library of Congress.
A group on the front porch of the Atlanta home of an African American lawyer, by Thomas E. Askew. He took many of the portraits in the albums.
Interestingly, this house anticipates the decrease in the size of the American porch in the coming two decades, possibly because home owners would become more interested in their backyards, according to Michael Dolan in “The American Porch.”

While he was a professor of sociology at Atlanta University, W. E. B. Du Bois compiled 363 photographs of African American life in Georgia into several albums — which he displayed at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.

The pictures* here, taken in 1899 or 1900, were part of his collection. Click on any thumbnail in the gallery to scroll through larger photos.

Du Bois’s exhibited albums particularly featured middle-class African Americans and their homes and institutions, and dozens of fine individual portraits were included.

“The photographs of affluent young African American men and women challenged the scientific ‘evidence’ and popular racist caricatures of the day that ridiculed and sought to diminish African American social and economic success,” according to the Library of Congress’s online catalogue.

In 2003, the Library of Congress published a book of 150 of the images, entitled A Small Nation of People.  You can listen to a good NPR interview with its co-author, historian Deborah Willis, here.  In it, she mentions porches being photographed for the exhibit, as places “central to family gatherings.”

*All via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Vintage landscape: garden of the mind

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Young mother in squatter camp dreams of a garden, Sept. 1939, by Dorothea Lange, via Library of Congress“Young mother, twenty-five, says, ‘Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers,’ rural shacktown, near Klamath Falls, Oregon,” September 1939.

Photo and caption by Dorothea Lange for the U.S. Farm Security Administration, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,
‘The plant, when established’. . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden!
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive —

— Mary Ursula Bethell, from “Time“

Vintage landscape: pin-able

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Sorry about this, but I couldn’t resist. It’s just some mid-week silliness.

Gardening puppy, c. 1914, by Harry Whitter Frees, via Library of Congress“Watering the flowers,” c. 1914, by Harry Whittier Frees, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos).

Oh, go ahead and click that button.

Frees, an American photographer, began taking posed pictures of animals in 1906.  They soon became popular on novelty postcards and calendars and in advertisements, magazines, and children’s books. (More here.)

Gardening kittens, c. 1914, by Harry Whittier Frees, via Library of Congress“Planting time.”