The Sunday porch: Montgomery, Alabama

“Early dwelling, 222 S. Perry St.,” Montgomery, Alabama, 1939, by Frances Benjamin Johnstonvia Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The porch woodwork pattern is echoed in the little attic windows. Click to enlarge.

A huge vine is growing beside the steps, but it seems to go up into the tree on the left, rather than onto the porch.

The sidewalk is tiled in a simple geometric pattern. The effect, with the arches of the porch and basement windows, is a little Moroccan/Andalusian.

The house no longer stands.

The flower seller, Paris

Une marchande de fleurs, au niveau du 64 avenue Hoche, Paris (VIIIe arr.), France, 1924 (?), (Autochrome, 9 x 12 cm), Auguste Léon, Département des Hauts-de-Seine, musée Albert-Kahn, Archives de la Planète, A 69 599 X

Buying flowers at 64 Avenue Hoche, Paris, ca. 1924, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.

This autochrome is one of about 72,000 that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker, between 1909 and 1931. Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to 50 countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.'”* The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.

I wasn’t able to make a flower arrangement this week for “In a vase on Monday,”‘ but to see what other garden bloggers have created today, please visit host Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.


*words of Albert Kahn, 1912. Also, the above photo (A 69 599 X) is © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.

Life in gardens: warm afternoon

Warm afternoon 2, Southwest Washington, D.C., E. Rosskam, LoC. . . in Southwest Washington, D.C., 1941, by Edwin Rosskam, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Southwest is the capital’s smallest quadrant, located south of the National Mall along the Potomac River.  After the Civil War, it was populated by freed Blacks to its east and Scotch, Irish, German, and Eastern European immigrants to its west. Its old neighborhoods were largely destroyed in some very questionable “urban renewal” in the 1950s.

Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream…

Jennifer Grotz, from “Late Summer

Wordless Wednesday: a little help

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Greendale, Wisconsin, September 1939, by John Vachon, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Vintage landscape: streetside allée

Mount Clemens, MI, ca. 1890, via Library of Congress“Gratiot Avenue and Church Street, Mount Clemens, Michigan,” between 1880 and 1899, by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

From the 1870s until World War II, Mount Clemens attracted film stars and the wealthy to its mineral baths.

The view of this intersection today is here.