Quick Update: Bee Cottage in House Beautiful and Hurricane Irene

Can it really be Labor Day? Here’s a quick update on the Bee Cottage series in House Beautiful: If you missed the first back in February, you can catch up: http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/home-makeovers/living-room-makeover-pictures-0211. Just now out in the September issue, page 68, is Part 7, “Front of the House.” And I should add “Before Irene!” Happily I… Continue reading Quick Update: Bee Cottage in House Beautiful and Hurricane Irene


Domestic Bliss and Cleaning Out the Basement

One of my favorite greeting cards features a cartoon drawing of a hippo in a tutu, her rotund bottom amply exposed. “I’ve got a little behind,” she says. Well so have I. That’s what 10 days of moving gets you: a little behind. There are elements of so-called domestic bliss that are not all that… Continue reading Domestic Bliss and Cleaning Out the Basement


Easy Summer Entertaining:When Merely Pretty Is Enough

19 July 2011, East Hampton–One of the joys of giving a dinner party is doing up the table; and one of the drags is not having time to do it. Of course you tell yourself it doesn’t matter because what’s important is getting your friends together, and the gracious setting of your home or garden… Continue reading Easy Summer Entertaining:When Merely Pretty Is Enough


Talk About Blooming Where You’re Planted

Some determined and optimistic urban gardeners have willed this wonderful little garden onto a patch of dirt beside red brick row houses just outside New York City–in Queens I reckon. I was on the bus riding out to East Hampton last week and just happen to look up and see it, flourishing there just across… Continue reading Talk About Blooming Where You’re Planted


Bee Cottage: Welcome to My Garden

EAST HAMPTON–Summer is finally here, and Bee Garden is as happy about it as I am. Here is a peek, with more to come in the days ahead. I am so grateful to the lovely and talented garden designer Jane Lappin and her crew at Wainscott Gardens who keep it looking so beautiful. Thank you… Continue reading Bee Cottage: Welcome to My Garden