Ghosts in the Garden
Time out, the joy of proper pages, revisiting Elizabath David, and "Is it a sign?"
Much the city’s population emptied into the countryside to air out their cottages last weekend, but we didn’t budge. Instead, we hid out in the garden, all alone, lunching on deliciously lazy things like tomato and avocado salad with burrata on toast, drinking rosé, and inhaling the dizzying scent of lilacs that wafted through at dusk like a ghostly trail of perfume. Baby bunnies, no bigger than the palm of your hand, hopped in and out from under shrubs to nibble in the grass, while cardinals swooped from branch to branch above the lawn and sang with the sweet high-pitched innocence of choir boys. The unusual peacefulness of it (unusual because this garden has long been famous for its late owner’s parties) reminded me of being in the French countryside, where somehow leisure and pleasure always manage to be served up without any side dishes of guilt. Such freedom!
For the first time in, honestly, years, I went out and bought magazines. They’re hard to find these days. It took me three different shops to collect what I wanted, which, in fact, above all was simply actual pages to turn, passages to circle with my pen, corners to turn down so I could return to images or recommendations that caught my attention. It is an entirely different experience to leaf through a magazine, reading and studying pictures, than it is to scroll on a phone where you never really take anything in and where it feels like your eyeballs are rolling over and over in their sockets like marbles picking up speed down a steep slope. I spent at least a good hour with House & Garden alone, and it was there that I came upon a two-inch square of text that changed the whole direction of my weekend.