Missing Plot 29’s healing powers | Allan Jenkins

After enforced rest for garden and gardener, it’s time to (slowly) start spring

I have been exiled from the allotment for a few weeks now in a smaller world of pain. The plot is at the top of a hill and walking steep slopes has been beyond me. The meditation medication it brings me has been unavailable. This weekend I think all that will change. Though it may involve taxis.

A garden, I think, responds to constancy and attention. Fidelity, regularity and care are what works, as in any relationship. It doesn’t do so well when these are withdrawn, no matter the sound reason or intention.

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* This article was originally published here

A Touch of Romance

       Happy weekend!              I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day yesterday.          My husband and I decided to take a      little trip to Nova Scotia for a few  days so I am a little behind here on my blog.....again! Anyway, it was nice to get away but nice also to be back home. I love this romantic tea set with dainty rosebuds on it.

* This article was originally published here

An L.A. home where homoerotic artist Tom of Finland lived is a shrine to his legacy

The famed homoerotic artist Tom of Finland spent the last decade of his life in a 1911 Craftsman house in Echo Park. Now, the home is command central for all things Tom of Finland — a lived-in museum for both devoted fans and the simply curious.

* This article was originally published here

Flaws and effect: Jenna Lyons’s ‘imperfect’ New York loft

Jenna Lyons, the former creative director of J Crew, uses her refurbished New York apartment to show off her love of objects with a past

Jenna Lyons, style titan and former executive creative director of J Crew, admits to a lifelong appreciation for the timeworn, which underpins her vibrant sense of design. “I love a sense of history in something. I love a patina, I love seeing someone else’s touch, or seeing a stain, or seeing a nick or a chip. Materials get soft and they get round and they change colour,” she says. This passionate embrace of imperfection can be seen throughout her three-bedroom loft in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood, which she spent two years renovating.

When she was looking for a new home, a long stint living in a Brooklyn brownstone informed her list of prerequisites – she wanted it to be all on one floor and large enough to accommodate the “main parts of life”, like cooking, eating and hanging out. “I rent the apartment downstairs as my office, but when I bought the loft above it was all open plan and hadn’t been touched in about 40 years,” recalls Lyons, who is currently working on a top-secret beauty project, designing a hotel in the Bahamas and gearing up to launch a lifestyle television series and e-commerce site in the summer.

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* This article was originally published here

Seven beauty treatments for your future Oscars moment

Stars aren't the only ones who should look great, right? Here are fresh beauty and skin-care options around L.A. worth trying.

* This article was originally published here

He broke up with me by text. But I wish he had just ghosted me

Ghosting gets a worse rep than it deserves, in my opinion. As both a former ghoster and a ghostee, I find it way more merciful than a text with stupid excuses.

* This article was originally published here

Chris Erskine: In this common house, we raised four uncommon kids

We raised four kids in this old house. There were birthdays and proms, bloody knees and Scout meetings. We changed a million diapers here. We matched a lot of socks.

* This article was originally published here