Want a new way to sauce up an old favorite? The Petit Pois chalkboard wrangled me in from my hasty midday Mall-walk with this listing: gnocchi with fava beans and mushrooms. Yes, please. It’s one of those dishes in which every bite tastes slightly different—buttery mushrooms, tender bites of fava, garlicky goodness—and all pair very […]
Want a new way to sauce up an old favorite? The Petit Pois chalkboard wrangled me in from my hasty midday Mall-walk with this listing: gnocchi with fava beans and mushrooms. Yes, please. It’s one of those dishes in which every bite tastes slightly different—buttery mushrooms, tender bites of fava, garlicky goodness—and all pair very […]
Something sinister lurks behind the Easter basket prettiness of April. The first blooms of spring also herald the start of the lawn care industry’s campaign to sell high nitrogen fertilizers laced with pesticides that promise to-die-for turf. Do not succumb to this false lure. If you have decent soil and at least a good half […]
To those not in the know, Fifeville sounds like one of the remote towns outside the pearly gates of Charlottesville, where you can’t get a $3 coffee drink if your life depended on it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fifeville is an old Charlottesville neighborhood named after the Fife family, whose farm once […]
We have a habit around here at ABODE: Every April, we publish an issue on gardening. We do this because we know that for many of you, the garden is also a habit—and we do mean habit as in “irrational, all-consuming addiction.” It starts innocently enough: one tomato plant in a bucket, a few hastily […]
Interview by Carolyn Zelikow “My name is John Clark. In the 90s, my father was sick, so I helped him with his garden. I just fell in love with it. I don’t have room on my property to garden. So in 2000, the year following my dad’s death, I rented a 30’x30′ plot of land […]
Sure, there are about a zillion gardening books and magazines out there—not to mention a plethora of websites where every last detail of plant propagation is scientifically presented. But people still like to learn gardening from fellow amateurs. And, when a wise and friendly neighbor is not available to dispense advice fenceside, many of us […]
But is it design?“Modernism” shows museumgoers how we lost our frills These days, we’re used to living with a mix of the modernist and the traditional. Just look at the Downtown Mall, where the blunt outlines of the fountain in Central Place sit within view of many century-old facades. It’s easy to forget that modernism […]
Tighten upLocal builders study up on efficient houses It was an only-in-Charlottesville scene: a room packed with green-building enthusiasts, eagerly dedicating a day to the topic of spray-foam insulation. The seminar, held on March 22 at the Charlottesville Community Design Center, connected local builders and architects with the NASA-forged expertise of Richard Rue, a Texas-based […]
The mother of all garden partieswww.vagardenweek.org Grab your bonnet and bug spray. The oldest and largest statewide home and garden tour in the nation, Virginia’s Historic Garden Week, is back for its 74th season, April 21-28. To say that the tour is extensive would be shortchanging it; statewide, there are three dozen different tours featuring […]
Buyer’s market. Buyer’s market. Buyer’s market. Seems to be the real estate mantra these days. So buy already, why don’t you. But maybe if you hold off for another month or two, housing prices will drop some more and you’ll get a better deal. Or will you? “I certainly wouldn’t recommend that someone sign a […]