More Ornamental Laundry
Patio with Laundry
My bloom day photo of what Daffodil Planter called ‘the vine with multi-colored blooms’ reminds me that I took a photo of it in full bloom back in May. We hang-dry our laundry for a variety of practical reasons — it doesn’t use fossil fuels (clothes driers account for 5.8% of residential energy use), line-dried clothing lasts longer, it makes sense in our climate, and, well, we don’t own a dryer — but also I sometimes like the look of it. I remember when I was in Italy I thought the laundry lines between the apartment buildings were very charming, and now looking at two shots of our patio this past spring, I prefer the one with the laundry.
Patio lacking Laundry
I know at least some garden bloggers use a line. Daffodil Planter said she has one. Townmouse has a variety of drying contraptions. It’s getting more fashionable, and there’s, of course, even a blog devoted to the topic.
Tags: Arizona flagstone
This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 7:39 am and is filed under flatwork, stone, sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Ah, well, but interestingly enough, I had just 2 comments on that post. Usually we get at least 10 on interesting posts. This was not an interesting post. And not a single Pick on Blotanical.
I think that tells us that it’s still a very radical, going back to the dark ages thing to line dry.
(I must admit I personally prefer the garden without the line, which is why I remove all traces of it after the weekly laundry day. But it makes so much sense to hang dry, I can’t see not doing it).
November 20th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I like that patriotic color scheme you’ve got going–was this for a Memorial Day party in May? I wish I had taken a photo of my clothesline in my Laura Ashley days, with five flowered cotton lawn (no, not that kind of lawn) dresses hanging in a bright row. LIke Town Mouse I try to take my laundry down quickly. I have a retractable clothes line that stretches across a south-facing deck. With the dry air in Nevada County, and the summer heat, clothes dry in an hour. What a boon!
November 20th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I liked that post, though I guess I didn’t comment either. I find that comments are not the only way to judge the popularity of a post. Same with Blotanical. There are a lot of blog readers out there without blogs of their own so they don’t ever leave comments.
Those retractable lines are clever. We use a cane of bamboo to hoist it above our sight line.
I hadn’t noticed the patriotic color scheme, but yesterday might have been a patriotic day for me. I spray painted U-S-A on a client’s lawn, though it was for utility service to mark the power lines, not for jingoistic reasons. I had to google Laura Ashley to figure out what that meant. I seem to be in my REI clothing department days.
November 21st, 2009 at 2:28 am
Oooh, Ryan! This is a blog after my own heart.
I like line drying, though I don’t do as much of it as I should. I need to work on the therblligginess of it–make it more convenient for me than it is right now.
I agree about not judging the success of the post by the comments. SOmetimes I’ll say something to my students in class, only to be met with what I am interpreting as a blank stare. Later, I’ll find out from one of them that whatever it was I said was such a novel idea to them that they were a bit nonplussed. Maybe clotheslines are that novel to people now.
November 21st, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Ryan, My mother used to hang clothes out during really cold weather in Wisconsin. They would be freeze-dried. I never smelled sheets so fresh again. In the Pacific NW even our towels don’t dry out in 24 hours. We do have a wood burning stove so you’ll find our living room full of those old timey wooden accordian racks full of laundry. It takes days to get the jeans dry. But no ” how did these pants get so tight?” feeling in the morning. We also have an electric clothes drier.
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:40 am
ST – I don’t know if clotheslines are so novel, but i like the idea of using a blog post to give people a blank stare. What is ‘therblligginess?’
DM – I don’t know if I’d hang dry as much if I lived in the NW or Wisconsin. Freeze-dried laundry sounds a little extreme for me.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:20 am
In my Scottish childhood of course tumble driers were a thought unthunk, and we had a “pulley’ in the kitchen for drying when it was (frequently) wet – a rack of four horizontal poles the length of the kitchen that you hoisted to the ceiling to keep it out of the way. I want to get into line drying but haven’t worked up the energy – but Town Mouse recently gave me a set of her line drying accessories, Japanese plastic hangers clips on a single hook you can hang up, so my excuses are dwindling. I love your patio with the laundry – it’s very country peasanty pleasant! I’m inspired to create such a patio myself from seeing yours and I really think I will – a flagstone patio on our undeveloped flat south garden would look great and I love working in stone. Fingers crossed I can just keep these old muscles working!
December 7th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Country peasant pleasant. Exactly. Get a nice sunny day and hang some laundry, add some color to the yard for a while. Flagstone almost always turns out nice, so I’d say go for it.