Summertime is HERE!

What will yours look like?

At the beach?

In the garden?

En ville?

A table?

Questing?

Coasting?

(My favorite Venice "Erlich" House via Houzz)

Stay-cation?  (Resting!!!!?)  Got your tickets?

Highgrove, Glorious Garden

I posted about Highgrove once before here

I finally made it there in April.

It was worth the journey.  At least for the winding Cotswolds roads to get there and a red gypsy caravan we saw parked at the side of the road.  The tea and fat scones and clotted cream.  The chickens.  You're not allowed to take pictures within Highgrove but silly me I thought I shouldn't leave my camera in the car park so I didn't bring it at all. (Well the car park is seriously secure because we're talking about Prince Charles' house, are we not!?  So I regret not getting a picture of that gypsy caravan - and the rolling Gloucestershire hills.)  

These pictures were from postcards I bought at the gift shop.  We were too early for the allium, and we were not allowed to walk down the thyme walk in the top picture which was actually, my main goal for the visit.  There are other attractions....the house itself (exterior only), it's expansive views over the countryside and a steeple in I think, Tetbury.  The tree house that the young Princes, Wills and Harry, have played in, the hellebores, the walled garden. But the visit is not cheap, it books up early in the year.  Tickets go on sale in March or April (the website will tell you exactly what day that booking will start for the year).  I would book for mid-summer next time.  

It is not a horticulturist's garden - you will have seen most of the plants before if you are a bit of a plants person.  And for my tastes there was a bit too much emphasis on garden ornaments - the Prince IS given a lot of gifts by various and sundry parties and I guess it's polite to put them in his garden.  The best part is that it is an entirely sustainably cultivated, organic garden and you have never seen such healthy plants!  So you will have to be impressed and inspired.

If you are a fan of Prince Charles, and a bit of a royalist, you will also have to pinch yourself a time or two when you consider whose feet have preceded yours on those green and pleasant paths!

When France Came to the Conran Shop

A litte leftover from my Spring trip to Blighty......

We wandered into the Conran Shop after a game of tennis and what a nice surprise:

In celebration of the Patisserie des Reves (some of their lovely ladies, above) arriving in London

The Conran Shop was having a "French Monday Night" with goodies, free champagne

and a lot of French flavors

including these yes, CHOCOLATE vintage irons and espresso pots

splatter platters (actually they're Italian but they look very Cote Sud, don't they?)

old French cars - the Conran Shop IS housed in the old Michelin building -

stocked and stacked with French niceties.  We had our usual poke around to see what was new.

I thought this table setting had a very French vibe.  (C'est a dire bleu-blanc-rouge.)

(And in another direction entirely - who knew that Hundi lamps were back!?)

Couldn't resist these blossoms with the blue in the background.  I'm sure SOMEWHERE in France looks like this at least once a year.

The bicycles, too, are Italian I guess, but we just won't tell anybody, shall we?  I see myself toodling through the Tuileries on one of them.  In a striped top and Repetto ballet slippers.  With a ribbon in my hair......nice dream, huh?

Anyway shall we just say:  VIVE LA FRANCE!!!! and VIVE LE CONRAN SHOP!!!!!! and leave it at that?

(More Conran Shop posts here, here, here and here.)

In Living Color

Not all cat pictures are the same.  Some are special.

 

Here's a selection of images

that celebrate the specialness

of

(via Poetry of Material Things)

the natural world

around us.

Art, I think,

 
is about

(via Quill and Fox)

throwing into relief or in other words, asking us to look again and recognize

the extraordinary

(via Poetry of Material Things)

in the ordinary and the usual.

(All other images via Petit Cabinet de Curiosites)


 i.e., asking us to LOOK AGAIN and with love.  How was the weekend?


Bonus link:  Very cool interview with a guy who writes about and studies our Material World, Mark Miodownik

For a Summer Sunday - A Favorite Eating Place in L.A.

Rocio's Moles de los Dioses

Oaxacan style moles.  And tortillas made of nopales.

A menu of 13 Moles, and excellent fresh clean beautiful Mexican food.

If I were just visiting L.A. I would definitely not miss this.  Unless you're a Oaxaqueno already!


YUM!

Peaceable Paradis

In case you missed it......

Do you know about "imprinting"?

I think you learn it in Psychology 101.

If you acquaint yourself intimately within something or someone very early in life

it "imprints" itself on you and you spend the rest of your life feeling a great familiarity and even, LOVE for it. 

I guess the psychologists also call it "attachment".

These guys started life together and they now seem very attached.  Can you believe it?!

Pictures by, and story at:  Noah's Ark.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Backyard BBQ

I think it's called H&R Vintage on Fountain Ave.

in Silver Lake (L.A.)

It's a good place to stop.

To start up your backyard barbecue look.

Cuz yeah, it's summer!