Archive for the 'travel' Category

A Tale of Two Sets of Shutters

Published October 16, 2007 decorating , peace , travel 2 Comments

 One of the simple pleasures of walking through neighborhoods in new cities is seeing how people decorate the outsides of their homes.  Next to beautiful doors, I love shutters and flowerboxes.  When I found this house in Charleston, South Carolina, I was overjoyed.   The detail and layering of the window set in a beautiful urban garden.  What’s not to love? So genteel, so peaceful.  windowbox4.jpg

Compare the above window to this one I found in a small town in Italy.  Beautiful shutters, lovely old stucco.  If you forget about the frosted privacy glass and the metal pipes, I think the statement about peace (flag plus baby clothes) should touch your heart as well.

p7050136.JPG

 

They’re back!

Published September 24, 2007 California , butterflies , central coast , monarch butterfly , pismo beach , travel 0 Comments

What do you get when 25,00 thousand or so monarch butterflies come to spend the winter in a ecalyptus grove just a few miles from the Red Door? This morning I saw the first monarchs tasting the oregano plants in my butterfly garden.  Who doesn’t like Italian food?  It is a sure sign that the seasons are changing when the butterflies stop by on their yearly migration. The first time I visited the grove, I thought the trees had an unusual number of orange leaves.  Then I realized those were the butterflies hanging on the leaves.  What a sight.  Then there is butterfly sex…..doing it in the air.

To learn all about the butterflies, check out the resources at monarchbutterfly.org

Autumn is on the Way

Published September 21, 2007 autumn , bocelli , playlist , travel 0 Comments

It’s time to load up the old mp3 player with autumn songs.  I made a classical playlist and one for all other fall inspired music.  These are great for walking on cool evenings, sitting by the fireplace with a good book, driving through the mountains with the changing colors of the treesaspens-in-nm.jpg, or sitting at a vineyard sipping wine among the autumn-leaved grapevines.  My favorite vacations have always been at this time of year.  A special weekend in Santa Fe one October is especially memorable since the aspen trees were in full splendor.  An amazing performance by Andrea Bocelli to get you in the mood is on Youtube. Other Youtube clips are shown in the playlists. 

Classical Playlist (Listed by composer and missing some annotations here and there, but what the heck!) 

Jazz, Pop, Folk, New Age….(Listed by my favorite performances.  Can you imagine how many times “Autumn Leaves” has been recorded?  It is always a toss up between Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald for “Autumn in New York.”)

Silverado

Published September 16, 2007 travel 0 Comments

I recently went to a wedding at the beautiful Silverado Country Club in Napa, California.  It was nice visiting with old friends and family members in such a setting.  Sunday morning brunch was on a patio overlooking the golf course. p9020127.jpg I felt like I was a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.  Of course, during the 1920’s and 1930’s my family would have been the people in the maids’ and butlers’ uniforms, cooking the food, and doing the laundry and the gardening, not the ones discussing theater, polo, and jaunts to the continent.  Amazing.

 Napa certainly has changed.  It seems more like a bedroom community for San Francisco than anything else.  Little boutique wineries and too many strip malls for my liking.  I was happy to get back to the little place with the red door.  No one told me, however, that a heat wave had hit the coast and instead of the fog, the temperature had soared over one hundred degrees.  Headed for the pool, posthaste.