Miscellaneous Summer 2010 (Our of order)

Garden Show Brightens Winter

We don't have a garden or even planters that have exposure to the sun so our "gardening" in our urban condo is limited. Still we usually spend an entire day at the Flower & Garden Show. It's a very cheery thing to do in the middle of winter in Seattle. Here are a few photos of artists or gardens or art that caught my attention.

If only I had more space on my walls. Lungala Rubadiri of Nzalamba Art Works (www.nzalamba-artworks.com). The colors really speak to me and the images are all wonderful, I would have trouble choosing anyway.

I purchased one of her hen and rooster tiles. Loved all her work too.

Well-done reproduction of a Paris street scene.

A still photo doesn't do justice do this mobile garden art.

One way to use up your blue Platinum beer bottles. Drink up!

Thought these lights would add a lot to a garden patio. Wish I had one.

One of my favorite artists, she does these colorful ceramic totems.

The children's garden is always a delight. Even though we didn't have the grandkids with us we spent an inordinate amount of time here, a lot of it spent making string and feather bird's nests, the object of which is to provide building materials for bird's spring nests.

Who is that little owl?

Cool idea -- a bird seed "sand" box.

Snowmagedon 2012!!!!!

We had a little snow storm this week. That and a mini ice storm. Then the winds hit. Suffice it to say the place went nuts! Here are a few of my favorite pics.

Winter in Seattle -- rainy and gray, sunny and cold, Herbie

It's always very rainy in the winter here with the Sound reflecting the gray sky and the towering glass office buildings reflecting the gray water -- gray, gray, gray, Unless the sun shines, then the sky is blue, the water is blue, the mountains come out and it is truly one of the prettiest cities anywhere. In the first two weeks of the new year we had all of the above -- gray clouds, rain, fog, sun, snow, wind. Now we are bracing for the "greatest snow storm" in the past two decades. These predictions are often wrong, especially for relatively balmy Seattle, but still I did a Costco run today just in case.
 

On the first day of 2012, the weather was balmy and people were out enjoying the winter respite in Myrtle Edwards Park. We chatted up this gentlemen who caught our attention with an interesting bike made of WWII parts, a vintage Swiss emergency sled and his homemade hibatchi.

Another day in January, the skies were stormy and I caught a shot of a seagull perched on a rock tower.

The very next day was blue and sunny so we hopped on our bikes over to Elliott Bay Marina.

The Oram family headed to Mazama for the long MLK holiday while Tom and I chilled out with their dog Herbie. He loves it at our house because we give him long walks and he gets all of our attention. Luckily the weather held out and we had a great walk through Discovery Park.

We were surprised to wake up the next day to big flakes of snow.

Commemorating 9/11

Tom and I were married on August 18, 2001 but didn't leave for our honeymoon until September 9, 2001. We arrived in Paris on September 10, the day before 9/11. Below is what I wrote about that time.

Honeymoon Itinerary

Leave Seattle Sunday, September 9, Arrive Paris, France, Monday morning September 10.

Taxi in from DeGaulle Airport in traffic arriving at our hotel on the Seine -- the Hotel Quai du Voltaire -- to find rooms the size of closets, but a fine view from our window of the Louvre and the Seine. Unable to check in, we begin on foot to tour the city -- eating wonderful baguettes of ham and pate and sharing a prune creme brulee tart; buying gold eye shadow and bright red lipstick and nail polish; dinner at a French restaurant we thought we had discovered on the Left Bank only to be joined by Americans. We also manage our first day to walk to the Eiffel Tower, the huge Museum of Anthropology and Archeology from where we have a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower, before heading to the hotel to shower and go to dinner.

September 11, a day that began with hope and excitement for our first full day in Paris. Eating breakfast on the Isle Louis with an American photographer and [an] actress, visiting the Les Vosges square and hotel and settling in for lunch at a curbside restaurant; heading for the garment district which is in the old Jewish Quarters and passing by a television airing the fateful terrorist attacks as they happened on the World Trade Center towers. The crowd gathering in stunned silence, then tears.

We spent the next 6 hours trying to contact our four children. First Peter with an Internet card and computer in a bar, then phone calls to Cherise, Kelly and Peter [Neu]. Finally connecting with Sally Neu and then Kelly from our perch in St. Germaine. Then collapsing in relief to find that Peter [Neu] had gotten to the airport that morning to fly from Seattle to Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh to Paris but when he arrived shortly aft 6:00 a.m. found that his plane and all planes had been grounded because of a terrorist attack.

We eat dinner at a Moule (mussels) restaurant and try to make sense of it all. We can't sleep that night, going over the day's events. Turning them slowly in our mind. We can't comprehend the incomprehensible. We sleep until noon. Planes are not flying to the US for fear of attacks and we are in Europe. We decide the only thing we can do is proceed with our vacation itinerary as we have breakfast at lunchtime at a restaurant near the Rodin Museum. We visit the museum and meet an American couple from Connecticut who are equally stunned -- in fact, Americans we meet everywhere are stunned and muted. We talk about their love of Paris. How they met in Paris 8 years ago, flew home and got married, and returned for 3 months of honeymoon exchanging their home for one in Paris. They are meeting another couple on a canal two hours south of Paris for a two-week barge trip. By barge you can go across Europe we find.

We walk to Napoleon's tomb.

That night we eat at a restaurant in the lively Latin Quarter sitting next to an American girl studying there and living a block away and two Australians on a 5-week trip through France and Greece. They're stockbrokers and talk with us about the terrorist attacks at length -- telling us that colleagues of theirs narrowly missed being there at the time of the attacks. Everyone it seems feels close to the tragedy, with so many people working in the buildings, from every country, the inhuman act affects us all.

Collectively, Europe mourns. People all express their sorrow to us. It helps. Meanwhile, so many of us are in Europe -- Christy, Jim and Jeff Caldwell, Peter Gaffney, ourselves and then, we find, Peter Neu who flies out a week later to Berlin.

On this trip we go on to Tours (where we experience a three-minute moment of silence and church bells ring throughout the city to honor those who died in the terrorist attacks), Cognac, St. Cyprien, Monaco, Massa Rossa (where my grandfather was born), Lucca (and torta verdura), Ponte a Moriano (where we visit the relatives), Florence (where we visit Tony and Marghi), Stressa, and London. We never completely rest easy but we find respite in each other and the calm surroundings of the French and Italian countryside.

Music at the SAM Sculpture Park

Thursday nights during the summer, SAM hosts music. Everyone sits around the tiered lawn drinking cocktails, beer and wine. Kids dance in front of the musicians. The view is fine. The living mellow. It's a great setting. This year we had the added thrill of watching sail boats under colorful spinnakers heading very near the shore (avoiding the current in light winds) trying to round the mark and make it back to Elliott Bay or Shilshole marina in a slow going race.