Aged and Gilded (Palazzo-Interiors & Gardens)

I Want to Play Outside

"A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawnmower is broken." James Dent

Romantic Style/Selina Lake & Sara Norriman

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summers day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." John Lubbock

At Home with Country/Christina Strutt

"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon, to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." Henry James

Pale & Interesting/Atlanta Bartlett & Dave Coote

"A summer's sun is worth the having." French Proverb

Provence Style of Living/Jerome Coignard

"A life without love is like a year without summer." Swedish Proverb

French Country Living/Caroline Clifton-Mogg

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability." Sam Keen

Style de Provence/ed. Angelika Taschen

 

Garden Glory

There are those who get excited by autumn and the first hint of crispness in the air; the flutter of leaves. There are those who are enthralled by the first flurry of snow heralding winter season. For me, undoubtedly, my heart sings at the arrival of spring. Right now, here in California where I live, the trails along the beach are swathed in a carpet of pink flowers. It is quite a sight to see. I love spring! I am intoxicated by the tumble of roses and lavender, the air laden with perfume. I am thrilled with the anticipation of buds yet to open. I always feel renewed and as though the world holds much possibility. Nowhere is this more evident than the glory of the garden.

Country Home

Country Living

Outside In

Perhaps you've cultivated a special place where the growing season never ends, even if it is just a few select cuttings underneath a bell jar. Maybe you are lucky enough to have a greenhouse where savory vegetables are the envy of your neighbors or the air is heady with the scent of exotic flowers. How wonderful to have a light-filled conservatory in which to enjoy a delightful brunch while soaking up the sun. Originating from the Renaissance gardens of Italy, the orangery was popularized by the fashionable French and built to house their tropical fruit trees over the winter. It eventually became a focal point of the garden with ornate architectural elements as well as a status symbol of prestige and wealth.

Art & Decoration

Forcing the Issue

No, it isn't spring yet. Not even close. But we can force things just a bit with the woody branches from our gardens and pretend it is spring long before it actually arrives. If you expose the branches to temperatures between fifty and sixty degrees, these sleeping beauties will wake to provide a show of blooms. Good choices include pussy willow, quince, apple, dogwood and pear.

Martha Stewart Living

Garden Variety

"Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it." Anonymous

Gardening IS hard work but the rewards are more than worth it. There is something quite sacred about communing with nature; feeling dirt between your fingers and facilitating life from a seed. It's a good metaphor for life. And nothing tastes as good as food you've grown yourself. What will you be planting in your garden this season? Are you deciding which baby vegetables and heirloom tomatoes you'll reap or are you more partial to flora? Will you plan a scheme and plant precisely in neat and tidy rows or with reckless abandon and surprise yourself with a symphony of color?

 

Paris Style/Taschen

British Homes & Gardens

 

British Homes & Gardens

 

British Country Living

 

Campagne Decoration

 

 

British Country Living

 

 

 

Previous 3 images/The French Country House/Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery & Bernard Touillon

Mosaic Monday: Euro Garden

1. In the Italian Garden at Heligan, 2. Thistle in the Italian Garden, 3. Italian Garden, 4. Italian Garden, 5. The Cuxa Cloister in the Cloisters, Sept. 2007, 6. Chateau de Villandry - The water garden, 7. Em ơi! Hãy ngủ... (IMG_6364-W1), 8. society garlic, 9. Nostalgic Garden, 10. Lavender In the Medieval Gardens, 11. Barbers' Garden, July 2008: Dorothy Perkins Rambling Rose, 12. Versailles, France, 2009, - superb views over the magnificent grounds of the Versailles gardens and chateau gardens - a garden lovers dream come true! The size is sheer magnifique! ( Summer 2009 ).

Springing to Life

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."  Charles Dickens

Mr. Dickens must have been in California when he wrote that--it fits the description of our climate perfectly. After weeks of rain, we are being treated to glorious sunshine. Nevertheless, a sweater is always at the ready. I find myself happy for just about any reason. Spring makes me think of planning; filling notebooks with ideas, and getting rid of the old and bringing in the new.

 

Maisons Cote Ouest

I'm having a terrible time getting adjusted to the time change but loving longer days. I'm thinking of flowers that I want to plant--old fashioned heirlooms like foxglove and delphineum and some of my favorite roses. The lavender is already blooming.

 

This was an impulsive purchase for the garden. ( I use the term "garden" very loosely as I have yet to plant a proper one.) I couldn't resist those massive pink faces calling out my name.

It is always a treat to have flowers in the house. Here is just a bit of spring for my kitchen counter--a little bit of sunshine to start the day.

Garden Goodbyes: Preparing for Fall

British Homes and Gardens

Vogue Living

I have always had an affinity for flowers. I was once married to a landscape designer whose specialty was English gardens. It was then that I cultivated a taste for old-fashioned heirlooms--roses, delphiniums, hollyhocks, foxglove and flowers with romantic names like forget-me-not and Queen Anne's lace. Later in another life with an artist, I discovered the joy of spring in Idaho found in the blooming faces of fragrant peonies. The thought of my garden and the list of hopeful plantings carried me through the long desolate winters. And when the relationship ended, my love affair with peonies did not.

Over the years, the gardens I've grown are those where the only thing meant to partake of is beauty. I've never experienced the satisfaction that surely must come from working the earth to reap the benefit of sustenance. While the requisite herbs were planted and found use in my kitchen, their primary purpose was to serve as a foil against the pink of a petal or the blue of a blossom. Neat little rows of lettuce and dangling vines did not excite me. The lure of a flower bud was always much too seductive.

Hopefully this summer, tomatoes hung heavily from the vines in your garden awaiting their inclusion in a savory dish. Maybe you were lucky enough to pull a bundle of juicy lemons from your own tree. I'm personally salivating for a private booty of avocados. Or perhaps you are more like me and your rooms were filled with swathes of color from fresh cut flowers. In any case, the bounty of summer is nearing to an end. Late summer is the perfect time to give thought to preparing your garden for fall's respite.

1. Remove spent annuals and vegetables of the season.

2. Compost the refuse from your garden from discarded leaves and clippings. Be sure to use only healthy, pest-free cuttings!

3.  Cut back and thin out the perennials. You can do this by digging up your plants, dividing them into sections and replanting in other areas of the garden.

4. Remove the weeds from your garden that might rob it of vital nutrients needed for next season's planting.

5. Add mulch to your beds, trees and shrubs. They need a winter coat like you do.

6. Choose your bulbs for spring planting. This is the best part because it means...more flowers!

Just Rosy

"Every flower must grow through dirt."   Anonymous

If you love the smell of roses, here is an easy great recipe for rosewater.

1.5 cups bottled spring water
1/8 cup 100% proof vodka
1.5 cups fresh fragrant roses of any color
1 quart glass jar
essential rose oil (optional)

Place water, vodka, and rose petals in a clean 1 quart glass jar. Cover, shake and place in refrigerator for 1 week. Shake the jar daily. Strain petals and pour into atomizer. Add a few drops of rose oil if you like. Store in refrigerator for 2 weeks. (Rosewater will appear cloudy due to roses.)

A rosy corner of my room.

I couldn't pass these up.

Wired

I am on total techno overload!!!! Even the simplest advancements are overwhelming for me. I just got the iphone yesterday. I know, don't say it.  It's shameful how behind the times I am. Love it, love it, love it.  But...I am was so frustrated at not knowing exactly how to use it. What seemed fun at first turned into pure neurosis until I figured out a few basics. And I found this great little video camera that I don't need but would love to have. Adding a few videos to my blog would justify buying it, would it not? And I got so fed up that I decided to switch to a different browser and now I'm trying to figure out how to navigate that.

What I'd rather be doing is puttering in the garden. (As if a garden exists right now.) These are a couple of the roses I inherited from the former tenants.

They're pretty but not really my taste. I like huge, old-fashioned, frilly, full-petaled roses. I took a little visit over to the David Austin English rose website.

My absolute favorite rose of all time is Eden--a beautiful, romantic cupped ivory rose with a pale pink tinge on the edges. I couldn't find a photo but this rose, Queen of Sweden, comes close (but not quite).

I think you can never have too many pink roses. This Fantin Latour is very popular.

This one is Louise Odier.

This is not a color I would normally choose. I go for pink and cream. But this one, Princess Margareta is just so pretty and its the featured rose at David Austin right now. Look at those ruffles!

And after digging in the dirt, I would love to sit in a space like this and enjoy a limonata. I can practically hear that gravel crunching underfoot.

British Homes & Gardens

But instead, I'll be digging my heels in and trying to learn how to use the phone, the web browser and updating the Palazzo web.