Do you need to get away?

[caption id="attachment_1930" align="aligncenter" width="225"] Up, up and away in friendly skies[/caption] Though there's no place like home, a change of scenery now and then can be very good for us.  Whether we travel across town or across the world, seeing  new sights and new people can and should enrich us in some way - give us new ideas and  inspire us.  And so I leave my home in the Cleveland area of Ohio to visit California and my son who is graduating with a Masters from UCLA. My husband Bill and son Rory are traveling with me.  Maybe you'd like to come along too.

[caption id="attachment_1932" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The shores of Lake Erie[/caption]

There's the city of Cleveland in the distance.  Do you see it?  The tall buildings look so small.   It doesn't take long to be up in the clouds.

Whenever I fly I get the feeling I could be leaving the earth forever, that I could be on my way to heaven never to return to earth again.  This feeling helps me realize I better make the most of the life I have and accomplish all those things I want to do, use any gifts I've been given, live as richly as possible while I can.  For this reason air travel does a lot for me even before it delivers me to a new and interesting destination.

[caption id="attachment_1937" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Over Los Angeles, California[/caption]

After writing a letter or two, reading a magazine, flipping through a book and consuming a few drinks, I look out the window of the plane and see lots and lots of tiny little houses all in neat rows. We must be over L.A. and  soon to be on the ground. The miracle of air travel.  I bet most people take it for granted.  Not me.

[caption id="attachment_1939" align="aligncenter" width="300"] LAX[/caption]

We've arrived safe and sound at the Los Angeles International Airport.  With structures like this it looks like we could have landed somewhere on another planet, but no, we're really just in California.  My whole little family will soon be together again and that doesn't happen often enough.  How 'bout for you?

Now to wait for our ride, for our Patrick, who will pick us up and wisk us away into the city.

 My husband Bill and son Rory wait along with me.  We see  cars, cars and more cars, (that's L.A. for you) but Patrick eventually arrives and we drive into Westwood, home of UCLA,  for a bite to eat.  No food on the plane like in the old days.  Our tummies are demanding attention.

We'll give them that attention at a very neat pizza shop called 800 Degrees.  It operates  in an assembly line manner.  As we walk down the line we order our pizza and its topping, our salad, our drink, and by the time we pay for our order it's ready and we're off to a table.  Interesting approach.

Travel is tiring,  so after our meal and some good conversation a cozy bed is the place to be, but by morning we're all rested and ready to explore.  Are you ready too?  Our first destination is to be an interesting historic house, the Gamble House, in Pasadena.

 This house was designed by architects Greene and Greene for David B. Gamble of the Proctor and Gamble company.  The Gambles lived in Cincinnati but summered in Pasadena until 1908 when they decided to have this house designed and built for their year round living, and an amazing house it is.

The house and most of its furniture was custom-made.  There is great attention to detail. Anyone (like me) interested in and appreciative of house and garden would enjoy touring this place.  Does that include you?

The spacious outdoor sitting areas

The water garden,

the Tiffany work in the front door and throughout the house,

 the brick work in the driveway,  so much is  custom work and quite impressive.  I'd love to show you  inside details of the house, but pictures were not allowed indoors.  You'll have to buy a ticket and come here in person.  My boys and I bought our tickets

and waited patiently for the grand  tour. Patience is and was a virtue, but seeing every nook and cranny of this house is worth the wait. We all left most impressed. Seeing this house inspired me to take my house to the next step once home.  The Gambles clearly felt home should be a place of escape, a place reflecting one's taste, a place capable of  refreshing the spirit as well as the body and  I so agree.  Do you?

But speaking of  the "body", we're  all hungry again.   Before any more exploration it's time for more food.   Did you ever give thought to how often we humans need to refuel these bodies of ours?  The time and money we spend doing this... but it's delicious fun, isn't it?

So come along,  join us as we look for a charming restaurant.  We're off to  old town Pasadena.  I do like the historic parts of any town

and here we stumble upon a nice establishment with white tablecloths and outdoor seating.  I love restaurants with white table cloths, so this place spoke to me.   Do you like it?

 Here we sit and enjoy great Italian food, a little wine and the  lovely California weather.  It's relaxing.  Are you relaxed?  I'm told L.A. weather is pretty much the same every day, so much so that people who live here hardly notice the continuous sunshine and warm breezes.  They take it for granted.  In Cleveland it's a little different.  We have great weather, but not all the time.  People in Cleveland say "if you don't like the weather just wait a minute for it will change".

From lunch we're headed to The Huntington Library, Museum and Botanical Garden in San Marino, but that's another post.  I hope you will join me for that excursion.  Why?  You know.  Sharing doubles the joy.

If I took you to all the places we visited at one time you would become as exhausted as I was by the end of my time in California.  I'll be kind and break things up for you.  You can now take a nap, write a letter or enjoy a walk.  Variety is the spice of life.  Maybe you even have the energy to go off on an excursion of your own.  If that happens tell me about it and you know why you should.

Sharing doubles the joy!

It really does.

You are entering my Enchanted Garden

BEWARE!

In this Enchanted Garden you may lose all sense of modern time and place.  You may forget about the bills you have to pay and the errands you have to run.  The garden may steal away any tension you're enjoying and force the jostle in your day to become quiet.

If you are prepared for these things to happen then by all means, follow me down the garden path.

It's been raining for days and the old rose tree is weighed down with all its new growth.  The roses are just beginning to bloom.  They bloom for such a short time, only a few days, but during those days their scent is marvelous.  I wish I could capture some of that scent in this post, but you will need to use your imagination.  I hope you use your imagination often.  It is a wonderful thing and a terrible thing to waste.  Look closely at the delicate blossoms of the old rose tree.

Such tiny flowers

Beneath the rose you will notice some peony in bloom. They are another of my favorite garden plants, but they too stay for too short a time.

Let us proceed down the garden path.

When life becomes too dominated with demands I love to come here, to come to my enchanted garden.  Modern life brings us many wonderful inventions, but nothing is as wonderful to me as nature.  There are no crowds in my garden.  There is no noise, only the chirping of birdies.  It is a most refreshing place to escape modern life.  In this setting I can imagine I'm back in any time period for people of the past enjoyed exactly these same beatious scents and sights.  Sights like this lovely Lamb's Ear.

or this Columbine

[caption id="attachment_1903" align="aligncenter" width="225"] a pink columbine[/caption]My garden always welcomes me.  It's welcoming you too.  It appeals to our spirits.  Here in the garden it is a grand place to reflect and enjoy contemplation.  I hope you spend time in reflection each and every day.  My "dead friend" Lord Byron said "A life without reflection is a sad affair" and I whole-heartedly agree with him.  You too?

Oh, I see the hostas have some company.  They are being visited by the purple iris.  Once again, the iris is another of those flowers which stays for too brief a visit.  I love to see their flowers come, but hate to see them go.  This is so true of many of my human friends too.

I invite impatience each year into the garden for unlike the peony and iris they not only stay a while, but they flourish and grow and become quite a plentious sight... that is if Peter Rabbit and his family don't indulge.  I understand Mr. McGregor's feeling about rabbits now that I tend a garden.

Oh, you must see the climbing rose that was planted by some former owner of our garden.  Take a look at this.

I'm training it to reach out to the house forming a pretty entrance to the patio.  The flowers of this climber are just lovely.  See?

Come, get even closer.  Take a whiff!

Is a flower like this not heaven on earth?

A Romantic garden should invoke flights of fancy.  I spend time in this enchanted place and creative ideas seem to come at me from nowhere, or perhaps the ideas are coming from the angels who live here.  Angels like this one.

 She hides under the lilies and iris.  She must be shy.  Sometimes she holds a blanket filled with rain water so the birdies can enjoy a refreshing drink.  But there is another angel.  This one is more mature and here she is...

I should name my angel friends.  I used to name the angels back when I was a little girl in Catholic school.  In fact, my friends and I would often play with our angels, especially our guardian angels.  allowing them  to enjoy the swings at the school playground.  We'd push our angel friends  instead of enjoying the swings ourselves.  I guess it's from those old days that my imagination got it's start.

Do you grow fennel?  I love fennel, especially bronze fennel.  I have it in my herb garden and here in the Enchanted garden too.  It grows beside some statuary.  Statuary is another thing I love.  It's so appropriate for a Romantic garden.

[caption id="attachment_1885" align="aligncenter" width="225"] Fennel and statuary[/caption]

The other side of this particular statue sees yellow lilies getting ready to make an appearance.  Welcome  lilies to my Enchanted garden.

And every garden needs a bird bath.  The birdies need to bathe too you know.  I love to watch them at this task.  They enjoy themselves so much, but then who doesn't enjoy a bath?

There are all sorts of birdies in the Enchanted garden.  Some are living and some are pretend birdies like this one that sits atop a structure training plants up and around it.

Sometimes I stroll the garden and other times I sit in chairs beside it just gazing at all my plant friends.

Other times I'll sit on the patio and view the garden from this vantage point.  I sit at the table and have afternoon tea alone or with friends.

Or maybe I'll take a book out to the chairs at the edge of the wall and read to the singing of the birdies.

The profusion of plant life in a Romantic garden  encourages rest, relaxation, contemplation and imagination, wonderful elements that soften and enrich  modern day life.  I sometimes wander near and far but though these escapes are always delightful,  I always look forward to returning to my Enchanted garden for this is a very favorite place, a place to rest and relax.  I hope you have an Enchanted garden of your own.  If not, come back often and visit me here in mine.

See you next time.

Afternoon tea on the patio with friends

[caption id="attachment_1825" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Almost all of us[/caption]

Greetings everyone!

I don't know what I love more - afternoon tea,  a beautiful day outside near the garden, or getting together with friends.  Well, this day I was enjoying all three of these things at once for I was serving tea to some of my friends on the patio with my garden in full view. I suppose I like the idea of afternoon tea so much because it's such a gracious old world pleasure and I find old world pleasures  delightful. They help in offsetting the stress and pressures of  modern life.

So I pulled out one of my many tea books for inspiration - this one is called Tea Party by Tracy Stern, and I got to work.

Since I had some cream and buttermilk scones leftover from my last tea, tucked in the freezer, I decided to make tea sandwiches for this tea.  So to work I went!  First to cut the bread into rounds,

then to insert a chicken salad mixture and decorate each tea sandwich with a sprig of mint from the garden.

That was quick and easy.

Next to whip up some cucumber sandwiches -

a little cream cheese, salt, white pepper, thinly sliced cucumbers and a sprig of fresh dill, and another sandwich was complete.

The sandwiches were placed on a tray, covered with a damp tea towel, and were placed in the fridge where they would stay fresh until my guests arrived.  That was easy, wasn't it, and it didn't take much time at all.

So I had scones and tea sandwiches and also a cake which was purchased - something  savory and something sweet for my guests to enjoy.

My only contribution to this cake was the flower from my garden which I placed on top of it.  There's really so little work involved in having guests in for tea I wonder why more people don't enjoy this celebration more often.

If a person feels like going all out they can prepare elaborate hot food for their tea and call it a high tea.  If they feel like taking it quite easy, they can serve only cinnamon toast or bread and butter as certain  characters in Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple" stories do.  As in the Art of Letter Writing there are no hard and fast rules.  The Art of Tea allows us to do our own thing - all sorts of our own things.

I set everything out on the counter in my kitchen, so everything would be ready, just to be carried out to the patio at tea time, and then I could relax and anticipate a fun afternoon doing other things till my guests arrived.

 Besides the necessary glasses, sugar bowl and silverware, there's

strawberry jam and Devon cream for the scones,

mint and lemon for the tea,

 the cake, and a selection of plates I needed to choose from,

 the flowers for the table

and  of course the tea, plenty of tea, ready for ice cubes.

I also enjoyed a little art play by creating place cards for each guest which would be set into these cute little silver tea pots at each guest's place.

Everything was now ready except for me.  Time to dress and make myself presentable.  It was also time to walk through the house and do a little fluffing and polishing, but not too much because my guests and I would be outside on this beautiful day.

At the appointed hour I carried all the ingredients out to the patio.

The potted geranium was removed and set at another location, and the tablecloth  came out.

I've been collecting vintage tablecloths for years.  They make a table look so happy.

The scones and tea sandwiches were set out on the tea cart along with the cake

and the scene was set.  Now all I needed were my guests

And here they are!

We may not be ladies of leisure all the time, but this afternoon that's exactly what we were!  We sipped, we munched, we chatted, we breathed in fresh air and enjoyed the sweet sound of birdies and the scent of  old roses.  Was this heaven?  It was heaven to me!  I hope it was heaven to my guests too.

Tea has a long history of being associated with the finer things of life and today vestiges of extravagant associations remain. Having tea is such a simple thing, but such a luxury!  To invite friends to tea  is a fine way to pay them a compliment.  It means  you want to spend time with them.  It means you relish their company.   And just as the gift of a letter is an old world nicety,  forgotten by many, but still capable of creating delight for the writer as well as the receiver, so too is the Art of Afternoon Tea - especially afternoon tea shared because...

Sharing Doubles the Joy.