Dreich.

Yesterday, my daughter and I spent most of the day in Aberdeen having lunch and shopping. Today, we made waffles and little books, then went out, all of us. Both days, it was rainy, the kind of rain that comes down steadily, without a lot of fanfare but with not much relief in sight, and today it was even more like that than yesterday. If you look on the iPhone weather app for this town, you can see the animation for rain, drops coming down in perpendicular lines. It looked like that when you looked out the window, too.

It took us a little while to get out of the house, and by the time we arrived at the Winter Gardens in Duthie Park, it was fairly dismal. We were all just a little out of sorts. 'They've put in a lot of new, nice play equipment. But it's not much of a day for that, I'm afraid,' my daughter said. We walked at a good clip from the car park to the gardens. It was wet and we were a little quarrelsome.

rain on the glass

But once we were inside, the rain didn't much matter. We could see it--hear it, faintly--sheeting on the conservatory walls and roof, but the green world inside did its conjuring.

venus flytraps (don't touch!)

 

fuschia, in the Victorian Corridor

 

brilliant I'm not sure what.

 

the desert. In Scotland.

 

morning glory.

 

in the tropics.

residents of the Winter Gardens.

 

My particular favorite beauties of the day.

Evie.

 

Miriam.

 

Eli.

By the end of the day, it seemed like the gardens, plus a game of bowling, some fish and chips for the kids and some Thai food for the adults, restored us. And the rain stopped.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Adding on a room.

I recently visited my wonderful friend, my oldest friend, who lives in the Sonoma Valley. We had a splendid time doing everything under the sun. One bewitching thing about her life is the garden she's made, like a vestibule--you enter a gate, and the entryway to her place is filled with small trees, vines, big and little pots, a wicker chair and an Adirondack chair, a little metal table and chairs (very French!), hanging baskets . . . we ate our breakfast there each morning, her little black cat, Sido, prowling the premises, it was just magical.

I am crazy about this space she made. It occupies my thought and I aspire to it. So today, I went to Home Again to see if there were consigned pieces of furniture that might allow me to approximate the lush, quiet spirit of my friend's garden. Ours is a very different kind of yard, but here's what happened, for my efforts.

This afternoon, after I'd set everything up, I sat out there, under the cherry and the apple trees. It's shady until after three, and in the evening, with citronella candles, it's rather heavenly. But back to the afternoon: the sky was blue with some clouds, spitting a little rain but not too much. The wind was moving in the trees, a kind of meditation.

Tomorrow, I plan to plant some lavender in some planters--I've got a lot of it planted in the ground all over the place, but I loved my friend's, growing in big pots, buzzing with bees. And tomorrow, I will be taking my breakfast in the garden.