Location, Location, Location

These are the magic words for real estate agents everywhere.  It appears they may be equally so for those in marketing and sales.  On our recent trip to Portland we stayed near Portland Meadows, the horse racing track.  Now I am not a gambler, but in my early twenties I spent a fair amount of time at Longacres (which preceeded Emerald Downs) and it never felt like a particularly masculine sports venue.  Certainly not compared to football stadiums or hockey rinks.  Good grief, even Queen Elizabeth goes to the races.

Portland meadows backs up to a mid-sized shopping area and I jotted down the names of the businesses located there:

            Baxter Auto Parts

            Fisherman’s Marine & Outdoor

            Dick’s Sporting Goods

            Lowe’s Hardware

            West Marine

Exercise Equipment NW

La Z boy

Burrito House

Could you find a more masculine group of businesses?  All it was missing was a steak house.  What I am wondering, is whether the stores get their business as the men are on the way to the track (while they still have money in their pockets) or coming home from the track (if they have been successful). 

“Honey, I have to run to the hardware store and then pick up a new air filter for the car.  I’ll be gone a couple of hours.”  Right….

A Weekend Away

It says something very nice about the relationship I have with my daughter that we can take a week-end out of town in which pretty much everything went pear-shaped…and we still had a lovely time.

For my birthday, we were going to drive down to Portland for an antique paper show – postcards, stamps, and other ephemera.  We hadn’t gone down for one of the Portland shows for quite a few years, so when we planned it in early February it seemed like a good idea.  The entire lead-up became stressful because of the  unusual end-of-February cold snap which brought snow in fits and starts for three days from here down to Portland.  After haunting the weather and DOT sites during that period, we finally decided to just do it.

There were no disasters or accidents…but….there were slushy roads, an obnoxious refrigerator hums in our hotel room, bloody noses (more than one), two really bad meals, a toothache, and temperatures that stayed around 20 degrees day and night.  The paper show was in an old armory building with incredibly inadequate heating, filthy rest rooms, and seating that gave my daughter a back ache and really pained my poor old arthritic hips.  We even managed to get lost in South Tacoma on our way home.

I’ll admit we did have one nice meal of take-away Chinese, the hotel had enough pillows, and we lucked into a great craft shop in Centralia called Cindy’s Simple Stuff. It’s a delightful little shop with lots of variety for any of the paper arts and lots of ribbon at killer prices.  If you are in the area…do not miss it. http://cindyssimplestuff.blogspot.com/

One rather wonderful thing happened on the trip, one of those things that makes you realize your child has really, finally, become an adult.  After 35 plus years of  traveling together, for the very first time, she got out of bed before I did on Sunday morning and started packing things up.  I just laid there in bed watching in amazement.  It was wonderful!  And hopefully it wasn’t just because she was in a hurry to get home.

Sir Harold Hillier Gardens

One the same day that we visited Mottisfont Abbey we also went to Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Romsey, just a few miles down the road.  This garden couldn't be more different, and yet we found it equally wonderful.  It covers 180 acres with over 42,000 plants from around the world in themed plantings.  We were particularly attracted by the fact that it was hosting a show of garden art.  There were hundreds of works of art spread out through the gardens - art of all sizes and types, truly something for everyone.

You can get a better look at these pictures on my Flickr site. There are at least a dozen more of the artworks there also.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39450859@N07/sets/72157623448854816/

The lovely lady wading in the pool is the one who got us there as I had seen her on-line.  She was, of course, one of our favorites, as were the big balls of wound vines shown at the bottom.  And speaking of bottoms, who wouldn't love that blue guy standing on his his head.


Some pieces were very organic and would fit nicely in almost anyone's home garden...



Others were of a size that could only be called 'Institutional'.

My favorite was a group of Mad March Hares frolicking through the tall grassy meadow, a perfect example of how perfectly sited each and every work was. 


Don't you just love them?

  An added bonus was the newly hatched group of Moorhens - would they be Moorchicks?  We found them balancing gingerly on the waterlily leaves as mother watched on approvingly.

Mottisfont Abbey Gardens

Recently I've been working with my photos from Mottisfont Abbey and their amazing rose garden.  In 1972, the gardens became the home for the 'National Collection of ancestral species and 19th-century rose cultivars'.  Our visit was mid-June of 2007 which must have been a banner year for roses.  We had been amazed at brilliant rose displays in Winchester City Gardens and Queen Eleanor's Garden at Winchester Castle but we were not prepared for the sheer abundance of blossoms we found at Mottisfont.

Since we were there on a weekday afternoon, the crowd wasn't too big and although I took hundreds of pictures that day (we also visited the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens on the same day) I could easily have taken hundreds more - in fact I wish I had.

As you can see, it wasn't just the roses.  The plantings were brilliant and there was an abundance of display ideas for a multitude of different rose habits.  The gardens have lovely perennial borders as well as plenty of fruit trees.  The wonderful old brick walls are the best backdrops one could wish for.  Can you tell I loved it?  After Sissinghurst, this has to be my best English garden experience ever.

In addition to the gardens, the rest of the grounds were delightful and even the quick tour we took through bits of the house was worth the time.  If you are anywhere in the area, don't miss this National Trust gem, and give yourself the whole day so you don't miss a thing.

Nothing Special

As someone who has neither been in love nor had someone in love with me for more years than I care to enumerate...I refuse to think today is anything other than a regular old Monday in February.

(I can't even have 1/2 price post-holiday candy any more so what's the point?)

Super and Not-so-Super

Just a few comments on the game…actually on the production.  The game itself was pretty good, as Super Bowl games go.  Great to have a Super Bowl game that kept you interested til the very end.

For those of us watching on a ‘normal’ sized television:  What idiot thought it was alright to have both teams in yellow pants.  With all the black print on the white shirts and all the white print on the black shirts, watching was visually exhausting on the overhead shots.

This was a football game...sport.  Why did we have to watch thirty minutes of patriotism first, and not one but two poorly done patriotic songs?  Was it a Texas thing?

The team introductions by Sam Elliott were brilliant, as were several other features – the ones that were about football, that is.

There were some wonderful second half ads, but the first half ads were pretty lame.  Makes me wonder, do they pay more for the second half?

I really have nothing good to say about the half-time…pretty much boring.

Entitlement

She was old, tiny, and somewhat stooped, but she was wearing trainers and moved pretty spryly for her age.  As I approached the red light at the intersection, she scurried out to cross in front of me and shot a defensive glance at me.  I was moving very slowly and obviously coming to a stop so I was a bit offended that she would think herself in danger from me.  To my left was a very large Waste Management truck.  I saw the pedestrian light counting down and realized she had jumped into the intersection on the big red “Do Not Walk” hand.  As she passed in front of the truck, he shifted gears, rumbled, and moved about two inches forward. 

The moral of this story is that being old does not mean you can break all the rules.  Of course, no one would run her over, and I’ll never know if it was done on purpose.  But twenty minutes later I am still laughing at the look on her face.

As a post script, at my advanced age I am trying to walk the fine line between breaking a rule for the fun of it and breaking one because I think I am somehow untouchable because of my age.  When your hip hurts and your kids haven’t called for a week, I imagine it is easy to feel entitled…but you’re not.

One more thing, thinking back on it, she looked remarkably like the old woman I watched “sample” at least a third of a pound of cherries at the nearby Farmer’s Market.