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Can you tell where I spent the day yesterday?  How about now:

 

That should be a dead giveaway but in case it isn't:

 

I spent the day in San Francisco with my sister Kate, my niece Maddi and (hang on this might be confusing) our sister Mary's sister in law Julie, who was visiting from Wisconsin.  Her husband is attending a conference all weekend so we whisked her away for a day of shopping and sight seeing.

 

I have wanted to visit the San Francisco Consveratory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park ever since it was restored in the late 90's.  It sustained major damage during the winter of 1995 and finally reopened in 2003.  It is a beautiful example of a Victorian conservatory.

And get this – it was a kit!  You know like Ikea furniture or something!  Can you even imagine what the instructions looked like?  It was bought as a kit by James Lick in late 1800's but he passed away before he could assemble it.  A group of San Francisco businessmen purchased it from his estate and gifted it to the city. 

 

Being there made me want to watch Green Card again.  The best part of that movie was Andie McDowell's apartment and her conservatory. 

 

I'm wondering if kits are still available? 

 

We've had a few days of gorgeous weather around here.  Warm, sunny days that are perking up my newly planted deck pots quite nicely.  Not too hot to render them limp and lifeless and whiny (like someone around here gets when the temp goes above 84 degrees).

 

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I went for pale yellows, blues and pinks.  Soothing colors.  I threw a little of everything in each pot to give the deck the feeling of an unstructured English garden.

Hey – how did THAT get in there?

 

No orange allowed!  That's what happens when you aren't paying attention when you are loading your cart at the garden center.  Orange things sneak themselves into your cart.

There that's better.  Peachy pink I can handle.  Please ignore the weird, peanut buttery shade of our house.  It will be painted soon.  If our painter ever calls us back.

 

In another two or three weeks that lobelia will be spilling over the edge of the pot, quite fetchingly.  The Bacopa too.  Bacopa is the perfect flowering plant if you ask me.  It's sweet little flowers bloom quite profusely and it comes in shades of white, lavender and pale pink.

 

You have to watch out for some plants because they will take a liking to your garden and spread unmercifully.  Or they will bring giant alligator lizards into your house and let them loose.  Like the Bella speciosa felinus plant.  Tricky, that one.

 

I hope you all have a splendid weekend and I wish you all had a husband that would risk malaria and West Nile Virus to bring you an armload of lilacs and dogwood (with a little bit of Azalea thrown in) and a cat that likes to supervise all the goings on.

It is going to be glorious weather here in Northern California this weekend so I fully expect my NorCal blogging peeps to have gorgeous pictures on their blogs.  You know who you are.

I'm going to drag Rick to the 1st Annual Roseville Antique Faire this weekend.  If anyone is going let me know.  Maybe we can meet up.

 

Edited to add:  I just realized how many pictures of Belle have been popping up lately.  She a bit of a camera hog, wouldn't you say?  I think she should get her own blog.

  

Or my email. If you have emailed or commented and I have rudely ignored you please accept my heartfelt and abject apologies.  I blame work and the unworldly wind we have been having (like something out of a Ray Bradbury poem) on the sad state of affairs that is my inbox. 

I will devote myself this weekend to responding.  If you have asked to exchange links or have just sent me a kind word, I will get back to you, I promise. 

Easter was a lovely affair.  I love the eating holidays.  There I said it.  I love getting together with my loved ones and having no pressure except to try to top last year's menu.  Thankgiving, Easter, Halloween (were the food is decidedly lowbrow but still a feast) – no presents – no pressure.  Just food and dressing up.

I made Mari's stuffed Strawberries.  Quite a pretty presentation.  And deceptively easy to make.  Search on her blog for 'strawberries' and you'll find the recipe. 

 

Every year our Easter menu is the same.  Why monkey around with perfection.  Except somehow, along the way, I got stuck with providing the breakfast meats.  Me.  The vegetarian.  This year my fellow chefs took pity on me and assigned me the fruit portion of the menu.  That was easy enough.  Stuffed strawberries for the wow factor and sliced honey dew with blueberries because the color combination is so pretty.

Another fun aspect to the food holidays is that I can pull out my serving dishes and use them.  Of course it would probably help if I had decent photos of them but I was more focused on the food when I took these pictures.  The platter the melon and berries is on is quite lovely.  A big, green pressed glass platter that I bought at Anthropologie for $3.97.  The thing is HUGE.  And it was on the clearance table for some reason.   I'm hoping it's not because of the lead content or anything like that.

The plate the strawberries is on is especially dear – my sons gave it to me on my birthday this year.  They went to a local antique store and found this lovely pink pressed glass cake plate.  This was my first time using it.   I'm sure it will be around for many more of the food holidays.

 

Embedding is disabled on this video so click HERE to watch it. 

This type of video always brings tears to my eyes.  It reminds me of my all time favorite video of Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma.  I can watch this one over and over and over again.

I love how unglamourous, how down to earth and how blessedly talented they are.