Filoli - Landscape Painting

Garden Side Trip

A side trip on the way home included one of our favorite places ~ Filoli Garden and estate south of San Fransisco in Woodside . It's an out of the way place that is not on many people's radar screen. Even most avid gardeners do not know about it. One of the things that makes it unusual is that it has a formal style more common in Europe than in the US.


The wisteria was in full bloom which I've never been there at the right time of year to see before. Magnificent!

Bluebells

" I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful

than the bluebell I have been looking at.

I know the beauty of our Lord by it."

~ Gerald Manley Hopkins ~

Infinite Beauty

Newness

The Garden

Here is one spot where each may experience

"the romance of possibility."

Louise Beebe Wilder

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden

one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it,

but in the garden.

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett~

The Bright Promise of Swallows, Nesting.

After almost an entire month of non-stop rain in March [one of the wettest on record]we are so glad for the beautiful 65 degrees on this, the first day of April. Wow! it seems like it has been a long, wet and windy winter! [And I'm sure we have not seen the end of it yet.] But this morning brought sunshine and the return of a family of swallows that has been nesting for the past few years in this birdhouse outside my kitchen window. A wonderful way to start April .

Soon all our backyard birds wanted to pose for their Spring portraits. This Robin had just taken her morning dip in the bird bath and thought she would look best on the back of the weathered, green Adirondack chair.

Life Delights in Life

"Gratitude is the fairest blossom

Which springs from the soul."

- Henry Ward Beecher-

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

-William Blake

Just a Hint of Spring

"O the green things growing, the green things growing,

The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!

I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,

Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing."

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Wind is Rising

September

"Lord, it is time. The summer was very big.

Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose.

Command the last fruits that they shall be full;

give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive

the last sweetness into the heavenly wine."

~Rainer Maria Rilke~

"Smoke hangs like haze over harvested fields,

The gold of stubble, the brown of turned earth

And you walk under the red light of fall

The scent of fallen apples, the dust of threshed grain

The sharp, gentle chill of fall.

Here as we move into the shadows of autumn

The night that brings the morning of spring

Come to us, Lord of Harvest

Teach us to be thankful for the gifts you bring us ..."

"By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer’s best of weather

And autumn’s best of cheer."

~Helen Hunt Jackson, September, 1830-1885~

White Flowers

To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music;

it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy,

than to attempt to fully understand.

~Henry T. Tuckerman~

Colours change: in the morning light, red shines out bright and clear and the blues merge into their surroundings,

melting into the greens; but by the evening the reds loose their piquancy, embracing a quieter tone

and shifting toward the blues in the rainbow. Yellow flowers remain bright,

and white ones become luminous,

shining like ghostly figures against a darkening

green background.

~Rosemary Verey, The Scented Garden, 1981~

Of Roses and Boxwood Hedges

Although it has been incredibly cool and rainy this spring,
a few of our roses are beginning to bloom. I'm so ready!

This Dogwood tree is making me happy this year. It has finally
come into its own. (they really are a slow growing tree!)

And the little boxwood hedge~is the best addition ever! (two years ago)

Hatched Today

Ferns Unfurling

A Soft Release From Man's Unrest

Unto this wood I came As to a nest;
Dreaming that sylvan peace
Offered the harrowed ease-
Nature a soft release
From men's unrest

Thomas Hardy

Squirrel

We have a new visitor in town. And he's figured out the art of robbing the bird feeders. I think the novelty will soon wear off ( for us I mean ).

Amazing Color

Spring has returned. The Earth~

is like a child that knows poems.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~

Awake, thou wintry earth~

Fling off thy sadness!

Fair vernal flowers,

laugh forth Your ancient gladness!

~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

Every spring is the only spring -

a perpetual astonishment.

~Ellis Peters~

Fog + Frost = Magic

"Feathered with hoarfrost,

skeletal trees loom closer;

fog shrouded arches."

~ Paul Brown ~

When ordinary cobwebs become silver garlands,

and weeds are dusted with sugar.