When ev'ry maiden prays that her lad...

...will be a cad

I remember being in elementary school singing this in the playground.

It's May!

"I have simple tastes, I am always satisfied with the very best."

Jonny Valiant

375 Ocean Road

Come with me on a tour of Melrose, a 1916 Tudor style home in Narragansett.  It's always been one that catches my eye when I whisk by. Last summer when the gang from New York were visiting we snuck in to  take pictures and explore the abandoned grounds.  As soon as we were done I researched it extensively, so you can imagine my surprise when today I drove by today and saw a "For Sale" sign up front!  Thank God for my pacemaker, whew!

(disclaimer: sorry for the incredibly heinous photos...thank you remax!)

Above is the view from the front door, I know this from the time I snuck a peak in the windows seen in picture.  This room will be great for those making dramatic entrances to my parties.  I'll have to hire live entertainment of some sort.

Not sure what this room is below, but I'm envisioning quiet nights with friends by the fire, talking and smelling the wafting jasmine come in from the garden.

This must be the master suite?

The listing price is $579,900.  A "steal" especially since all the houses in this neck of Ocean Rd. start at 5 million.  

Did I mention four bedrooms, four baths, a guest cottage, three car garage, koi pond (top photo, under the plywood), spitting distance away from my favorite tidal pool for swimming and basically a dream come true.  I daren't imagine where to start the work, but if I was a millionaire or in another phase of my life I'd buy this in an instant and start the dream life. 

Here's the picture Micah took of Katie and I in the garden last May:  (I'm the ecru blob rolling about in the grass, wearing Katie's poncho in a bucolic fit.)

I hope this isn't "the one that got away!"

Weeping Willow Blues

I simply cahn't remember where I found the above illustration but I love it altogether!

This summer I think I'm going to plant a weeping willow (at a safe distance from the well) and wait for it to grow to a height were I can sit under it for hours and hours...

A Reticent Realist

I read a review on Fairfield Porter this weekend and I'm instantly enamored!

There was a show exhibiting his work at the Tibor de Nagy gallery which I missed, per usual.

'Anne in a Striped Dress,' 1967

'Katie in an Armchair,' 1954

"Quiet, Bud"

I'm sure your sick to death of all this Alice in Wonderland stuff going around.  I'm with you, but I've had this song stuck in my head for the past few weeks and am hoping this will break the curse.

What this weekend will look like, fingers crossed!

The Gardener's Cottage at Lanhydrock

Maybe it's the weather.

Or that I just got a new Beverley Nichols book. 

 Or that we are working for gentlemen who have a 1791 farmhouse and barn in the woods with chickens, raised gardens, etc etc. 

But I want to include all of the above in some sort of life potion. 

NOW!

Call me in three years and see how I did.

Lafayette Park

Adam Moore's photograph looks straight out of any Spanish magical-realist novel. Garcia Marquez visualizing Cartagena or Allende bringing Caracas to life. Nobody does it better. It's actually just San Francisco, magical in it's own way! (Never been)

I do declare!

I took this picture down in "Chahlston" last fall at an Antebellum manse, this door fascinated me!  Why oh why you silly boy?  Well take a closer look at it's structure.  CLOSER!

Not only a door but a giant window.  The only way to get out to the "palazzo" is to open the two bottom window-door panes up to a six foot height! 

Why didn't I take a picture of the opened fenestration?  Because I'm a numbskull!

Fiddle-dee-dee, Mr. Rhett!

-please read above text in high society Southern drawl-

Country Life....Page 119

"Dress in the country varies considerably in many matters from that worn in Town.  A boy's first 'country suit' after he leaves school is a great event to him.  At Eton and Harrow the style of dress might almost be called a uniform, and the first suit of tweeds mark the emancipation from school-life.  When in the country he dons these the first thing in the morning, unless he should be on hunting  or bycycling thoughts intent, or should incline towards tennis, boating, or the slow delights of angling....

...Invitations to breakfast in the country are by no means unusual.  The dress would consist of that ordinarly worn in the mornings, whether tweed suit, knickerbockers, hunting, or riding gear, or the black morning-coat or suit."

~Exerpt from Manners for Men

by Mrs. Humphry, the "Madge" of "Truth"

Portraits by Lord Lagerfeld

Türkiye Delights

Whatever apprehensions I had about going to Turkey have faded after looking at Eugenio Recuenco's photographs.

Gothic Minutiae

I love these archway details!  I'm not sure if when I have my estate they will be included, but I imagine them perfect in my library overlooking the orchard.

Lavender, Party of Ten

The Rainforest of Oz.

(Pia Jane Bijkerk)

Springin' Cleanin'

Does any one Spring clean anymore?  Wash everything, hang the sheets out on the line, bleach, throw out clutter, etc etc?

Must be an Irish habit my mother instilled in us as lil' things.  There's really no greater satisfaction (sort of), especially when you find a scarf made of Donegal tweed that took you the entire month of November to knit.  Apologies to all who I accused of stealing it. 

Je voudrais...

...s'il vous plait

Of the Book-Hunter

In torrid heats of late July,

In search, beneath the bitter bise,

He book-hunts whiles the loungers fly-

He book-hunts, through December freeze;

In breeches baggy at the knees,

And heedless of the public jeers,

For these, for these, he hoards his fees-

Aldines, Bodinis, Elzevirs.

-Andrew Lang

Photographs by verticalspace

Peripheral

Some works of extraordinary photographer, John Dugdale.  Can you imagine being a photographer and going blind at a young age?  All he has left is his peripheral vision.  Yet he continues on!

 

These are shots of his Hudson Valley farmhouse.

Ladies Almanack

Djuna Barnes.  Influential writer, illustrator and a stylish stunner.

"Come on, go feed Whiskers. No, don't eat it; give it to Whiskers"

Every Winter I seem to go through a "I can't take another Winter at Grey Gardens" phase, you who know me well are acquainted with it.  I turn off the phone, lock myself in, plump down by fire, grab my knitting needles and wait 'till the robbins beckon me outdoors.  Don't get me wrong, I always seem to accomplish a lot during those hibernation hours and relish that time period, but I am ever so happy to see that trees are budding, flowers blooming, fish are jumpin,' cotton is high, etc etc.

Isn't this photo shoot stunning!?  Very Beverley Nichols, although when it came out I had no idea who he was.  This is one of those spreads where I cut out every picture and pasted in my book.  I went looking for it, and it's still there!  Perfect in everyway!  Look at the rest here.

I can't wait until life looks like this everyday!

Bookish-by-the-sea

Remember last week when I started a quest to find the perfect bookish cottage by the sea?

Well, dears, I found a few more, one found by another.

This is pretty spot on just missing some leather volumes, which I'm sure is on the other side of the room:

NEXT! (whacks pointer to chalkboard) is this specimen:

A "good thing" although a bit too elegant.

On to the one sent to be by his Lordship, Uncle Dunkle:

By Jove! that mountain man never ceases to suprise me!

To wrap up class, think back to Ang Lee's adaptation of 'Sense and Sensibility.'  (The most beautiful of all Jane Austen films.)  Yes, well remember the "terrible" cottage in Devonshire they make a home of?  C'est parfait!

Everytime I watch it my body shivers with longing. 

 I looked and looked and these are the only measly pictures I could find:

"Willoughby...Willoughby"

Get's me everytime.

The closet of Daisy Buchanan?

Nay! 

'Tis none other than Tsilli, found by way of moodboard.

Lady Katherine's Funeral Mix

My humble veneration

top: caravaggio "death of the virgin"

bottom:  lauren.rabbit via chateau thombeau