Beth Emmott

After Connecticut we drove to Maine where we stayed with Margie and Joe in their wonderful home where guest rooms are private apartments, the food and conversation are wonderful and their garden is perfect for both human folk and VERY large doggie folk.

Bob visited with Joe at work and photographed along the coast while Margie and I headed north to meet Sally and Pam at the Maine Botanical Gardens for this years Garden Hoax. Words don’t do justice. It was misty (as all our garden events seem to be) giving the garden an ethereal feeling. We’ve been to lots of terrific gardens but this was different. It was a Maine Botanical garden. Where elsewhere beautiful flowers are planted to create vistas and swathes of color and texture, here the texture is of Maine. It is a garden in a forest.

Pam and I are in the rain in this pic Margie took
and House in the children’s garden with a cat fence!

Back to Margie and Joe’s for a bowl of home made chowder (what else) and the next day Bob and I headed north to Waldoboro where we stayed at the Blue Skye Inn, visited Pam and David, and ate Ginger Ice Cream in Thomaston (my mother has always raved of the Ginger Ice cream she ate in Thomaston, ME as a child in the 1920′s).

Alpaca

Bought alpaca from an Alpaca farm to card with some wool I have for spinning—this winter’s stress reducing project! and then home driving in one of this summer’s wild rain extravaganzas.

Short and sweet and lots of fun!

It’s been a while all right. My class ended. I didn’t get to go to the last class as Frank called a meeting that evening of all the graphic design instructors and I figured I’d better go to that. Last year I didn’t go to one because I was in Ireland and I wish I’d been able to, so. . .
The Sunday after that we left for a quick end of summer (my summer) vacation to Maine. We stopped first at my brother Senter’s in Connecticut. First thing I see is a bunch of fungi growing from a stump in his yard—I’ve been on the fungus train too long!

More fungi!

We had a great two days sitting on their porch over looking the pond and eating lobster at Abbott’s!

View from the log house!

Eating lobster with Senter and Bitty!

Several years ago, on my birthday, we went to Cape May, NJ and visited a wetlands park there. Beautiful, warm spring day, Sunny with a breeze that russeled the tall grasses. We walked through the grasses and emerged to a swan floating in a small body of water.
This small accordion card was a reaction to a perfect day.
(click image for larger view)

Today I Saw a Swan by Beth Emmott.

The center page is cut out with the two sided swan attached to a thread. The decorative corners of the pages are a nod to Victorian Cape May.

Went to VA to visit my Mom this weekend. Jonna and Diane were there and we had a wonderful time at Curt and Mary’s.

When we left we stopped at the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge which has wonderful wetlands which go right into the ocean. We hiked and photographed a bit, saw turtles, osprey and snakes.

As ever in that part of VA the quiet of the tall grasses and the beauty of the marshes is contrasted by the roar of the planes from the many military bases. My Dad was an air force test pilot and my Mom feels right at home. What others might find loud and jarring she finds quite wonderful and almost reverent.
The new header image is from Back Bay

Been too hot and buggy to enjoy my garden. Lots of time spent trying to wrap my head around HTML5 and CSS3 for web work. Did get to see Kevan, Erin, Cooper and Fletcher one weekend.

Will be heading for IRELAND soon on a job/vacation. One of my clients, has an arts foundation in County Mayo and they want to increase it’s web presence so I’ll be meeting with the people there to get a feel of the operation and the area. Bob is coming as well as I want him to shoot video for it. We are going a few days earlier to do a little touristing in Dublin and on the west coast and then will stay in a cottage on the North Atlantic. Not to shabby.

Never been to Ireland, hope to see the Book of Kells and do some hiking. Then back as school starts the next morning. I enjoy projects like this (duh) for the obvious but also because the time spent working on it after I return is like my head is still there.

Don’t know if I will have much internet, certainly not in our cottage so that will take some getting used to but if I do, I’ll post about it.

Oh, never did get a fig tree.

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