This Season 's Garden Splendors Chez Nous So Far, 2008

I tried to download these images in an earlier entry and was unsuccessful and so will try again. I took them all within the last month walking around our garden an snapping pictures left and right, here and there, pretty much all over our garden here in Virginia. It's been now eleven years of hard work and we have created a pretty lovely garden setting for ourselves that takes constant work and vigil, patience, vision and the rewards always come in new and unexpected and welcome ways with our hastas, orange cone flowers, butterfly variations of light to deep lavender bushes, day lillies, poppies, black-eyed Susans, dainty small yellow coriopsis, lavender and now red bee balm, yellow swamp buttercups, Japanese and Dutch irises in lavenders, yellows, pinks, baby blues, and many many more. Enjoy. Hope you all enjoy Father's Day. I've had several thoughts today for my father that passed away eleven years ago. I still miss him. We had some really good times together. Cheers Dad. I lift a glass of wine to you and toast to you. Thanks for everything. Your son, TONY

Red / Now Pink Poppies, Too - Father's Day Today

I'm lovin' Father's Day today. It's beautiful outside and I've just come inside after having spent the last three or four hours on our deck and in our garden. I do a lot of weeding these days. I also have to be sure that the things that we want to be seen and appreciated can be. That sometimes means moving things around some - adjusting. I don't mind, I sweat through it if necessary, that's just the way it is. I'm sure the sweating a toiling are all good for me. I enjoy it, even this part. I love surveying the whole sweep/span of our yard always checking for colors/ patterns / contrasts as my eyes sweep from left to right. It's been a great hobby of mine : one that I have endulged myself with some already today.

It's sunny and bright. I have loved watching the white majestic mostly white clouds pass by on a perfectly beautiful baby-blue sky backdrop. It takes time for these ghost whispers/snippets, cragged and like white hair gone wild spread out and seep/bleed effortlessly, imperceptively into the baby blue heavens. I just love this. I guess I'm a cloud-watcher. I guess I find that seeing a white cloud on this blue backing just stops me and immediately contemplates me something fierce ! That's not a correct wording, but it sounds like what I mean and want it to sound like! Oh well, sue me! Today I was reading about how our scholars are fearing the disappearance of the sentence with all the texting and stuff goin' on! I do take liberties with the sentence, breaking it apart, but I love it and I love that it can bring emotions and thought and meaning to us and to our lives. Vive le sentence !

Last Father's Day my daughter gave me a package of poppies to plant. She ordered them in the mail. It took a long time for them to arrive in the mail. When they did I planted them out back pretty much immediately. This year we got our first one of them to bloom : it's a delicate, lovely pink! I hope to download now pictures of it as well as the red poppies that we have now had for years, Wish me luck.

Father's Day has been lovely so far and I understand that my son and my daughter are making me a Father's Day dinner. I can't wait. More later, now let the poppies explode onto this page! Enjoy, thanks for reading along.

I was successful, yes! I'm thrilled to get these pictures downloaded. They are not my best photos I readily admit but they are pictures of poppies that I hold true and dear. I just realized that like those white clouds I like so much these poppies are thin and airy and light and yet solid and strong, too. Just like the ruffles on a female's summer dress these poppies have grace and beauty and movement as the wind pushes through and around them. There's a majesty to these poppies just as there is to the suspended, weightless-seeming white clouds. The baby blue skies hold them in place just as the green stem-like-chord-umbilical does sustaining, maintaining and feeding0animating, orchestrating,staging,centering, grounding, founding, rounding,sounding and showcasing these magnificent red and pink diaphanous skirts of green plant's life exposed and ready to charm and captivate another's heart and soul and inner chords. They do me. I'm won over, have been for forever.

I told my daughter that if she wanted she could give me more for this Father's Day. I'll just have to wait and see. It's fun waiting, anticipating, not knowing. Last year my son set me up with music that was another really big hit for me. Will there be more?

Oh, the two red poppies that appear just above this text were taken a couple of years ago, the rest are all from this season of 2008.Take care, TONY

Fully Enjoying Wine With My Wife May 2008

     If we are lucky my wife and I get to sit out on our deck in Annandale , Virginia and look out at our burgeoning/blooming/flowering back yard as we sip our white and sometimes red wines. Many times we are enjoying sparkling wine as well. In this case we are sampling both a red 2005 Bordeaux that we are considering buying for the store. It passed the test, now I just have to ask the price and availability. We were also on this specific evening trying the white Tariquet blanc French Colombard/ Ugni Blanc dry, flavorful white Gascogy southwest France blend. We already sell the Tariquet at our wine store at Cleveland Park Wines and Spirits. Here are some pictures. Cheers,  TONY

Past Garden Splendors Chez Nous ( 1997-2007)

I love to garden. It relaxes me and helps me to stay in-tune with nature and my surroundings. I transplant like a madman! I love perennials and love color and flowers that are hardy and due well enough in our pour Virginia soil. Here are some of my favorite pictures of orange and double-blossomed orange day lilies, cone flowers, deep blue/ lavender morning glories, our butterfly lavender bush, yellow black-eyed Susan's, a bumble bee on one of the cone flowers, and many more. Enjoy, TONY

Eating A Mango For Sunday Brunch, May 18th, 2008

I love mangoes , always have ever since I was a young boy growing up in Brazil from the years of two to eight. It was such an exotic place, filled with so many lush, colorful and memorable moments that even today I can conjure up and back though a bit fizzy still quite vivid and intoxicating. Anyway, I ate an entire mango earlier.
My wife had got it at her elementary school and brought it home about a week ago. She was given this mango and not liking them herself she brought it home especially for me knowing my love of them. She had already reminded me twice to eat it as she spotted it on our dining room table in our fruit bowl along with two ovocados and some apples and bananas. You could see the pain and panic registering in her eyes as she spied it still there. She was thinking to herself " why has he not eaten it yet? Will he eat it while it is still good? Will I have to throw it out later?!
I knew that I would find time to really enjoy this lone mango this weekend. I wanted to enjoy it, not rush through it too quickly. There's an art to eating a mango that makes my eyes twinkle with recognition, a bit of that " bad boy " glee in my eyes, too. It's erotic, really the act of eating a ripe mango. How many of you have ? Most people get the frozen pieces in bags at Trader Joes and places like that. I do enjoy those, too but that's a completely different experience.
I spied the mango earlier and said to myself : now. It's time to enjoy this mango. I got a sharp knife and proceeded to slice the green/brown/yellow/red shiny skin off and I could feel it's ripeness and yet still firmness. It was starting to run over my left fingers as the right peeled. My fingers started to sink a touch into it's yellow flesh. I knew it would be messy : I knew I would become involved : I already was. I sliced two pieces off and ate them. I called out to my son and offered him a slice twice, he declined. So I pressed on and my fingers sunk more as the mangoe's juices began to run and stick even more now to my fingers. I was losing my grip on the mango.
I took matters into my own mouth when I sunk my teeth into the exposed yellow flesh. My teeth sunk a millisecond before they hit the thick, large seed. I ran my teeth along the seed and sucked and the fine hair of the seed brushed them and some got stuck between them with repeated attempts to eat this delicious mango. Now hours later I still have some of these soft, fine strands of Mango hair there to remind me of this earlier experience.
I managed to eat all the mango by myself as I carefully would pull back from the seed and with it the hair would follow and I would try and get it's juicy tangled within. It's a delicate operation. I wanted the juice but not all those fine strands of mango hair stuck between my teeth. I was largely successful, too. I did have to lick my fingers repeatedly as the juice is both sweet, sticky and concentrated. I did not mind, it gave me more time to enjoy and revel in this moment, simple yet to the my mind's active imagination quite racy and sexy.
I thoroughly enjoyed this moment and it may explain to some extent why I enjoy mangoes more than other fruits. I'm sure I will find occasions to enjoy many more mangoes just like this one. TONY

Zoofari Thurs eve. May 15th/Year of the Frog Benefit

     Last night my daughter and I attended the National Zoo's big event called ZOOFARI to raise money and awareness of the critical situation of frogs worldwide that are dying off because of too much ultra violet rays coming through than before. I think that's correct. Anyway, we were invited to attend because we helped them for the event and so we started up at the top on Connecticut Avenue.

     It was quite the event, perhaps three thousand people in attendance or more. We walked down the main thoroughfare and had a slow descent because there were so many tables filled with some of the best foods available in Washington D.C. ( many of the most popular and expensive restaurants were present with both owners and top chefs ). There were also many wines poured and represented there. They came mostly from some of the larger houses and were in many cases a bit more generic and widely available. That does not diminish their value. I chose , however, being in the business to focus on the smaller import houses where available ( Wines of Spain, Boutique and Billington ) and sample their wines. I loved the new fruit-forward raspberry and strawberry Spanish rose of Aurelio Cabestrero( owner of Wines of Spain ) and the Two Brothers Chilean red from Billington imports. From Boutique as I mentioned before they poured the Oregon wines from Spruce Goose vineyards. I liked them all, even the non-alcoholic Pinot Noir. 

     It was a slow descent to the bottom of the zoo and we took our time as we greeted people I knew and introduced my daughter . We sampled many foods and were very impressed by the breadth of everything available and the organization, too.

     This was a great event, visually spectacular, wonderful on a culinary level, too. As I said I enjoyed the wines and I did get our local rep to pour my daughter and me a taste of the California brut Gloria Ferrer : always a winner where I am concerned.

     Cheers to a fine evening and to all those that donated their time and energy to making this such a grand evening! Hope lots of money was raised, as well as awareness for the plight of frogs worldwide!    TONY 

Drawing With PAPER:MATE Pens

Often I just NEED to draw and it's always so serendipitous as these urges hit me. They are not planned, not researched, not organized ;they are of the instant moment with not time to think or even act except to find anything - and scrap of paper and and pen or pencil to draw with! QUICK! And that's how I produce some expressions in a drawing form these days. I don't mind. I wish I had something more lasting or permanent than a Paper:mate pen but they are easily available and I do use them throughout my day at work. I always have at least one - more often three or four in my pockets as I push through my days.
I'm lucky to be able to just immediately stop what I'm doing and start drawing. I use the three colors of ink : black, blue and red and I just dive, crash course, grind myself along with these pens into the virgin paper below me. It's very primal, very much a necessary thing for me. It's not especially pretty. I'm driven, I'm edged, I'm pained, pressed and pushed both by myself and whatever angels, demons, faeries or whatever are getting into my heart, soul and later brain.
I just start quickly as if I had never stopped before. It's like I had always been drawing : full speed or close to ahead : FORWARD! I march, I splash, I thrash, I gnash-grit my teeth and I prance as if in a ritual dance, like around a fire with bright flames except this time it's just the blinding virgin white of the paper glaring it's defiance and indifference back up at me taunting me with it's lily-white youth and almost saying : You don't dare ?!?! But I do dare !
I take up the dare, the challenge and I'm damned perhaps either way but I know in my heart that if I don't draw that I will personally feel that I've let myself down and I won't do that. No, no, no. I've got to produce. There has to be my product out there / here for better or for worse. For me it is better ; for the rest I cannot say.
Driven I be and driven I will always stay I feel quite sure. Join me. Tag along, let's see what this old boy still has left in him. Cheers, TONY