Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts

04 April 2015

A lovely wedding (despite the weather)


Spent most of the day at a friend's wedding - it was lovely. I had the pleasure of seeing her really happy, a beautiful service at a lovely venue (Wotton House), good food, and a chance to talk to some other friends/colleagues from work without  feeling the need to rush off and work!  

18 October 2014

Autumn Walk...


Rosehips


and berries


seedheads


and turning foliage - yep, it must be autumn.  After our lovely lunch, we took our fairly usual walk --a nice circular (well, technically a loop I suppose) walk which manages to encompass horse stables, a wetlands and two cemetaries, all within an hour's stroll - and yes, we are still only 25 minutes from central London by train.  I love where I live!...


Not everything was autumnal yet - my favourite tree, for instance, has not quite turned yet, though you can begin to see some yellow in the leaves. 


There was still a bit of late blossom on the brambles


and a few wildflower stragglers.


The seagulls all seem to be coming inland, though - there was a whole colony of them over in the wetland area. 



And also over in the wetland area...


here we all are - a kind passerby took a photo of everyone together, which means you even get to see me, which is of course not usually the case - lucky me!


Couldn't resist sharing this photo of the children using the playground equipment...  A year older, but not any more grown up.20

25 August 2013

Brunch!


After a lot of dithering, we ended up staying home and having English Muffins, scrambled eggs and bacon. And of course the pre-requisite Bloody Marys...  

24 August 2013

A Day in DC


As our friends Rosy and Robert came down for the weekend from Boston, we had a nice tourist day in DC - Rosy is English and has never been to DC and Robert is from upstate New York, so although he has been here, it was an 8th grade field trip or similar.  So we all played tourist.  It was the same day as the memorial 50th anniversary March on Washington, but later in the day, so not quite so crowded.  This is the National Gallery, where my mother went during the day.


The weather was gorgeous. 


Other than my mother, we went to the Museum of the American Indian (she's been a couple of times recently, so decided to do something else, and lucked out with an exhibit about the Ballet Rousse at the National Gallery). 



First, we had lunch in the cafe. I had a selection of sides - fried green plantains, roasted squash with peppers, and a grilled watermelon and heirloom tomato salad. 


Alex had buffalo chili cheese fries. As it was a huge helping, some of the rest of us had some as well...


We had a wander around, looked at pottery


read about various Indian cultures, 


listened to tradtional stories, 


looked at fertility statues


and so on. 


Then we headed out of the museum to see the sights of the Mall - here's a Segway tour heading towards the museum - there were quite a few segway tours tooling around - looked like fun!


We headed down to the Lincoln Memorial - you can still see lots of people assembled on the steps, many of whom were remnants of the morning's march. 


The recycling bins were overflowing all along the Mall, and we passed trucks gradually picking up all the recycling - I bet it took the rest of the day!


Some of the more tired members of the party waited at the World War II memorial while the rest  of us walked down to the Lincoln Memorial. 


We then wandered over to the Korean Memorial, but I didn't take any photos there (I have before, when I've seen it, just was very tired by this time - two days on my feet all day in a row is harder than it used to be for me!)...  And then home.  A lovely day.

20 August 2013

And now, for some more Tuesday...


In addition to Mt Vernon, we spent some time at Barbara's house, before and after the Mt Vernon visit.  For one thing, there were kittens to be played with - not many photos of that, as the room was very dark. But you can see one of them - not sure which, probably Sam, who is less shy - getting ready to pounce on the boing-pom-pom thing.


There was also time to browse Barbara's garden, and though my bug photos are certainly not the equal of hers (in addition to not having the patience and talent, I also don't have a macro lens on my camera), I did find a few interesting creatures to photograph, like this ambush bug,


a wooly caterpillar


and a grasshopper.


Being me, I also took photos of some flowers and seedheads....



I find things that are done blooming almost more interesting than the things that are in full bloom!