Holiday slides - New York

So much to see in a five day trip to New York.

But first stop every time - The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Grennevilliers 1893 -

Gustave Caillebotte 

a possible design for his dining room doors.

Want.

 Still Life with Flowers and Prickly Pears -

Auguste Renoir.

Bouquet of Chrysanthemums - 

Auguste Renoir.

A woman seated beside a Vase of Flowers - 

Edgar Degas.

She gazes, as the caption says, distractedly to the right.

I amuse myself by trying to guess what she is thinking about.

"Y aura-t-il assez de pommes de terres si Edgar vient dîner ce soir?"

"Cela prendra-t-il beaucoup de temps?"

"Je vais éternuer." *

And finally October in the Marshes -

John Frederick Kensett.

He was painting right up to his death in December 1872

and this series known as "Last Summer's Work"

is of meadows and salt marshes near Contentment Island Connecticut.

*"Will there be enough potatoes if Edgar comes to dine tonight?"

"Will this take much longer?"

"I'm going to sneeze."

My thanks, if it's correct, to Google translate for

helping out my schoolgirl French.

What can I tell you?

I have been blogging lite.

Coupled with the struggle my ageing computer has 

to upload photos to the blog,

and the amount of time I have spent away from the computer indoors,

Instagram has been all too seductive.

But September is nearly over

and as it has been so splendidly abundant

Instagram cannot satisfy the need for a splurge,

so here it comes.

An arresting sight on the beach.

Fruit picking at Maynard's Fruit Farm on its last open day.

(Premature I felt - the trees were groaning.)

A pebble beach can seem a tad dull until

you have time to look at each stone more carefully.

The colour range in the shingle at my feet was astounding.

The last of the Open Gardens on a rare wet day,

but the colours sang out and the crowds were absent.

Sad for the charities but in some ways kinder to the borders.

We went to an Open Garden at Perch Hill (Sarah Raven's Cutting garden).

It was magnificent but the crowds...

there must be so much colateral damage.

I don't know how I managed to give the impression that

we were the only people there!

On the other hand a late afternoon at Wakehurst Place

was very peaceful.

This little chap is also a very peaceful sort.

He smiles and gurgles and puts up with

his sister's tender ministrations.

He is growing apace and my knitting barely keeps up.

And now I must find my passport.

There is a big chap to visit soon.

Summer's end

In a way it wasn't such a great hardship 

to have scaffolding up in summer

because I always forget that the light doesn't penetrate

until autumn.

This is possibly Great Dixter's finest hour.

Zinnias are giving dahlias a run for their money this year.

Someone had her fourth birthday.

All things unicorn and rainbow

were the order of the day.