EVERYTHING COMING UP ROSES

On Monday, as the nation shivered and cussed its way through a hard case of the blues, I celebrated not being in New York and ordered four bare-root rose bushes. Haters are going to hate, but say what you will about David Austin - the man can name a rose. "A Shropshire Lad", "The Lark Ascending" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" made it to the top of a list that also included "Eglantyne", "Fighting Temeraire" and "Lady of Shallot" to mention just a few. "BougainFeelYa" and "Golden Showers" may smell just as sweet, but I'm a lady who enjoys a little romance in her life.

In summation: my dear friends, I couldn't possibly say it any better than Georgie Boy, so why don't I just let him do the talking.

THE SUN IS COMING

It was 10°F when I landed in New York. That was almost two weeks ago; it was cold then and it is cold now and I have had just about enough, thank you but no thank you. More than the temperature though, what I am missing most right now is color. All these soft, watery winter sunsets have lost their charm. Entire meals have become based around ghostly white vegetables produced from the bowels of my refrigerator: turnips, kholrabi, daikon, shriveled parsnips and pithy knobs of celeriac.

Give me a fresh Rainier cherry and a bundle of glossy, fragrant tarragon and summer squash filled up with sweet yellow sunshine. Give me a fat chicken and a red pot and a bottle of cold white wine. 

P.S. I've done an interview with Zoé, and it's on her wonderful blog Wild at Heart.

(All photos taken on a Canon AE-1 Program using Kodak Porta 400 speed film, June 2012, upstate New York)

MEMORY OF A NORTH BAY SUNSET

Ok so maybe I'm procrastinating. Dragging my feet a little. Eking out the summertime memories here. I don't think anyone would blame me, but just in case, I did have some excuses planned for you (last weekend I was in Connecticut, the weekend before I was in Istanbul. Truly strange but truly true!)

But forget all that. Because honestly, in my mind's eye, I hope I will always be right here on this beach, on this gentle August evening, ginger beers that would become dark and stormies gently rolling in surf, with this on the tapedeck and sand up to my ankles and nothing left to do but build a bonfire and watch the sun going down, over the ocean, as it should be, for ever and always.

UP THE MOUNTAIN

No island summer is complete without at least one trip up to Pt. Disney, the top of our rock. Time after time I walk down that same dirt road and along the curves of that same well-worn footpath, and time after time, coming 'round that final bend, the view never fails to catch me off guard. You can't help but get a little still, a little stupefied. There's just so damn much of it. 

Bumping back down the mountain, blasting the tape deck and eating handfuls of sun-melted trail mix like no tomorrow, we stopped by the airstrip on the way home and came across an old airplane waiting patiently for her owner.

THE LIGHT ON THE ISLAND

It is absolutely incomprehensible to me that it has been two whole months since my plane touched down on West Coast soil, two months since the sweetest two and a half weeks of my 2012. Maybe because I think about these places and those people so often each day that, in my mind, I've never ever left.

In a history of fine island summers, I'd say this was definitely one for the books. The finest visitors, the finest reggae mix tapes, the best berry picking and the very best and most adorable lighthouse docent I ever did meet.

I took three big fat rolls of photos this trip, and these are from one of the first orders of business we got down to: our annual boat camping trip. Mom, Dad, Dag, Dog and I all piled into the Albin and set sail for our favorite spot. We ate hot dogs and fried our spuds up with fresh rosemary and garlic and gathered feathers in our hatbands and slept outside so we could watch for shooting stars. Our own Moonrise Kingdom.

OH TOMTEN, MY TOMTEN

Three days after my birthday, we left for a light speed tour of Scandinavia: Stockholm, Borlänge, Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen or bust in five sleep deprived days. It's all a little blurry, but here's what I remember:

Sunshowers in Stockholm--roses in a churchyard and eating fried herring wraps in the rain. The hands-down best Best Western I've ever stayed in, and fields of wild lupine splashing the green, grassy roadsides in pink, purple and blue. Late afternoon in Oslo, the sun setting slant-wise through the trees at Akershus Castle. Landing at the airport outside of Trondheim and feeling a wild, northerly feeling I've had once or twice before while slipping through some dark Inside Passage-way aboard a ferry boat bound for Alaska. We dined royally that night on roast Reindeer and cloudberry parfaits inside an 18th century smithy, inside the walls of a city that celebrated its 1000th anniversary all the way back in 1997. Glowering clouds over beautiful Bergen, its row of red, white and green wharf houses in a permanent state of Christmastime cheer. Best of all: finally finding a country that's named something truly worthwhile after me.