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Family vacation in France: Day 11 from Bayeux to Mont St.-Michel, Part 1

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Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that ‘they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves.’ They hadn’t come here to fear. They hadn’t come to die. They had come to win.
– Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne

Last view of Notre-Dame Cathedral of Bayeux from our apartment window.

We didn’t get to see everything we wanted in Bayeux (still didn’t when all is said and done), so we decided that we’d go back to the Visitors Center at the WWII Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial and also see the Overlord Museum before heading out to Mont St.-Michel, our next destination. But first a last look at our quaint AirBnB apartment, which is an old building that includes a wonderful charming painting and textiles shop on the ground floor and is next to a stream with a water wheel.

What you see when you first walk up the very steep staircase to our apartment. It is decorated with a poppy theme.

The other side of the living and dining area of our apartment in Bayeux.

The red couch is adorned with poppy pillowcases from the charming shop below us. And poppy paintings adorn the walls.

Our serviceable kitchen in our Bayeux second-floor AirBnB apartment.

A little alcove between the kitchen and the bathroom and main bedroom of our Bayeux apartment.

Our bedroom was very light and bright and tastefully decorated, Bayeux apartment.

Isabella slept in her own bed in our bedroom, Bayeux apartment.

Last look at the shop below our Bayeux apartment.

Another reason we stayed is to go to this antique shop in Bayeux that we perused on our first day here. Jacob saw some WWII souvenirs there, and while he was interested, he wanted to check out other such shops at our stay in Bayeux. We didn’t see any other antique shops, so we had to wait until it opened on our last day since it was closed on Sunday. A British woman ran the shop, and she was knowledgeable about many of the items. I was interested in vintage and antique pins. I ended up getting two – one is a French pin from the turn of the century from a social club and the other is a sterling silver “sweetheart” pin, which is what a person in the armed services gave to either his wife or girlfriend. This sweetheart pin represents the service of the man. I thought they were a nice find.

The antique shop on the main street in Bayeux.

The display of pins in the front window of the antique shop in Bayeux.

More pins! Most of them were authentic WWII pins and metals, Bayeux antique shop.

More pins and other WWII souvenirs, Bayeux antique shop.

My Bayeux vintage pins. The one on top is French social club pin for music from the turn of the century. The bottom pin is a WWII “sweetheart” pin from an American serviceman.

When we first arrived in Bayeux and passed by this building, I thought of the setting of Lord Farquaad’s kingdom in Shrek. Now I bid this beautiful little town adieu.

As we leave the main roundabout in Bayeux, we say adieu to the knights on topiary horses.

We went to the Overlord Museum, or should I say, David and Jacob ventured inside. At that point, I felt I’d seen more than my share of D-Day museums in such a short period of time! The Overlord Museum holds a collection of WWII-era vehicles, with exhibits covering American, British, and German vehicles. Next up on our last morning was the Visitors Center, but our GPS had difficulty getting us there. I was afraid we were going to give up trying to find it as we looped around and around. Ironically, the entrance to the cemetery and visitors center was across the street from the Overlord Museum.

Entrance to the WWII Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

I’m so glad we returned to the Visitors Center, located in Colleville-sur-Mer. The cemetery is is managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission, a small independent agency under the U.S. federal government that maintains overseas American cemeteries. France granted the U.S. a perpetual concession to the land occupied by the cemetery. Luckily, it wasn’t crowded when we got there. We didn’t check out the computer terminals, which contain the Roll of Honor database – the names and stories of every U.S. service person whose remains are buried in Europe – on the ground level. The underground level’s exhibit is extensive, and I wish we’d had more time to read every panel. We watched the video Letters in the theater, which focused on a handful of men who lie in the cemetery. One story told of a doctor who didn’t tell his wife that he volunteered to go into combat, though he did write to a friend of the news. She didn’t know until she saw the letter to the friend. This film and other videos put a face to the names we saw, to the thousands of soldiers – 25,000 Americans died in the battle for Normandy – who gave their lives for freedom. I was quite moved. We didn’t have enough time to read all the panels, which included a detailed timeline of the important events from September 1939 to June 5, 1944. The panels for June 6, 1944, highlight the landings in three-hour increments.

The infinity pool just outside the full-length glass windows and doors of the Visitors Center, WWII Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Colleville-sur-Mer, France. You can see a map of the landings.

Just outside of the Visitors Center is a peaceful infinity pool that invites you to walk through a park surrounded by Kentucky bluegrass to the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. It’s a beautiful view, one that can’t be reconciled with what happened on D-Day. This would be our last view of Omaha Beach. And so we left Normandy after lunch, with me telling Jacob that upon his return he could check out the other beaches we missed and linger longer, and go up north to Dunkirk. In my mind, I was thinking I would do the same sometime in the future.

A view of Omaha Beach from the bluff overlooking the beach.

Panoramic view of Omaha Beach from the bluff. Breathtaking.

A cute dog at the restaurant where we ate our last Normandy meal. He laid down at our table by my backpack, hoping for some crumbs.

Family vacation in France: Day 3 in Paris

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I am only good at two things, and those are: gardening and painting.
– Claude Monet, French Impressionist painter

Statues and architecture at the Orsay Museum, Paris.

The expansive railway station-turned-museum, inside the Orsay Museum.

More statues and the ever-present clock at the Orsay Museum.

We reserved our Sunday for more museums – Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Orangerie, and the Musée Rodin. While the Louvre obviously is impressive, the three museums we visited today were my favorites, with the Orsay Museum being my absolute favorite. This museum, a former railway station which boasts Beaux Arts architecture, takes up where the Louvre’s art collection ends, namely the Impressionist era. I can imagine coming to this museum on a daily basis for a month or more, just to enjoy and savor every painting, every detail. This museum is full of Impressionist (including post-Impressionist) big names, the ones I’ve learned about when I took an art history class in college – Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin. There also a great many wonderful sculptures.

I love the rendering of the plaid textile in Renoir’s Jeune femme a la voilette (1870), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Manet’s Berthe Morisot a l’eventail (1872), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Henri Fantin-Latour’s Narcisses et tulipes (1862), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Madame Louis Joachim (1868), Orsay Museum, Paris. Look at how luxurious the fabric is rendered.

Detail of a sculpture, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Close-up of sculpture, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Detail of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Another detail of Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, Orsay Museum, Paris.

But I also saw some painters whose names are new to me – Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, Felix Vallotton – and whose paintings drew from me astonishment, delight, and great appreciation.

The Muses by Maurice Denis (1893), Orsay Museum, Paris.

I love the textiles in Pierre Bonnard’s paintings, including The Game of Croquet (1892), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Winslow Homer’s Summer Night (1890), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Alexander Harrison’s La Solitude (1893), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Le Dejeuner en famille by Edouard Vuillard (1899), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Baigneuse rose by Felix Vallotton (1893), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Femme se coiffant dit aussi interieur by Felix Vallotton (1900), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Interieur, femme et enfants by Pierre Bonnard (1899), Orsay Museum, Paris.

A current exhibit is called Ames sauvages: Le symbolisme dans les pays baltes, featuring artists from Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia whose works dated back 100 years or so. These artists embraced the Symbolist movement at a time when the Russian Empire was faltering.

Princess with a Monkey (1913) by Janis Rozentals of Latvia, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Nu (1906) by Janis Rozentals of Latvia, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Close-up of Estonian painter Peet Aren’s Aupres du lit du malade (1920), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Hiver (1908) by Vilhelms Purvitis of Latvia, Orsay Museum, Paris.

The upper floor houses the greats, and you have to get there early to avoid the big crowds that surround each masterpiece. We got there at the beginning, but by the time we reached the top floor, we had to share the paintings with a mass of art enthusiasts.

Monet’s The Garden at Giverny, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Renoir’s Girls at the Piano, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Notre-Dame Cathedral at Rouen, our next stop after Paris.

One of the most memorable paintings that I remember from my college art history class – Gustave Caillebotte’s Floor Planers (1875), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Renoir’s Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876), Orsay Museum, Paris.

Isabella and Jacob deeply engrossed discussing Impressionism. Not. Orsay Museum, Paris.

The rooftop view of the Seine River from the Orsay Museum, Paris.

I was going to post a self-portrait or Starry Night, but I really liked this painting by Van Gogh of two farm workers taking a rest, Orsay Museum, Paris.

Gauguin’s Tahitian Women (1891), Orsay Museum, Paris.

After lunch at the Orsay cafe, which was behind the massive clock that you see in and outside of the museum, we continued our walk down to the Orangerie Museum. This museum is located in the Tuileries Garden. Monet’s Water Lilies rightfully dominate large sparse rooms. You have to just stand there and take in all that saturated color under natural light from the eight huge curved panels, which Monet worked on “obsessively” for 12 years (1914-1926). Then you work your way downstairs to a collection of paintings that include Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Renoir. This is a very manageable museum, likely best appreciated early in the morning before the tourists come in.

Monet’s Setting Sun, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Clouds, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Green Reflections, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Jacob and Isabella with an incredible backdrop in the Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Morning no. 2, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Reflections of Trees, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Detail of Monet’s Morning, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

One of my favorite photos from our France trip – with Jacob doing selfie duties at the Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Bouquet of flowers by Renoir, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

Monet’s Morning no. 1, 1914-1918, Orangerie Museum, Paris.

We reversed direction and headed to the Rodin Museum, which is a mansion with an outdoor sculpture garden. The museum’s permanent collections reside in the Hȏtel Biron, built in the early 18th century, where Auguste Rodin lived as a tenant. The museum was created in 1916, a year before Rodin died, on his initiative when he donated his works, personal collections, and copyrights to the French state, and was inaugurated in 1919. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke first told Rodin about the estate. When Rodin saw the hotel, he rented four rooms on the ground floor in 1908. At that time, the writer Jean Cocteau, painter Henri Matisse, and dancer Isadora Duncan also rented, but from 1911 on, Rodin was the sole occupant.

Rodin’s The Thinker under a brilliant-blue sky with equally brilliant-white clouds, Rodin Museum, Paris.

Up close with an outdoor sculpture, Rodin Museum, Paris.

Rodin has a way with imbuing such strong emotions in his sculptures, Rodin Museum, Paris.

Rodin is one of my favorite sculptors, so I was excited to see his works in France, especially as I’d seen a very nice collection of Rodin sculptures in North Carolina a few years ago. We were not to be disappointed, with the likes of The Kiss, The Thinker, and The Gates of Hell on display.

Bust of Victor Hugo by Rodin, Rodin Museum, Paris.

Detail of The Gates of Hell, Rodin Museum, Paris.

An outdoor statue at the Rodin Museum, Paris.

We did a lot of walking that day. It was Father’s Day, and is usually the case (family joke), we had to find a bad dinner to celebrate David. Two years ago it was a Subway sandwich shop in New York City. This year, a bad creperie place. The tradition continues….

As dusk falls, Jacob in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

A Village in the Fields now available in eBook format

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Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
– Stephen Fry, English comedian, actor, writer, and activist

For those of you who like reading in electronic format, with its advantages of portability and cost-effectiveness, I’m announcing the release of my debut novel, A Village in the Fields, which was published by Eastwind Books of Berkeley in September 2015, as an eBook. You can order your copy, at $19.95, at Smashwords.com. Check out the link here.

It’s my hope that an eBook version of my historical novel enables more Asian-American Studies professors to include my book in their reading list for their Filipino-American history courses. Desk copies of the eBook for the purpose of teaching are available. Please contact me at info@pattyenrado.com.

Enjoy your summer reading . . . into fall semester!

 

Flowers in the fall: from October to Thanksgiving and into December

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A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in – what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.
– Victor Hugo, from Les Misérables

It’s almost Christmas, and I have not posted the last of the season’s bouquets. This year, thanks to soil amendment, a drip system, new flowers in the garden, and good care taking, I created bouquets right through autumn and up to Thanksgiving. In truth, although by early November I was only getting a bouquet a week, I could probably eek out a bouquet here and there still.

But all good things come to an end, and the joy of gardening will be the return of spring next year. So in the meantime, here are the final bouquets of the season to enjoy and to carry me through winter.

An October 11th bouquet for my friend Joann next to an autumn gourd made by my cousin Janet.

Close up with the last of the dahlias (yellow) and baby’s breath and the purple scabiosas.

The other side of the bouquet, topped by monster straw flowers, which are still going strong, albeit more petite than in the summer.

Even in October, the miniature roses from Trader Joe’s were going crazy.

Bi-color miniature roses in bloom.

An October 14th bouquet with fabric pumpkins.

Lots of zinnias and my favorite scabiosa.

A vase full of African daisies,which are still producing in December.

An October 16th bouquet for Joann.

Zinnia close-up with yellow stars.

October 23rd bouquet for Joann.

I love this peachy-pink miniature rose in the middle of the bouquet.

Another miniature rose, this one cream colored, peeking out of the lip of the vase.

Hot pink and deep purple complement one another.

An abundant October 27th bouquet for Joann. Lots of zinnias and straw flowers.

Another view of the zinnias, spread out like colorful open umbrellas.

The Halloween – October 31st – bouquet!

Just one more zinnia close-up.

No, this zinnia close-up….

The first November bouquet, which looks like a splash of spring colors!

Those scabiosas and zinnias again.

The other side of the November 6th bouquet, with dianthus.

The dianthus is hanging in there still.

Another full bouquet, November 11th, for Joann.

A fall flower, the rudbeckia.herta, cherry brandy.

A close-up.

The other side of the November 11th bouquet.

Close-up.

Looking down on this bouquet – deep purples, pinks, blues, and oranges.

A Thanksgiving bouquet.

Thanksgiving bouquet, November 23rd, with white echinacea.

We hosted Thanksgiving this year. When my in-laws went home the next day, we gave them this bouquet.

Another close-up.

Thanksgiving 2017 comes to a close.

Well, it’s December 2nd, and we are hosting our annual birthday dinner for our friend Soizic. No bouquets to be had, but a platter of miniature bouquets will suffice nicely. This time with a holiday backdrop.

The lovely ruckbeckia hirta, cherry brandy and purple echinacea.

Another close-up with baby’s breath, miniature roses, straw flowers, dianthus, rudbeckia, scabiosa, yellow gaillardia, and helenium auturnale red shades.

And now our platter of miniature bouquets sits next to the beautiful birthday cake from Masse’s Pastries in the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley. A treasured tradition!

In the morning, the top view of the miniature bouquet. Until spring….

 

48-hour whirlwind East Coast weekend: the Boston Book Festival and the Boston Filipino-American Book Club

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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 – Robert Frost, American poet, from “The Road Not Taken”

Waiting for my red-eye flight to Boston at Oakland International Airport.

In mid-September, Grace Talusan, Fulbright Scholar, English professor at Tufts University in Boston, and winner of the 2017 New Immigrant Writing for Nonfiction by Restless Books, contacted me to let me know that the Boston Filipino-American Club (BFAB) was going to be reading my novel, A Village in the Fields, for the month of October. Grace, whose memoir, The Body Papers, will be published in the Fall of 2018, asked if I would be willing to Skype with the members at their October 29th meeting following their traditional brunch. Absolutely, I let her and book club founder and artist Bren Bataclan know.

At some point in October, my husband, David, suggested that I use up points and fly to Boston the weekend of the book club meeting. At first, I dismissed the idea. I’m not spontaneous, I pointed out, echoing a famous line of mine from my college days. But as the days went by, I started to warm up to the idea. However, I didn’t want to burden anyone with my visit. When I finally reached out to Grace and Bren, they were enthusiastic and welcoming of the visit. So I booked my flight and was looking forward to the trip. My job has been very stressful these past few months and I pulled two near-all-nighters the week before my planned visit. In fact, that Thursday evening, I worked until the early morning. I wasn’t sure then if it was a good idea to be going away. But David noted that I needed to get out, that being around book lovers would be a welcome change and just the community that I needed to be in the midst of.
So I took the red-eye from Oakland to JFK in New York and caught the next leg to Boston. (An aside: It turned out that the woman sitting across the aisle from me was headed for the Boston Book Festival. Her publishing company, New York-based Other Press, was hosting a tent, which is where she brought up recognizing me on her flight. She noticed that I was reading Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere.) Grace and a good friend of hers picked me up at the airport, and we had a nice breakfast at the Eastern Standard, an elegant French-period appointed restaurant on Commonwealth Avenue in the heart of Kenmore Square, which is on the other side of the highway from Fenway Park. Afterwards, Grace dropped me off at Copley Square, site of the Boston Book Festival, a one-day event of talks and panels, tents filled with myriad publishers, and book signings! I was in heaven and the weather was perfect – fall chill in the air, changing colors of the trees. There were multiple sessions that overlapped, so I had to make some difficult decisions.

Fall at the entrance of the Eastern Standard restaurant.

Of course, I had to get a picture of me near Fenway Park (courtesy of Grace Talusan).

Rapping with Shakespeare.

My introduction to the festival was listening to The Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy. During 2016-2017, Shakespeare to Hiphop (literary performers and TEDx Boston alumni Regie Gibson and Marlon Carey) partnered with the Boston Public Library to celebrate the great bard. The result is The Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy: “an all-new presentation combining American jazz-funk-country-pop and hip-hop with poetry, song, storytelling, rap, and Shakespeare’s own words.” Their performance was entertaining and crowd-pleasing.

Checking out the different tents and publishers.

Food truck at Copley Square.

I walked around the tents, checking out the various local presses, and then I walked over to the Church of the Covenant to hear the fiction keynote featuring Claire Messud and Jacqueline Woodson discuss their recently released coming-of-age novels, The Burning Girl, and Another Brooklyn, respectively. Both read excerpts from their novels. According to the book festival program: “The mutability of memory, the swift passage of time, the use of stories to make sense of experience, the treacherous landscape of female adolescence, and the simultaneous vitality and volatility of teenage girls’ friendships – these are common threads that run through these narratives, as both writers draw perceptive, unsentimental portraits of young women growing up and growing apart.”

Church of the Covenant.

What a thrill to hear Claire Messud and Jacqueline Woodson read from their new works, and in such a beautiful setting as this old church.

I couldn’t stay for any book signings afterwards. I would have had to stand in a long line, considering how packed the church was for their keynote. I dashed back to Trinity Forum to catch the “Voices of American: The Immigrant Experience Through a Writer’s Eyes” session, which featured Ha Jin, Marjan Kamali, and Grace. I have read Ha Jin’s books, including Waiting, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1999. I picked up Marjan’s novel, Together Tea, which is about the matchmaking exploits of an Iranian woman’s parents. And I look forward to Grace’s memoir to come out next year. Grace read an excerpt about her father’s childhood in the Philippines that was gripping, heartbreaking, and beautifully written. My heart was literally in my throat as she read, which is how I define meaningful storytelling – the kind that stays with you, that you turn over and over in your head at night and for days. The three panelists talked about being immigrant writers, and while Marjan wished to be thought of as a writer and not “labeled” as an Iranian-American writer, I applauded Grace’s response: There are few Asian-American writers; she is more than happy to take on that mantle to draw more attention to the stories of Asian Americans, of Filipino Americans.

A very packed room for Ha Jin, Marjan Kamali, and Grace Talusan.

Marjan Kamali signing books after the session. I forgot to take Ha Jin’s up-close photo!

Once I briefly met Ha Jin and Marjan, I dashed to the Boston Public Library. I wasn’t able to catch the session “Fiction: Missed Connections,” with Eshkol Novo, Celeste Ng, and Lily Tuck, but I decided that getting their books signed was more important. I ended up reading a good chunk of Celeste’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, on my long plane ride back home the following evening. It’s a beautiful novel, both in character revelation and insight and in her writing. I wasn’t familiar with Lily Tuck, but I picked up her latest novel, the slim Sisters, which I read in one sitting that night. I appreciated the structure of what I consider a novella, and I learned a lot about crafting intense short scenes/chapters. Another writer to read more of her previous works!

The front of the Boston Public Library.

Courtyard in the Boston Public Library – a building we didn’t go into when my family and I vacationed in Boston in 2010.

Lily Tuck signing her slim novel, Sisters, for me.

Celeste Ng signing her new novel, Little Fires Everywhere, for me.

I completely missed “Freeman’s: The Future of New Writing.” John Freeman, literary critic, poet, and former Granta editor, is a childhood classmate of one of my favorite local proprietors, Jen Komaromi of Jenny K. I wished I could have attended, but it was time for me to head on over to Bren’s place in Cambridge. I caught a Lyft and met my gracious hosts, Bren and Bob, in their beautiful turn-of-the-century flat. The trees had already changed colors and it was cold. Perfect fall weather. Bren grew up in the Bay Area and is now a successful painter and muralist. He and Brian share the distinction of being one of the first couples to be married in Massachusetts when same-sex marriage was legal. While they had a dance performance to attend that evening, I was perfectly happy to cozy up on the couch and read Sisters in one sitting. And then cat-nap and catch the World Series.

Thinking of my daughter, Isabella, as I took a picture of the hare statue in Copley Square minus the tortoise.

Old South Church across from the Boston Public Library.

In the morning, after my error of telling Bren and Bob that the weekend before Halloween was Daylight Savings time was discovered, we had enough time to right the ship, get ready, and head on over to hosts Rory and Jane’s home to enjoy a Sunday brunch and discuss my novel. I was in awe of all the great food that was on the table. What a wonderful tradition of a having a potluck brunch with Filipino food such as puto and a rice dish that was supposed to feature Spam (Anna, who brought the dish apologized for not being able to find the tin of Spam in her kitchen). I met some wonderful people and new friends. I felt so welcomed. Rather than drain me, my short whirlwind weekend energized me. I was surrounded by books, book lovers, writers, my Filipino American community, warm hospitality. What more could a writer ask for? Maraming salamat, dear new friends!

Meeting host Rory Dela Paz and Anna (courtesy of Bren Bataclan).

Enjoying Filipino food and conversation (courtesy of Bren Bataclan).

New and long-standing members of the Boston Filipino American Book Club (courtesy of Bren Bataclan).

Talking about my book (courtesy of Bren Bataclan).

Members of the Boston Filipino-American Book Club and their tasty spread hosted by Jane and Rory Dela Paz.

Saying goodbye to this artistic couple, photographer Alonso Nichols and memoirist and fiction writer Grace Talusan (courtesy of Bren Bataclan).

The late August and September garden

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If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman politician and lawyer

I continue to catalog the bouquets from my garden.

The August 26th bouquet for our LUNAFEST chair, Joann. She has done so much for the East Bay LUNAFEST film festival the past 10 years, that delivering bouquets this summer was just a small token of my appreciation for all that she does and continues to do in the community.

The other side of the bouquet.

The August 30th bouquet for Joann.

Close-up of the August 30th bouquet. I love the combination of pink and blue.

We spend Labor Day Weekend with my cousin and her husband, who live in the next town over from our hometown of Terra Bella. I brought cut flowers and made an arrangement for her dining room table. The light hit it just right in the early morning.

Another view of the bouquet in its pretty green vase, with alstromeria, dahlias, and arctotis.

The September 4th bouquet for Joann.

The September 10th bouquet for Joann.

A late bloomer, one of my new favorites is the rudbeckia hirta “Cherry Brandy.” I love the deep cherry red of this hardy flower.

A nice close-up of a scabiosa and a pink and orange zinnia. I love the little star-shaped details in the center of the zinnia.

The September 16th bouquet for Joann.

A close-up of a zinnia and scabiosas.

Zinnias in the planter box in mid-September.

A butterfly on a miniature bi-color rose, which we got from Trader Joe’s. At first the roses turned black and I cut the four different kinds of roses way back. Then they came back, and they are healthy and prolific bloomers. I’m glad I stuck with them and didn’t pull them out and compost them!

David caught this bee visiting our cosmos. We are excited to see so many bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds in our backyard, which is something that we told our landscape architect that we wanted to see with regard to flower and plant selection.

Following the path of the butterfly as it lands in the monster red straw plant in our backyard garden.

The September 20th bouquet for Joann. I like this painting-like photo of this bouquet. The gourd, which my cousin Janet made, gives it an autumnal touch, especially with the red gaillardia x grandi celebration flora, which is right in the front.

A close-up of the September 20th bouquet. The zinnias give it a fall touch.

We had a LUNAFEST reunion dinner at committee member Laurie’s house. Along with a bottle of wine, dessert, and David’s torta, I made this bouquet for the hostess.

I made two bouquets for my friend Soizic. One always brings bottles of wine and bouquets for the hostess. This one features alstromeria, echinacea, dianthus, scabiosa, and amazingly the resurrected dahlias. This is a favorite of mine this season, too.

The second bouquet for my friend Soizic. This one has a lot of zinnias and arctotis. I really like this bouquet, and I consider it one of my favorites of the season.