Pretty Clouds

Our usual Tuesday at the beach with

particularly lovely clouds.

Lots of people enjoying the end-of-summer, last-days-of-the-vacation fun.

Even old people enjoy the beach.....

Then the lovely clouds

followed us home.

As for the approaching storm.....well it is a bit worrying.....

Misty Morning

I woke up in the night and saw how wonderfully foggy it was after the rain.

Still foggy in the morning when it was time to take the dogs out.  

Mist, like candlelight and snow manages to transform the ordinary.

So we walked up by the school where the grass has been mown.

I start getting worried about the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'.

Surely, it's still summer?

Soon the sun will break through.

Pots of Money

Kykuit, high above the Hudson, was built by the Rockerfellers in 1908.

What fun it would be to design a mansion with money no object at all! Putti all over the place and lamps by Tiffany, and Chinese import porcelain and a great deal of modern art. 

The study

the porch

an arch in the garden

the view over the original swimming pool

and across the private golf course.

Supermarket in New Jersey

  

Supermarkets in the suburbs are so splendidly vast and the aisles

 filled with old ladies with large carts dithering. You can buy such an 

 assortment of things that us city types are amazed.

Not to mention what you can buy as you try to escape....

 balls that bounce and bounce !

and crazy putty and a very small duck encased in plastic

 with the parking lot reflected in them .

Back at the ranch, the dolls are getting gussied up for a new outing.

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Morning and Evening

The usual Tuesday at the beach

with spectacularly crashing waves.

In the evening, thunderstorms heading in.

Decorating

Current state of the nest: unfeathered.

Even the dog is confused.

So I wander along Broadway pondering the pillow possibilities

 and the linens (here vintage tablecloths of obvious retro-allure.)

Here moving more delicately upmarket.

Crisp piping says summer in spades.

Monday: or The delights of Idleness

I'm so glad I don't have a proper job. If I did, I would have to dress up in a work uniform of some sort   

like these three wage slaves/ fashionistos (masculine of fashionista?) I saw this morning as they were off to conquer the world in their trendily too-small suits.

Instead, I can photograph the little jug of flowers I picked from the miniature garden in the tree pits in front of the building. 

I'm always a bit frightened someone will come and yell at me for picking the flowers and I will have to explain that I planted and tended them. Then they won't believe me. (The things I waste my time worrying about....)

Anyway, there is golden sage and a giant sort of parsley that  grew and grew from a weedy specimen I got at the super market, zinnias from Union Square, another sort of sage and the little mauve thing that I can't name. Anyone?

Collections of things on 22nd Street

On my morning walk with the dog, I discover

a gathering of garbage sacks --the kind for heavy refuse

an abandonment of toddler toys in Clement Moore Park

and a covey of construction workers.

Happy Weekend

Beach/Reading

I rarely read anything at the beach,

but spend most of the time looking at the water.

Yesterday a lifeguard paddled his canoe.

However, some book suggestions:

Non fiction:

Virginia Nicholson's fascinating Singled Out --about the generation of   "surplus" women after the First World War. Splendidly informative and grippingly readable.

 Just Kids Patti Smith's memoir of Robert Mapplethorpe and the 1970's, brilliantly evocative of the era in both good and bad ways. Brings it all back.

Hints of mortality on the shoreline.

New Fiction:

The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco Richard Hamilton's elegant retelling of traditional tales told by the vanishing storytellers of Marrakesh. Not new stories exactly but recently published. Grimm's fairy tales meet A Thousand and One Nights!

A.M Homes: This Book will Save Your Life. Set in Los Angeles and addressing contemporary angst etc. Funny, sad, quirky and sharp.

Tried and True:

Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. I've only just read it for the first time.

Vanished England in a capsule. What weather! Such rustics.

Charles Dickens'A Christmas Carol. In view of current American politics, I rather like Scrooge saying, "Are there no workhouses?" and suggesting that the poor die and reduce the surplus population.......

After the beach, lunch at the Shipwreck Diner in Northport.

What a bizarre lunch....quiche, fruit, homefries, a pickle.

Oh well, now I needn't eat for a week.

I look forward to hearing what you're reading.

 Weaver of Grass has some super suggestions as do the people who

have commented on her post.

Seen Around Town

Waiting for the  M23 bus

at seven thirty in the morning.

A rather splendid hat on the corner of 8th Avenue.

Ah! air conditioning in Chelsea Market

where they have underfloor lighting sort of like underfloor heating.

The benison of a sprinkler.

The titles of poetry books make excellent reading in themselves......

Several bloggers are giving their summer reading shortlists on Wednesday.

Suggested choices:

2 Non Fiction books

2 New Fiction choices

2 tried and true favorites

I'm still trying to think.......