Prague Windows

No defenestrations here...
just the charm of a foreign city.

All these photos were taken in the old part of town.

This one at the Castle.

Up at the castle also. You can see the cathedral reflected above the charming lace.

In the pink

billowing

cheery

more pink

a bit gloomy for a flower shop...

more lace

I love street signs in foreign places.

Why I Write/Summer Reading

     In May, Cait O'Connor  invited me to join a group of other writer/bloggers including Pamela of The House of Edward in doing a post entitled Why I Write. I was flattered and interested...and distracted and thought I would get to it - in the end.

     In brief, I think I write for the same reason I read: to enter a window into another world.

Chelsea Physik Garden

 I've been thinking of wonderful summer reads - needless to say most set in England. I just finished Kate Atkinson's virtuoso Life After Life. I gobbled it up, loving every minute of it.

Wiltshire

 Several years ago, I felt rather the same about Rosamund Pilcher's The Shell Seekers, set in Cornwall.

Wiltshire

Jane Gardam's Old Filth Trilogy is a real delight - rich and visual and sensual and altogether astounding.

as above

And as for me - I try to recapture a now vanished world - of family and England and love and hardship. I have recently re-edited Ruth and Gisela which was originally published as A Fortunate Child. It's now available on Amazon's Kindle Direct which means you don't have to have an actual book and can download it in an instant.  Click here for details. A very kind review of the book on the super bookish blog A Work in Progress.

Another window in a very old house in Wiltshire, with the light slipping in sideways - like in old Dutch paintings.

Here is the house where part of  Ruth and Gisela is set. My grandparents' house in Faversham, Kent photographed in about 1952. I'm so glad most of the windows are open. The final photo is of a family celebration some years ago, because my story is about family and mothers and daughters.

Happy 4th of July

Sag Harbor Windows

Totally awash in 19th century eye-candy!  Sag Harbor was wonderfully prosperous when most of Long Island was just a giant potato field. So I went round taking pictures of windows and gardens.

Lots of bees on the sedum.

California bright on the porch.

Elegantly antique......

but earlier yet .....the old custom house

on Main Street

Had never realized the subtle scent of Old Man's Beard.

My favorite ( I think) of the little old houses

A particularly lovely window.

Chelsea Windows

The perennial fascination of windows......

which I study on my walks. Here a tall austere one with serious white shutters

20th Street

here the original interior wooden shutters on the seminary block.

the window here as a mirror reflecting the yellow fall trees

only a teeny window ( top left) but nice viney stuff in the seminary railings.

20th Street

Penn South reflected in a very new building on 23rd Street

the last rays of the sun on 24th Street. 

Note the odd little window like an exclamation mark!

neither my camera nor I can manage night pictures....

I do so love rooms illuminated at dusk and imagining their mysterious inhabitants.

Dream Windows

Bergdorf's up near Central Park

What a lion!

and  metallic sorts of dresses too

 with details and ruffles 

In ABC Carpet, instead of a carpet, there is earth in the window

 with marigolds growing beneath the picnic table.

Reflections, Windows and a View

A window on 22nd Street with some odd reflective surface

reveals all the U-Haul truck waiting to haul someone's stuff .....somewhere......

Such elegant, tall windows on 20th Street.

Looking out of my study window, I see a worker on his way either up or down to/from the roof.

Rather nerve-wracking if you ask me.

A bakery in Chinatown on a Saturday evening.

My main blog is now here

Spring on 21st Street

My main blog is now here 

Squares and Windows

Brilliant crisp morning light.

More of the same.

An interior window between the bar and the dining room at The Half King on 23rd Street.

The bar is painted the most wonderful terra cotta pink.

My main blog is now here.

Friday Windows and Reflections

Peonies at Union Square. Yum. 

I cannot think why I didn't buy them.

A very shiny tasteful window display at ABC Carpet on Broadway.

A very shiny untasteful window display at a clairvoyant's on 20th Street.

What's this with clairvoyants anyway?

Note the reflection of the psychic traffic cone....

In keeping with the clairvoyant theme, this window

 had sort of ectoplasm in it -- or a sheet.....

Between 5th and 6th Avenues.

Almost chartreuse.