Capitol Reflection

Wisconsin State Capitol

Wisconsin State Capitol

A walk around the Capitol Square usually provides a few views of the State Capitol in the office building windows. I love a good reflection.

WInter Dark and Winter Light

Crossroads at Old World Wisconsin

Crossroads at Old World Wisconsin

How did it get so late so soon.
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December’s here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?

Dr. Seuss

Ah, the shortest day of the year. Cloudy, cold, gray outside.

Lots of lights are on inside though, for today only I’m ignoring the electric meter. The lights on the tree are glowing – all those bright LEDs in their sapphire blues, and ruby reds and emerald greens. They truly look like jewels.

Outside looks rather like the above photograph. But the photograph I’m keeping safely tucked inside my mind looks rather like the following one:

Lights like Tiny Jewels

Lights like Tiny Jewels

Ah, that is so much better!

Marigold Teapot

From the Marigold Kitchen

From the Marigold Kitchen

Not the best of timing, only a few days before family from both coasts comes for a long holiday visit, but I’m feeling a bit under the weather. This photograph of a bright yellow teapot, and the thought of a cup of hot, aromatic tea, makes me feel better. Not spirited enough to wrap the final stack of gifts or bake the last batches of cookie dough chilling in the fridge. But certainly good enough to sink into the easy chair in the living room and gaze at the brightest of tiny lights on the tree. That’s one of my favorite parts of the holiday season, enjoying the twinkling lights in a winter dark house.

Tomorrow is soon enough to finish the wrapping and baking. Now is a perfect time to sit and contemplate writing several lines in my gratitude journal.

John and Ruth Pew House, A Frank Lloyd Wright Design

On the Shore of Lake Mendota

On the Shore of Lake Mendota in Madison

The Pew House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1938-40, is seldom available for public tours, so it was with great enthusiasm that I explored this home, inside and outside, during the Wright and Like Tour held last June. Even dodging rain drops for most of the day didn’t dampen the spirit of the day. It was a good day for photographs – no bright mid-day sun – but the home is positioned neatly over a ravine on the shores of Lake Mendota, and taking any kind of photos requires gymnastics and compromises. To get a lake view, I hiked down the path towards the dock, but could never really take a photograph that truly captures the lines and beauty of this structure. There simply wasn’t enough space to get a photo of the entire home, even with my wide angle lens, and vegetation partly hides the part of the home I was able to shoot.

Hidden from View

Hidden from View, Lake Side

Not much of a view from the dock, or from Lake Mendota. The view from a boat would give you no clue that a Wright home was tucked into this hillside.

The home is a two-story Usonian design, unusual but delightfully compact and full of Wright’s built-ins. In one of the small bedrooms, tiny in size, the room worked well because everything was built into the room – bed, desk, storage. No photos were allowed of the interior of the house, but it is full of charm typical of Wright’s style.

I read a delightful story about an interview with Ruth Pew who voiced unhappiness with the home for the first two years she lived there. It seems she felt that Mr. Wright did not take her wants and needs into consideration when he designed the home, and she was nearly ready to put the home on the market. Instead, she decided she would “give the house a year without struggling with it.” And in that year, she discovered that the home had been built not for the woman she was, but for “the woman I could become.” Talk about self-discovery!

View from Deck into Living Room

View from Deck into Living Room

The Pew House is referred to as a “poor man’s Fallingwater,” because it was built straddling a ravine (instead of Fallingwater’s stream) and on a tight budget with salvaged materials. According to a docent on the tour, one of the windows in the living room had to be replaced because the faint logo of a local establishment became evident after the house was inhabited.

The Wright and Like Tours are held annually, in a different Midwest city, each June. 2010’s tour will be in Racine, Wisconsin. If you are a Wright fan, it’s a great opportunity to see a half dozen or so buildings designed by Wright and his contemporaries.

Shasta Daisies

Glistening from a Morning Rain

Glistening from a Morning Rain

Four years ago, we decided to dig up a corner area of our lawn and plant a sunny perennial garden.

We had no idea of the work involved–digging out the grass, making the heavy clay a bit more friendly towards growing plants by adding lots of black dirt and compost, designing the plants keeping in mind color, height, soil and watering requirements, and blooming times. And that was just the beginning. Then came the search for the selected plants, planting, watering weeding, mulching. Gardens are lovely and I love that I have a patch of bright color in view of the house, but they require a fair amount of dedication. And lots of hard work. Worth it, though. Well worth it.

We’ve added new plants each year. Each year a few don’t survive the perils of a prolonged winter, but more frequently they are nibbled to death in early spring by hungry and very determined rabbits. We’ve learned to spray a nasty smelling organic type of rabbit-keep-away on anything green whenever it rains, and that keeps the damage to a minimum, and I admit I’m happy whenever I see red foxes prowling the neighborhood.

This year we had a late spring, but we’ve had more than enough rain to keep the plants happy.

Many of the flowers are thick with blooms for most of July–Shasta daisies, purple coneflowers, balloon flowers, yellow coreopsis, lavendar, gigantic sunflowers–and they all merge together in masses of purples, whites, and yellows.

I took lots of photographs earlier this week, after the rains had nearly stopped for the day, so I’ll be sharing garden flowers for the next few days.