Travel - Montana - And A River Runs Through It...

Bear Country.
Tom Miner Creek Road.
Emigrant, Montana

I'm into black and white these days. Kind of see the world that way.

I'm into driving up the basin and looking at the aspen trees, the tee-pees - (a portable conical tent made of skins, cloth, or canvas on a frame of poles used by  Native Americans ) - the log cabins, the willow meadows, the raw open wide immaculate beauty. 

If you look closely in the last photograph, you will see those teepees. 

But no people. Where else is open with no people? Cities are crawling with people. 

I would like to plant my own original garden.  Of course a garden cannot be planted quickly here. That's a good third act that lasts. After commerce, marriage, divorce, broken limbs, maybe, as Dan Barber, the great American chef says, "the garden is something that will last beyond my generation, and if you aren't thinking beyond yourself you aren't thinking big enough." I like that. It makes sense. Let's plant a garden. 

https://www.bluehillfarm.com/team/dan-barber

1st Volunteer Day at Kellie Castle Garden Fife, Scotland

Today is my first day as a volunteer at the Kellie Castle Garden. I was captivated by gardens after visiting Sissinghurst recently and thought I could learn something right in my own back yard at Kellie.

This is how it looks, Tuesday, June 13, 2017.

The long row of nepta - also known as catmints - beside the grassy walk is in full bloom and about to welcome in the delphiniums behind it. You can just see them coming in on the lower left hand of the photo. The flow of blooming colour soothes the soul.

So much changes each day in this lovely walled garden, part of the National Trust of Scotland.

 Apples beginning....just beginning. Remember we are so far north.

 The way the fern unroll and come alive each spring is breathtaking.

 Foxglove.

 This is my first job.

Pruning the roses along the border just outside the wall.

Where there are no buds, new growth be gone. I was rather timid at first, cutting off such long stems. But Andy told me to be ruthless as it's not that easy to make a mistake.







This is the view to the East.

This is the view to the West and the stables and Castle beyond.

From the walled doorway looking south to the Firth of Forth beyond. Edinburgh is just across the water.




Kellie Castle Garden. Place of Magic.










http://www.nts.org.uk/Visit/Kellie-Castle

Gardens - Kellie Castle Garden

Iconic. Sublime. Majestic. 

The National Trust for Scotland says "the first mention of Kellie occurs in a Charter of David I from around 1150, to which Malmure, thane of Kellie was witness." 

Witness the walled garden: 

White rose trees dot the catmint.  

Delphinium just coming into bloom. 

Poppies hide in between ferns. 

     Massive bowls of peony kiss the borders. 

Pink roses open. 

Creatures roam. 

Daisies blanket apple trees. 

And many unusual faces look out to greet you. It is one of my very favorite places on earth. 

Autumn 2015 in The East Neuk of Fife

From  the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Tay lies the Kingdom of Fife, an arm of Scotland that juts into the North Sea. The East Neuk is lowland with small hills that make it easy to see great distances.

The A917, a two lane road, runs a ribbon east-west through the coastal villages of Elie, St. Monans, Pittenweem, Anstruther and Crail to the eastern point of the Balcomie links. A footpath links the villages.

Before I begin on the new cottage, the new library, the new life, I'll set the scene:

Here is Pittenweem Harbor, the village where I am staying, the shore with the tide in, the taste of what Autumn looks like through the trees on the road to St. Andrews, the home of golf and the St. Andrews University where Prince William and Kate Middleton met...but I'll get to that later.

To live through Autumn, as the light changes and the night comes earlier, as the temperature cools considerably, is a glorious childhood memory, something real and ever changing...daily...

as if God's paintbrush was flicked over the hills and left yellow, orange, gold and red in watercolor and dabbed, smeared and brushed into shape.

Books Worth Reading - A Passion for Flowers by Carolyne Roehm

Carolyne Roehm created this wonderful book a while ago, but because it is organized by the seasons, I find myself getting lost right now in autumn. Go ahead, take a look, just click on the Amazon link below.

And to quote the great artist Claude Monet through Ms. Roehm:
                           
                           "More than anything I must have flowers, always, always."

Art - Storm King Art Center

In New York?

Just an hour and a half drive from Manhattan, set in 500 acres of the Hudson Valley is the lovely Storm King Art Center.

More than 100 sculptures and installations are sited across fields, hills and woodlands including, among dozens of others, Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, David Smith, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Goldsworthy's STORM KING WALL, built 1997-98, the reason for my trip.

Walk meadows, climb museum hill, picnic on Johnny Swing's NICKEL COUCH, marvel though Maya Lin's STORM KING WAVEFIELD, as you breathe sky, sing green, wave a piece of sleep where you watched your grandmother cook, and taste the colour of the remembrance of your own dream.  I've been waiting years to get there.

Yes, there are lots of photos, more than usual, but it's a HUGE place.

British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy's stone wall rings the trees as they stand. Andy Goldsworthy, OBE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy

The wall submerges and comes up the other side.

http://www.stormking.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy