Delicious sweet watermelon.
A gift from the gods.
(And a friend,
and a farmer in North Carolina!)
Thanks to all, and
to sun and rain and earth,
and to seeds that are so willing to grow.
Enjoying the fruits of summer.
Reposted from Laine's Blog, July 2014
©LaineQuinn2023
The crowds are gone,
town is quiet,
for awhile!
Old Town, © Laine Quinn, 2019, Gaufre's Restaurant.
This is the old Aviles Street.
Come to First Friday tonight to see the new Aviles street,
with sidewalk cafes and lots of new galleries.
Including Butterfield Garage on Aviles!
Laine's photos will be on display through the month of February,
alongside the other wonderful artists from Butterfield Garage.
Butterfield Garage on King Street is set to open in April of this year!
Sunny Flowers!
When visiting a "Foreign" country,
and you see familiar things,
it brings home closer
and strangers become friends.
Holloku, Hungary, which is a very very old town situated in rolling hills that reminded me of Maryland or Virginia! Familiar flowers and great food and company!
September, 2014.
A vigilant rest,
living so close to those unpredictable humans -
with cameras!
Brown Pelicans, sunning themselves at the Conch House in their mating plumage.
Was it just last week? No, the week before(!) 2016.
To see such craft...
And the dish ran away with the spoon!
Which Provincetown Restaurant?
Childhood rhyme,
Hey Diddle Diddle.
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such craft,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
If you put bottled beer in the freezer to get chilled
and forget about it until morning,
does it explode?
Answer:
Yes.
It's not as messy as you might imagine,
as it is frozen,
but it is messy!
A few years back, in the freezer of my sister on the occasion of her son and Daughter in Law's wedding celebration.
(Is it really 5 years already?)
(oh my)
The perfect afternoon at the beach.
The perfect thing to do...
Get sandy and wet!
And later?
Have a drink with friends!
St. Augustine Beach pier, and Aden playing in the tidal pool and later at the Conch House with friends.
serving dinner once a month on the Full Moon.
Breakfast and Lunch -
most other days!
Another town, another great meal on the road in Lambertville, New Jersey.
Marley's Cafe,
situated on a teeny tiny island in Essex Connecticut,
with nary a Jamaican in sight,
but great atmosphere,
food
and service!
You have to take a little ferry across the little waterway and back again! New England in Autumn.
Stoned beauty.
Savannah Georgia, outside the Mansion on Forsyth Park with an elegant restaurant and delicious lunch! (2015)
...not from New York!
My favorite Ice Cream at the beach, St. Augustine Beach.
Little fish watch out.
As the sun prepares to set.
White bird is dining.
And Human is watching...Vilano Beach, St. Augustine inlet.
The Jasmine is blooming again in St. Augustine.
In backyards and front yards,
the scent is everywhere.
In Disney parks,
a lot of things are make believe.
But the sun setting at Epcot was very real.
As was the food and the people and the friends we came with and the friends we met at the park.
All real!
Epcot Park, Disney World, Florida.
To Breakfast?
First reaction was to shoo them away which turned out to be ridiculous.
So I pulled out my camera and joined in the fun!
(Anyone who went to St. Anthony of Padua Church in Baltimore,
might recognize the Holy Ghost in this shot!)
They cleaned all the plates on that table and off they went
for more adventures.
It was our day to explore Nassau.,
after breakfast.
Sea Gulls on the Lido Deck, Carnival Cruise.
Back to the ship for our second night at sea,
on our way to Nassau.
No worries, there's lots to do on board.
Dancing, gambling, drinking, eating, sauna, swimming...
Not enough time for it all.
And always a new friend in our room at the end of the day...
Can you guess what this next shot is?
(Hint, it's not ice!)
The ship was the Fascination, of the Carnival Cruise Line. Small by some people's standards, huge by others!
On a mission to find fried lobster in Freeport,
we piled into a crowded van and headed to Port La Caya.
We asked anyone who would listen,
Fried lobster?
No...
No?
No...
We stumbled on a couple of local beers
and some conch fritters and lobster fritters
before we realized that the little shack on the harbor
was the place for the heavily advertised (by friends),
fried lobster.
Complete with a bona fide character,
Daddy Brown.
So greedy for the beautiful golden lobster,
the photographer neglected to take a photo!!
You'll just have to go yourself!!
Port La Caya, Freeport, The Bahamas.
If you can climb the stairs,
your day care awaits...
Bar & Tables
150 Craft Beers
Fine Vino
You get the idea!
Cedar Key, Florida, where they respect their elders and provide facilities for their well being.
This is the day before he understood that you can eat the cone
and
get to the rest of the ice cream!
Aden useing a spoon in Godollo, Hungary to scoop out the rest of the ice cream!
This terrace was so inviting that we spent time there on our way into the village of Tihany,
and we spent time there on our way out of Tihany.
Situated on Lake Balaton it was a place to stop, slow down and smell the roses,
and the lavender!
Kid friendly with a wonderful view,
it was a very special part of what became the perfect day.
(Where's Aden?)
In wine growing countries the fall is a time of great excitement as the grapes approach the time for harvesting. Each bunch of grapes swells with juice produced from the long summer days of sunshine and rain.
The vineyard owner watches the grapes carefully to be ready for that time of optimal ripeness. Everything waits its appointed time, especially the harvest. You do not want to pick too soon and lose one scintilla of flavor or depth and you don’t want to pick too late and find you have lost some of your perfect grapes.
And like most things, the whole issue of ripeness has its exceptions too. Some grapes are intentionally left on the vine to await the first freeze. Those wines are called ice wines and are sweet and concentrated in flavor as the water in the grape has been lost to the freeze leaving only the delicious pulp. In France some desert wines are allowed to partially suffer what they call the “noble rot,” which makes the grapes shrivel and concentrate inside. Sauterne is one such wine.
Keep an open mind about expectations and judging. Even if a thing or situation or person is not perfect, it or he may very well turn out to be perfect in a completely different delightful and unexpected way.
Photo by guest blogger Sue Harrison, location Dordogne region of France.
One of the things that’s the most fun to do in foreign countries is experiment with food. Most of us will try things we’d likely only raise an eyebrow to at home. In most of America we have a limited amount of different kinds of sausage. You’ve got hot and mild, breakfast and brats and not a lot of variation except in certain ethnic neighborhoods.
But in France, a sausage is an art form and (like the saucissons pictured above) they are varied in not only their complex spicing but also the animal they come from. We are used to pig and chicken and turkey sausage but oh my how many other kinds there are. In this one display we have duck and deer added to our pork and flavorings of mushrooms, figs, goat cheese and chestnuts.
These are not sausages to be quickly sautéed and put on the plate with some eggs. These are little morsels of heavenly taste, cured and dried and ready to be sliced paper thin and paired with a baguette and some cheese and surely a nice glass of wine.
In life, as in the market, when someone offers you the chance to try something new and wonderful just take it in and say thank you. You never know what you will discover about life or about yourself.
Photo Sue Harrison, location Sarlat, France, market day. Guest Blogger Sue Harrison
Delicious sweet watermelon.
A gift from the gods.
(And a friend,
and a farmer in North Carolina!)
Thanks to all, and
to sun and rain and earth,
and to seeds that are so willing to grow.
Enjoying the fruits of summer.
"99 bottles of beer on the wall,
99 bottles of beer.
If one of those bottles should happen to fall,
98 bottles of beer on the wall."
Does anyone remember this song?
I was the girlscout in the back of the bus on those long trips,
who could sing it all the way to 1,
and start all over again.
Don't know exactly what that says about me,
but that was me as a young girl!
Lots of beer at the Rendezvous, in St. Augustine, Florida.
The nice thing about living in a tourist town
is that you get to pretend that you are on vacation from time to time.
A long walk on the beach (thank you knees!),
dinner after, at your favorite taco shop,
sitting at a colorful picnic table,
under the palm trees...
2 fish tacos and a beer,
enjoying the evening breezes and the other tourists,
as the day's light fades.
Ain't it great to be alive!
St. Augustine Beach Pier sign.
You might think that having dinner under a canopy of Jasmine,
might be a bit heady.
But it didn't bother these diners,
or the birthday party upstairs.
The combination of good company,
Jasmine and wine,
make for a sweet, heady evening!
Jasmine at O. C. Whites, in St. Augustine, Florida, birthday party too!
How much can we trust each other?
You and me,
and the stranger who made these wonderful lattés?
More than we give ourselves credit for,
I think.
How many bridges do you go over without worrying whether or not they will support you and your car?
How many roads travelled, with sign posts and traffic signals,
that a stranger has placed there for your safety?
Perhaps it is easier to take some things for granted and worry about others,
but maybe we need to trust the people we know a little more,
or at least as much as we trust the unknown, invisible people who support our world!
The latté was wonderful,
and I didn't die!
Everything has a beginning a middle and an end.
Sometimes the beginning is obscured by secrets or lies,
but it is still there, somewhere.
The middle is the fine tuning of intention.
If you are a grapevine, it's simple.
For humans it's fraught with trial and error.
The middle contains the maturing as well as the fumbling.
The end?
Well, the end is the end.
For grapes, it's quite simple and possibly delicious.
If you are a human, it's just about the biggest mystery there is -
besides of course the beginning, or right before the beginning...
You might say that the end isn't the very end and the beginning isn't the very beginning...
I guess that the middle is the only thing that we can know for sure!
Muscadine grape vines and wine at the Log Cabin Farm and Winery in Welaka, Florida.
Life is sweet!
Guess where this photo was taken: Canada, France, Iceland, U.S.?