On The Road Again--Chapel Hill

We are on vacation this week (thus the lag in my blogging), and started it by spending the weekend in Chapel Hill with Julia. We left home Saturday morning and met her for lunch around 1 pm at Foster's Market in Chapel Hill, which is owned by Sara Foster of cookbook fame. We have been there before and it is a fun place, always busy, great sandwiches and salads, and has a nice outdoor patio.

Foster's Market

UNC treats at Foster's Market

In the afternoon Julia took us to the American Tobacco Historic District in Durham , which is the former Lucky Strike cigarette factory and  former headquarters of the old AmericanTobacco Company. It has been completely refurbished and now is a large retail/restaurant/office complex, and music venue. We love seeing old buildings like this that have been renovated and are being reused.

Tobacco Road

Cool bench with recycled materials

Tobacco Road

We had Sunday brunch at this cute place in Durham, Watts Grocery. We got there when it opened and there were already lines down the street waiting to get in. It was good! Let me just say that biscuits are pretty darn delicious in North Carolina!

Watts Grocery

We did a lot of walking around, met a few of Julia's friends, did a little birthday shopping for Julia, had beers at Top of the Hill , and dinner on Sunday night at Talulla's, a Turkish restaurant in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is such a nice town and it's been a fun place to visit while Julia has been in grad school the past two years. We'll be back next spring for graduation!

UNC cow on campus

Love that stone bench, UNC campus

Calm in the Garden

The weather this week has been perfect. Sunny and cool, no humidity, no bugs, just pure pleasure. A good week for morning walks, tea on the deck,  dinner outside with a friend, comfortable runs in the evening for Walt.  Walking around my garden this morning I just felt such a sense of calm. It's like the frenzy of summer blooming is finished, and the garden is just relaxing. Even the light seems different these mornings, softer without the glare of summer's heat. I look outside and see the soft greens and muted colors, and I just have to grab my camera and head out.

This World

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it

nothing fancy.

But it seems impossible.

Whatever the subject, the morning sun

glimmers it.

The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.

The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark

pinprick well of sweetness.

As for the stones on the beach, forget it.

Each one could be set in gold.

So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds

were singing.

And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music

out of their leaves.

And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and

beautiful silence

as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too

hurried to hear it.

As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs

even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,

so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being

locked up in gold.

~ Mary Oliver ~

A Beautiful September Morning

Dogwood

We are having absolutely perfect weather this week. Too bad I am working most of the week. It's so refreshing to take a morning walk in weather like this.  I did work outside on Sunday and cleaned up the gardens, cutting things back, weeding, and edging a little. I even emptied a few pots that were just looking too scraggly and tired.  There is still a lot blooming, and here are a few pictures from a beautiful September morning in the garden.

Hosta and fern

Perfect rose

Creamy white rose

Euphorbia

Love This

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Happy Birthday Julia! (A Few Days Late)

Apparently someone was a little miffed that there wasn't a blog post about her birthday, so let me wish my sweet girl a belated happy birthday! Even though there was no blog post on the actual day (Friday), I was thinking about her and missing her as I walked around New York. It's because of her that we know our way around New York, and we had a lot of fun visits with her when she lived there. Now she is in Chapel Hill, finishing her MBA and MHA and has a great job offer for next year, and we couldn't be more proud!

Last Day in New York

Waterfall in reflecting pool

Friday was our last day in New York and we had tickets to go to the 9/11 Memorial in the morning. There is still a lot of construction going on, but it is truly amazing to see what has been rebuilt in 11 years. We walked through the tree-lined Plaza, and around  the two reflecting pools which sit on the footprints of the original towers.  Thirty-foot waterfalls cascade into the pools, each then descending into a center void. The names of every person killed on September 11 (and in 1993) are engraved in bronze ledges surrounding the pools.  More than 400 white oak trees are planted around the plaza and will eventually form a canopy over the reflecting pools. I thought the Memorial was very meaningful, especially when I learned that the design was called "Reflecting Absence."

We were there on a beautiful September morning, not a cloud in the sky, and I kept thinking how similar it was to that awful day 11 years ago.

Reflection

1 World Trade Center

We walked around Wall Street for awhile, seeing the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall (where George Washington was inaugurated!), and then walked over by the Brooklyn Bridge. I wanted to walk across the bridge, but we were running out of time, so we caught a cab back to our hotel, picked up our bags, and headed to Penn Station and home. A fun week!

NYSE

Federal Hall with statue of George Washington

Just a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge

NYC, Day Three

Gramercy Park 

I was on my own again on Thursday, so after a bagel and tea for breakfast (at Ess-a-Bagel on Third Ave.), I started walking down Second Avenue towards one of the prettiest streets in Manhattan,  E. 19th,  which leads right into Gramercy Park. If I lived in Manhattan, this is where I would live (and then I could shop at Bergdorf's).  This tree-lined street has beautiful town houses built in the 1920s by some of the most famous American architects. And you have to live on Gramercy Square to get a key to the private garden. Wouldn't that be great, your own private garden in the middle of the city? Ooh, I would love that. 

Gramercy Park

E. 19th

E. 19th

E. 19th

E. 19th

Gramercy--love that ivy

I continued down Irving Place,  just off of Gramercy, and decided to stop at Friend of a Farmer for lunch. We had been here for brunch once before, so I knew it was delicious, and it's a really cute place.

After some refreshment, I continued down Irving Place and over to Broadway where I shopped around the Union Square area, stopping in at ABC Carpet and Home (Martha shops here),  Printicon, a fancy paper store that I have been in before and liked, City Bakery (just to look), and I may have stopped in Fish's Eddy again.

One of the places I have to visit every time I am in Manhattan is the Strand Bookstore, just south of Union Square. It is a great old bookstore, four floors, but I like the basement where I always browse their extensive collection of used and new gardening books. I have found a few treasures there, but didn't find anything this time that I had to have.

Pretty window boxes in East Village

East Village

Leaving the Strand, I decided to head east on E. 11th St.  I walked past Julia's old apartment at the corner of E. 11th and Second Ave., where the gardens look just as pretty, and then headed back up Second Avenue, all the way to E. 42nd. Another day of a lot of walking, but that's what I like about New York, you walk everywhere and because there is always something to look at you don't even realize how far you are walking. Another thing I really like about NewYork is all the small parks in the middle of the city, every couple of blocks it seems. I saw lots of little children playing on playgrounds, young mothers with their babies in strollers, enjoying the park, and of course the every-present homeless guy sleeping on a bench. Thursday was the first day of school for New York kids, so I saw lots of little ones being walked home by their parents, and tons of middle schoolers hanging around the bus stops.

Flowers on the corner

Walt and I decided to have dinner at Libretto's on Second Avenue, a short walk from our hotel. It was one of Julia's go-to restaurants when she lived here, cheap and cheerful Italian food. I had rigatoni with vodka sauce and Walt had lasagna. It was delicious. After dinner, we walked a a few blocks over and up Park Avenue towards Grand Central (and surprise surprise, there is a Magnolia Bakery inside Grand Central), then back down 42nd St. to our hotel. Love those cupcakes!

Grand Central Station, at night

NYC, Day Two

So while Walt was working all day down in the Financial District yesterday, I walked about 500 NYC blocks (just kidding, well maybe not kidding). You sure do walk a lot here. I'm taking lots of Advil.  I started out by having brunch at Sarabeth's, a cute little place on Central Park that I had been to before with Julia and with my high school friends Kathy, Mika, and Hodder when we were all here in 2008. I had French Toast and a plate of bacon that would have fed a family of 4. I did my best. Then I took a stroll around the south end of Central Park.

Central Park in the morning

It was pouring rain in the morning, so I took my time with breakfast and then ducked into Bergdorf Goodman for a bit, but phew, that's not my kind of department store! I guess the people who live on Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue shop there.  When there was a break in the rain I continued down Fifth Avenue and went to the MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, which I really enjoyed.  There is a beautiful sculpture garden, and lots of paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet,  Matisse,  and many others, as well as several exhibitions. I was excited to see Van Gogh's "Starry Night," and a triptych of Monet's "Water Lilies."

My buddy Balzac (by Rodin) at MOMA

MOMA 

Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

Then I decided to go by Rockefeller Center, which was crazy because they were setting up for a big football event that night and there were about 5,000 event people working and you couldn't see a thing. No sign of Matt Lauer.  So off I went to see the New York Public Library, and Bryant Park, two of my favorite places in the city.

NYPL

I think I like Bryant Park so much because it reminds me so much of Paris. The statue of Gertrude Stein helps in that regard, also.  So many people just sitting and enjoying the day, even a little reading area where people can pick up a magazine or book. And the restaurant there is so beautiful, the Bryant Park Grille. Julia and I had lunch there one day when she was working here.

Bryant Park

Love this restaurant in Bryant Park, so pretty

Love this sculpture of Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park

I met up with Walt in the West Village for dinner, where we ate at a great little French bistro that I have wanted to try, Pastis. I had steak frites,  of course,  and Walt had a fresh pea ravioli, both were delicious, and it was a fun dinner. We walked all the way back across town and uptown to our hotel. New York is exhausting!