Right now — at midmorning in Stuttgart — it’s 59°F. Our high today is predicted to be only 69°,with all-day clouds and intermittent rain.
It’s been this way since last week, and it looks like summer will not return until next Wednesday.
But yesterday about 5:30 p.m., I caught a few minutes of sun shining through my little arrangement of miniature roses, spirea, and wild strawberries.
An hour later, it was raining.
“Yūgao dana nōryō zu” (cooling beneath an evening glory canopy), 1880s, a woodcut print by Yoshitoshi Taiso, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The image “shows a couple in the country with a child and a teapot, sitting on a mat beneath a trellis covered with yūgao vines, enjoying the full moon,” according to the Library’s online catalogue.
“Group of women having a tea party in Queensland, Australia,” ca. 1887, photographer unknown, via State Library of Queensland.
Beautiful Platycerium or staghorn ferns on the wall and columns. These could be Platycerium superbum, which are native to Australia. The one on the left seems to be supporting another plant — maybe a coleus.
How quiet it is, how silent,
like an afternoon in Pompeii.— Louise Glück, from “A Summer Garden“
The patio at Vroman’s Bookstore, 60 E. Colorado Street, Pasadena, California, Spring 1923, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Vroman’s Bookstore was founded in 1894 by Adam Clark Vroman and is still a Pasadena cultural institution, with three locations in the city.
However, the little patio above, with its fig tree and fountain, no longer exists. Vroman’s moved to 695 E. Colorado Street in 1929.
Johnston used this image in her garden and historic house lectures.
Stongfjorden, Norway, ca. 1910, by Paul Stang, via Fylkesarkivet i (County Archives of) Sogn og Fjordane Commons on flickr.
I love the striped curtains — and those here.
enclos*ure 