Just want to pop by quickly to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and share some pics from our house and garden on this wonderful day! We didn't have a Christmas tree for many years, but this year I felt like having one again. I went with a white, gold, and silver theme and tadaaaa..., here is our tree in all its glory! All our ornaments are glass and I really like the warmth and festiveness of the colors. Highest temperatures today are forecasted to be 71 F/21 C and lowest 38F/3 C, so our evening will get pretty chilly for California circumstances. I ..read more

Last month I traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico again to attend a workshop. Let me just say it up front: I love this town. There is something special about the wide-open blue skies and the light there, no wonder many painters, maybe the most famous one being Georgia O'Keeffe, felt and feel drawn to this area. The clean air, the rugged high desert nature, the Adobe architecture are simply stunningly beautiful. Sadly, as usual, I didn't have much time to explore the town and take photos. But on my first day, I realized that I did forget to bring my house shoes and since I am always suffering ..read more

I am trying to pick up my habit to blog monthly about the roses that have bloomed in my garden the previous month. So here come my rose babies that have delighted me in September. Sadly, overall I have a feeling that I am getting less and less rose flowers over the last couple of years. I am not entirely sure why that is so but my best guess is that my roses are not fertilized enough to bloom to their full potential. So far I have been gardening entirely organically in my San Diego garden, but usually organic fertilizers are not as potent as the synthetic ones and I have not had the time ..read more

As I have mentioned on a couple of occasions on this blog, I have a special fondness for vintage and antique china. Somehow I rarely go to thrift stores here in America, but when I am in England, I hardly pass one without taking a look. More often than not I get lucky to pick up a piece that I really like for a very reasonable price. That happened again on our last vacation in England in June this year. Today I would like to share with you some of the treasures that I found on that trip. I am focusing on Blue and White China, which I simply love. It never gets old, is always so fresh and ..read more

It is hard to believe for me that over two months have passed since I posted last time and I would like to apologize to all readers who came here only to find that there is still nothing new. An important and very time-consuming work-related project and a trip to New Mexico came into the way of blogging. But the project is now successfully completed and I am back home since yesterday. In the meantime, autumn has come and I hope with that, calmer days which will leave me more time to post regularly again. The good thing for me is though, that through an interruption like this I realized once m ..read more

Better a little bit late to the party than not going at all... That is how I felt about participating in the Garden Blogger's Bloom Day meme hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens on the 15th of every month. So here is a quick glimpse at some plants that are blooming in my garden in the moment. All photos were taken in the last two days. I am only trying to grow dahlias in my garden since last year, a fact, that I hardly can understand anymore. They are so beautiful and the flowers are holding up surprisingly well in our relentless summer heat. On top of that, they also produce very g ..read more

It has been hot, hot, hot in the last couple of days here in San Diego inland with highest temperatures reaching 99F/37C yesterday. Needless to say that my garden is suffering and I often wish, that I had planted a more drought and heat tolerant garden at this time of the year. There is just one catch, even though it is not politically correct to say, I have to admit that often drought tolerant gardens are not very appealing to me. I simply love my roses too much. But two years ago I had the chance to visit an incredibly beautiful one which was a true exception. I blogged about it already her ..read more

Honestly, we didn't have the best weather when we have been in England for our annual vacation a little over two weeks ago. It was raining quite a bit and it was unusually cold for the season. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our vacation abroad very much, making the best out of every day regardless of the typical English weather caprioles. One day was particularly cold and rainy though, and we hardly made it to drag us out of our cozy and warm cottage and realize our plans to explore the charming Cotswolds villages of Lower and Upper Slaughter. When we parked the car in Lower Slaug ..read more

When my husband and I visited Adlestrop for its Open Village Day to see some of the local gardens that opened to the public for this event, I spotted a woman walking on the street, holding a beautiful little bouquet of garden flowers in her hand. Then shortly after, I saw an elderly lady with another very similar bouquet. I thought there must be a connection and this time I simply had to ask her where she got her flowers from. She held her bouquet up and asked me to smell the roses used in it (they had a very lovely fragrance) and replied, that they were for sale for charity purposes in the li ..read more

The first private garden that we visited this year on our vacation in the Cotswolds in England was Whitcombe House and it was an immediate hit. Located in the beautiful village of Overbury, the garden is completely surrounded by a charming stone wall and therefore seems to be very protected. The size is supposed to be only an acre, but it felt much bigger to me. It contained a pleasing mix of roses, perennials and flowering shrubs carefully arranged in pleasing color combinations surrounding an equally beautiful house. One special feature of this garden was, that there is a small stream f ..read more