Skies for The Angels

Skies for The Angels

Sun-kissed clouds after rain against the bluest sky, and foliage

Low-laying white clouds sweep grandly across a crystalline sky

Magnificent sunset near LACMA

The night of the Solar Eclipse and Super Moon as the sun set

“Up North: A Very Short Travelogue”

“Up North: A Very Short Travelogue”

A recent adventure traveling from Southern to Northern California…SoCal to NoCal, and back again,  reveals gems of landscape, cuisine, and most compellingly, relationship.

On the road…Highway 5 offers up vistas. You know you are on a journey. Traveling. Journeying. Voyaging. In movement.

Our heaven away from home…in Larkspur, CA…in Marin County. Right on the (canal) water. The peacefulness of this water…and its feathered inhabitants.

Morning time with flying friends….a view from the end of the pier…enlarged.

Looks like a silvery moon, but this is the reflection of the bright morning sun, cloud and sky…in the water. The flow, shine and shimmer of water brings peace to the soul.  I won’t soon forget this.

Bustling Clement Street in San Francisco’s Richmond District yields up delightful and delicious Asian eateries…like Burma Superstar , which offers the exotic and stimulating tea leaf salad.

Dancing in with the Keith Haring sculpture,  in Golden Gate Park, on the grounds of the De Young Museum.

The decorative painter’s favorite, the “gilded” room in the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum, in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park.

The beautiful walk up the hill to the Legion, overlooking the Bay near Land’s End, is an old stomping ground, and doesn’t disappoint.

The walk holds floral pops of color amidst brush and bramble.

After a magnificent six days, including two of driving, we arrived back safe and sound to Santa Monica, in time for yet another magnificent sunset.

The sky changes colors moment by moment…

The fading panorama of sunset colors and dark clouds are set off dramatically bu street lights which set nearby palm trees aglow. This is Southern California, after all.

California, place of dreams, traffic, light, fire and stars. North or  South, you shower us with your magic. Best of all is the work we are privileged to do here, and the people and relationships that make it all worthwhile. Thank you!

Siting Santa Monica: Ocean to Beach

Siting Santa Monica: Ocean to Beach

There is a magical walkway between Street and Santa Monica Beach.

On Ocean…beguiling architecture can be seen…

complete with detail of tile, brick and terracotta.

To the side..wooden shutters and pattern upon pattern,

giving new meaning to “white picket fence”.

As one moves down the walkway from Ocean to beach….one sees more layers, of pattern and material, plants and metal. Santa Monica knows from gates…weathered, imposing, architectural, artsy.

At the bottom of the walkway, is another magnificent building that manages to combine quaintness and stateliness.

More texture.  This side faces the beach.

Heading back up the walkway, towards Ocean Street again, one passes more brick, banked with foliage and flowers.

Palms, succulents, flowering plants and a mix of materials soften the concrete.

The walkway weaves its magic…feeling for all the world like a picturesque country lane…

Albeit one with some interesting signs, which betray its origins in the world’s entertainment capitol.

More gates, and a visual archway created.

These could be the gates to an Tuscan Villa, if one didn’t see the Pacific Ocean to the right, directly West.

True to ever artful Santa Monica, brick pattern and mosaic design add just enough visual interest to a garden wall to arrest and entice.

It is no accident that the mosaic design leads our eye to the gate, and what lays behind it.

I turn, to take in the Western view…from where I walked,than back Eastward, to Ocean, where I am walking to.

For now.