s u n l i t

At last, just sneaking in at the end of May, I have some pictures of Glasgow that are sunny. The day still went dark grey, rainy and cold enough for a hot water bottle in the afternoon, but the evenings this week have been gorgeous. Yesterday there was even proper warmth. The crispy cold wind is back today, but the hedges are full of greenery, the trees are out in force, the air is full of oxygen, and the sun is warm on the stone. Lovely.

p r i c k l y

After that lovely soft sheen of the peaches, time for something a bit spikier. Kind of the way I feel at work when certain emails arrive, in contrast with the soft melting feeling I have when I see the doglet's little squashed face.

Cactuses (cacti?) are such strange things. They look so prehistoric. You expect to see a dinosaur, scaly thing coming around the edge of them, but they're actually odd balls of sharpness randomly breaking up the modernist sheen of an Arizonan city. I think they're great, and we were lucky this year to be there for the desert bloom. These are some we saw around in Phoenix (in laws live on Desert Park Lane, which is a pretty cool address) and in the hotel/spa we stayed at in Tucson. The latter had a very relaxed, 1940s feel. It used to be a boarding school for rich girls back then and it is housed in their former dormitories. Now they've added cabins like the one here, and it's a really gorgeous place to be.

If I could have smuggled some of these needles home, I would love to make a cushion of them for our Head of College.

p e a c h y

The weather today here is awful. It's cold, so dark and grey and pelting with rain. It's an indoor day, as doglet has declared several times already. She's not even interested in her ball, only wanting to sit on our laps and groan.

So it's a nice day to sort through my photos of my father-in-law's peach and orange trees in Arizona. Here I waited for the afternoon/evening sun to warm the light and added a close up lens to my pancake one. I think there's still a lot to practice here, but I do like the glowing orange tones against the green. They were just before the ripe stage, but you can anticipate the lovely sweet flesh already. Their skins are so soft and velvety and the colours just look like sunshine.

a r t

I love the mid-century design of Arizona's municipal buildings. We really enjoyed having time to go to a couple of museums while we were there, as much for the buildings as for the things in them. The huge scope, and the flat clean lines look so elegant in the heat.

Going through my photos this morning has shown me that I still have so much to learn, especially in this case about light control, so I'm a long way off from creative photography myself, but the trip to see the Lola Álvarez Bravo exhibition gave good inspiration. 

The little Rodin thinking guys are from the tramway system, which has had a lot of investment in Phoenix. In the 'art district' section they have miniature sculptures as decoration. We loved this starburst in the entrance hall to the Museum, and in fact the typography / font at both places was as much of a draw as anything. 

The last two are small details from the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin West centre. Having studied him in evening classes when I was 18, it was wonderful to see it all for real in the baking sun. He always had red doors. 

s u n

The colours were so bright and dazzling in the desert. These are pictures from a beautiful old hotel in Tucson where we rested, and were looked after with lovely food and delicious wine. God it was nice!

b a c k

Hello. We're back from our dose of warmth and restoration in Arizona. We did very little beyond relaxing, swimming, and enjoying the sunshine. Just lovely being together, not having a list of things to do, and meeting up with old friends.

Unfortunately, towards the end of our trip my mother became very ill back home and has had to have a life-changing operation. So I've been down in Cardiff with her for the last week. Just back with doglet and co-carer now, and Mum is recovering slowly but surely. Turns out that 2013 isn't going to be quite as good as hoped, disappointments and challenges still presenting themselves just when we were really hoping that our luck had changed.

As has become a mini tradition, day one of our Arizona prescription is a trip to Whitfill's nursery to see the healthful plants, and enjoy the gentle ordered pace of gardeners and gardening. The plants are luminous, and the chat under the shade of the trees gentle and comforting. Here are some dying roses, looking so beautiful in their last phase.

Looking forward to some warmth and light here in Scotland too, now that the days are so long. And keeping positive and thankful -- how can anything seem bad when the doglet's jowls are always there to see?