Today's post is brought to you by the letter F

F is for Chelsea

Yes that makes perfect sense.

I'm talking about the Chelsea Flower Show.

Listen, this A-Z thing is a lot of work.

Besides remembering which letter of the alphabet we're on, and then actually writing the post, I'm also sorting and scanning a bajillion pictures. And I know its only Day 7 but I'm pretty sure I've already used more than my alloted number of words.

On to the letter of the day which is F.

Which stands for The Chelsea Flower Show.

Keep up folks!

I thought if I chose to blog about a Flower Show the post might just write itself.

You know... Look! Flowers!

Pretty!

My blog brain is tired.

circa May 2007

The show is held in London for five days every May on the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and is one of the

premiere garden events in the world.

I attended with friends which just happens to be another great f word.

I really hope that last sentence doesn't bring out creepy stalkers in my google search engine.

When I look at that picture and see those faces I think about how we've scattered to the four corners since that day...one to Asia, one to the US West Coast, me to the US East coast and one who has made two moves somewhere in between.

The world feels so big some

times.

Besides all the purty flowers there were an awful lot of people at the show.

You have to buy tickets in advance and I think it always sells out which means they can't squeeze one more soul into this space.

It was also H-O-T so we may have needed to break for a glass of Pimms.

I haven't seen these three girls in a couple of years but they peek at my blog from time to time. Won't they be hopefully pleasantly surprised to discover they're famous?

I'm supposed to be talking about the Chelsea Flower Show aren't I?

Most of the show is actual gardens created by some very talented gardeners.

Visitors walk around and admire the beauty and creativity on display and come away with fabulous ideas for their gardens at home.

This photograph was taken in front of one of the indoor displays.

Something was precious but thanks to my stellar photography skills I am not sure now what that might have been.

Time spent at the flower show with friends perhaps?

That's special.

And a memory.

And is indeed precious.

If you'd like to join the blog challenge click the A-Z button on my sidebar for more information and linking.

Over Here-in the Wednesday Hodgepodge Vol 21

Welcome to this week's edition of the Wednesday Hodgepodge, the day we link our answers for all the world to see. If you're visiting today from the A-Z blog challenge you'll find today's letter in #8. And you're very welcome to join the Hodgepodge today or any Wednesday. Answer the questions on your own blog and then link back here at the bottom of my post.

1. National Read a Road Map Day falls on April 5th. Would people say you have a good sense of direction? Do you rely on a GPS when you drive somewhere new? When was the last time you used a map?

Ha. I might win the prize for absolute worst sense of direction in the Hodgepodge today. I am directionally challenged. I think either you've got a good sense of direction or you don't and I don't. I'm not sure how I got along before the sat nav (GPS) became mainstream...probably used my head more. I had to read a map just recently but I can't remember where we were going. (see! I told you!) Actually I'm not great at the map thing either because reading a map + the motion of the car=feeling green.

I feel I must add here that after almost 27 years of marriage and literally thousands of trips with me at his side my hubs still can't believe I don't know where I am or where I'm going much of the time. He says crazy things like, "Just look where the sun is in the sky." Huh? And, "We were just there yesterday...how can you not remember which road we took?" And, "I think you might have trouble finding your way out of a paper bag." He's right. Incidentally...there is no prize in the Hodgepodge.

2. What's your favorite cookbook?

I may have a bit of a cookbook obsession so this one is really hard. Two that I use often would be Feast by Nigella Lawson and The Barefoot Contessa At Home. I also love Junior League cookbooks which are typically best of the best sorts of recipes. And my girls gave me a cookbook for Christmas from a restaurant in SC that we love called Soby's (New South Cuisine)...beautiful pictures to go with delicious recipes. Their shrimp and grits are the absolute best!

3. What painting would you like to 'walk into' and experience? Why?

"Le Jardin de Monet, les iris" by Claude Monet

Claude Monet (1900) Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Why? Well, for starters, if I were 'in' this painting I'd be standing in a beautiful garden in the lovely French village known as Giverny...Monet's Garden paintings were taken from his own garden. Mostly though, there is something about a beautiful garden that inspires and soothes and speaks. See #8.

4. What annoys you more-misspellings or mispronunciations?

I find them both a teensy bit annoying but mispronunciations are the worst. If a person mispronounces a word all I can think about is that word. Forget whatever it is they're trying to tell me...in my head I really want to correct them. We all have our issues, don't we?

5. What is something your mother or father considered important?

Living with integrity. That is also important to hubs and I.

6. Do you like or dislike schedules?

I like schedules but I love flexibility. I make a schedule for myself most days...it helps me accomplish tasks that I'd put off otherwise and it helps me feel productive. I can let go of the schedule when needed though and I have no trouble living free as a bird when we're on holiday or when someone calls and says 'Lets do lunch.'

7. Let's have some fun with National Poetry Month (that would be April)...write your own ending to this poem-"Roses are red, Violets are blue...."

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

I am more than ready

To bid winter adieu!

If you'd like to read the history behind that little ditty you'll find it here.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

I'm using the random thought today as my A-Z blog challenge post...you can read about that here or click on the A-Z button on my sidebar. It's a lot to write two big posts in a day so I'm giving myself ( and you too) a break on Wednesdays. Or at least this Wednesday. Plus today's letter is E and it's obvious I'm going to say E is for England, right? Instead of a long wordy blurb here (oops-too late) I'm going to post a picture that makes me supremely happy-

Our English garden. There is a quote I read once that says this-

"Many things grow in a garden that were never sown there." Thomas Fuller

I don't know if Mr. Fuller meant that in the literal sense but I like to think of it another way. When I consider all the life lessons I learned while living overseas I realize that many, if not all of them, were examined and contemplated and absorbed while sitting in this beautiful garden. I am quite certain my whole family feels the same.

Mind the bog

If you're looking for this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge questions you'll find them here.

Of course you want to read this post before you go grab those questions, right?

D is for Dartmoor

In April of 2007 Daughter1 was spending the Easter break with her roommate in Memphis and Daughter2 was spending the Easter break in Bulgaria on a Service Project trip with her Young Life group so hubs and I made some travel plans too. We rented a cottage in the Dartmoor National Park which is situated in the southwestern part of England. Our cottage rental confirmation included driving directions which at first had us worried. They said something along the lines of '...turn right just past the big rocks.'

Okay.

We needn't have worried.

As we came over the rise I said, 'I'm guessing that white house is our cottage.'

I guessed right.

I've never been to the moon but there was something about the landscape here that felt lunar. Normally the moors are soggy, or as our guidebook put it, '...use caution so as not to sink in the peat bogs.' Now that would be a problem. Fortunately not a single raindrop fell during our trip and we hiked to our hearts content.

I cannot really explain how amazing it feels to stand in the middle of a moor and to look around as far as the eye can see without spying another single solitary soul.

Well, besides hubs and the pup I mean.

We hiked for hours and miles and hours and miles and while we did run into a few hikers scattered here and there for the most part we had the whole world to ourselves.

At least it felt like we did.

We started the day at this little bridge and were pleasantly surprised to come across running water out on the moor....a stream snaking its way from who knows where to who knows where.

Like an oasis in the desert.

We were more than ready to take off our boots and have a picnic lunch when we stumbled across both stream and waterfall.

Waterfall?

How odd.

Hubs and I have noticed in our travels that people living back in medieval times moved a whole lotta rock. I say its because there wasn't any television and they had to fill the time somehow. Hubs says he doesn't think that's quite right. Whatever the reason there are rock fences running from one end of nowhere to another. We did read that these fences marked farms and fields which makes sense since we saw more than a few sheep that weekend.

Our pup wanted to play...

The sheep did not.

There are also wild horses with shaggy manes living on the moors.

The scraggly yellow plants are called gorse and they grow wild too.

We both loved the weekend we spent hiking and relaxing in Dartmoor. I've never been anywhere else quite like it and its easy to see where Arthur Conan Doyle gained his inspiration for The Hound of The Baskervilles.

We made a stop enroute to Dartmoor which I'll write about later in the alphabet but for now I'll end this post where our hikes ended...

at the pub.

No matter where you roam in England, you will almost always end up at a pub.

If you'd like to join the blog challenge click the A-Z button on my sidebar for more information and linking.

This way to the Wednesday Hodgepodge Questions

If you're visiting today from the A-Z challenge you'll find that post here.

And of course you are welcome to join the Hodgepodge here tomorrow and every Wednesday.

Here are the questions for this week's Hodgepodge...

see you back here tomorrow (Wednesday) to link answers.

1. National Read a Road Map Day falls on April 5th. Would people say you have a good sense of direction? Do you rely on a GPS when you drive somewhere new? When was the last time you used a map?

2. What's your favorite cookbook?

3. What painting would you like to "walk into" and experience? Why?

4. What annoys you more- misspellings or mispronunciations?

5. What is something your mother or father considered important?

6. Do you like or dislike schedules?

7. Let's have some fun with National Poetry Month (that would be April)...write your own ending to this poem-

"Roses are Red

Violets are blue..."

Incidentally if you'd like to read the history behind that little ditty you'll find it here.

8. Insert your own random thought in this space.

A Canterbury Tale but first the weekend and some other stuff

I spent some time this weekend trying to figure out how to work the A-Z April challenge posts into my blog on a daily basis. Some days I may just answer the challenge, some days I'll tack the challenge onto other news (like today) and some days I may put out two separate posts. I am going to continue hosting the Wednesday Hodgepodge because that's something I really enjoy. Those questions have also been floating around in my brain, frequently colliding with the A-Z ideas I've been considering. My head has been full of a lot of words this weekend people. Hubs might be happy he was traveling.

On the bright side, since hubs was away again I don't really have anything too exciting to share. Oh wait...the tile guy was here all day Friday and Saturday. Whoohoo! That may not be exciting to you but it's pretty exciting to me. He's finally got some tile on the wall now and we are really happy with our selection. He also repaired the ding in the hall ceiling and did a remarkable job. I think I might be able to live with a repair after all.

Now on to today's letter...

C is for Canterbury and the White Cliffs of Dover

This was a day trip so my description might be brief.

Might.

And doesn't the sky in this photo look fake?

It's not.

It was that kind of day.

We made our way to Canterbury via the White Cliffs of Dover.

They're chalk which explains the color and seeing them up close and personal was something hubs really wanted to do while living in the UK.

One sunny day back in May 2005 we loaded up the car with our dog and our teenagers (yes kids, we're going to see 'more rocks'), and we drove to County Kent.

Let me tell you-the sun may have been shining but it was windy.

Oh my word, the wind!

Wind does not make for attractive photographs.

Standing beside the choppy English Channel a couple of thoughts came to mind the first one being- so glad I'm not on a ferry to France! Seriously...look at those whitecaps.

I also found myself, much to my kids dismay, singing an old song written during WWII called The White Cliffs of Dover . Hey, I was standing right in front of the White Cliffs of Dover...how could I not sing? Only the chorus though, because that's all I knew.

Until we moved overseas I wasn't all that interested in understanding the battles fought in WWII. That changes when you stand on the ground where soldiers died and you climb inside a Nazi bunker on a beach in France and you walk thru a cave carved into the Dover hillside. Suddenly that war and what it required in terms of sacrifice and courage and what it gave us in the way of freedom becomes personal and very real.

I may have sung that chorus all the live long day.

Since it was so windy we decided to carry on down the road to Canterbury, home to the Church of England and one of the world's most magnificent cathedrals.

It was in this cathedral in 1170 that Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered.

1170.

The dates are something that never cease to amaze.

The cathedral is part of a World Heritage site and of course its also the setting for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Did you read that in high school?

In the Middle English language?

Did you buy the CliffsNotes?

Are you wishing there were CliffsNotes for my blog so you could read the condensed version?

I get it...I'll hush now.

If you get to England don't bypass the sights and scenery of County Kent.

So poignant and so beautiful~

Even dogs and teenagers would say that's true.

If you'd like to join the blog challenge click the A-Z button on my sidebar for info and linking.

I'll tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want...

I want to finish the April A-Z blog challenge...Day 2-I'm on my way...

B is for Bethany Beach

Okay, so you might have been expecting a more exciting locale but it's only Day 2 of the challenge so don't be knocking Bethany Beach. We spent several family vacations here with friends and my girls will say those holidays were some of their favorites.

I already told the story of how we had to run from the law in this little beach town one memorable 4th of July so I won't retell that now but, if you need details you'll find them here.

We rented the same house in Bethany about a block from the beach four years in a row. It was in this little Delaware hamlet that hubs and his partner in crime (J) earned their nickname-The Pack Mules. Four girls and two mothers need an awful lot of gear hauled to and from the beach every day.

The guys had a routine- get up, make coffee to go cups, load the chairs, umbrellas, shovels, towels, blankets, coolers, fishing poles, tackle boxes, noodles, rafts, and buckets onto their backs (hence their nickname) and then walk one block to the beach to stake our claim. The beach tended to get crowded as the morning wore on and we didn't like to have people on top of us so the Pack Mules developed a strategy. They created ginormous and interesting sand sculptures every morning while they waited on the fish to bite. These sand sculptures were something to see so people gave them a wide berth and thus, did not crowd us. This one is a giant seahorse and scallop shell...

The girls enjoyed construction too. If they weren't in the water they were building houses.

Literally...this is Daughter1 relaxing on her sand couch after a hard day's dig. We used to joke that we were going to hire the kids to move mulch when we got back home because let me tell you, these girls moved some major sand.

Late afternoons were spent playing games, working jigsaw puzzles and napping-

At least once during the week the dads would take the daughters to the pier to check out the catch of the day. They loved it...

Some evenings we'd visit the boardwalks in nearby Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach where caramel corn, Dippin Dots, and arcade games were all part of the fun.

Other times we'd hang out on the beach, eat pizza, fly kites, fish, and pose as The Spice Girls...

circa 1998

The Spice Girls were big back in our Bethany Beach days. In fact, we may have a pose from every summer holiday spent in Bethany...

Several years after our last Bethany Beach vacation these same friends came to visit us in the UK. We all went to Belgium for a long weekend, and while it took a little coercion, we did manage to convince the girls to recreate the old days in the middle of Brussels's Grand Place. They went along with it because they were pretty sure no one they knew would be watching.

Whoever would have guessed I'd have a blog one day?

circa 2004

Brussels also starts with B so I think it's okay to include this picture here.

The girls now in their 20's may think otherwise.

I promise you that not all of my posts in the A-Z will be about little girl days.

But some of them will.

Nor will all the posts be this long.

But they might because let's face it-I'm wordy.

I didn't have a blog when my girls were young so I use my blog as a keepsake of sorts. I'm pretty sure summers at the beach are memories worth keeping.

If you'd like to join the blog challenge click the A-Z button on my sidebar for more information and linking.

A my name is Anna and I come from Alabama

...and I sell apples.

Actually none of that is true. I stumbled across an April blog challenge while reading Sheila's blog yesterday and thought, why not? The challenge starts today so I'm not quite at the top of my game but since I added my link I guess I'm in. For the record, I don't think I've ever been at the top of my game...still sort of waiting for that to happen.

The challenge is called A-Z and the idea is to post every day (except Sundays) during the month of April. This means participants will write 26 posts and those posts can be on any topic. Or no topic as is often the case here but, there is one catch...remember the challenge title? A letter a day-that's the catch.

Since I am the queen of random I initially thought I'd just carry on with my usual nonsense and work the letter in somehow. The more I've thought about it though the more I've decided I need a theme. I love to travel and I've moved umpteen times and I enjoy taking pictures even if I'm not very good at it so here's my plan-I'm going to choose a photo from our very large and still mostly unorganized collection and blog about it. Something about the photo's location will meet the letter of the day requirement. It's still pretty random but I have a jumping off point which helps. Since there's no time like the present, here we go~

A is for Annapolis

circa 2000

This picture says everything I feel when I think about the years we spent living in Maryland. My girls were 4 and 6 when we moved to the Annapolis area and 13 and 15 when we left. They lived out their childhood beside the water and the pinks and purples of this sunset photo taken from the back of our boat makes my heart happy.

Annapolis was the decade of little girls in our house. Little girls who learned to roller blade and water ski, subtract and write cursive, play the violin, tickle the ivories, perform an arabesque and sing on a stage. Little girls who floated innocently into their tweens...who thought they knew what the teenage years held but were surprised by life and the twist it took, carrying them across another sea and into something new and unexpected and scary and wonderful.

The years we spent in Annapolis were happy years, crammed with music and memory...dance and dreams...growing up and getting ready. I think each stage of life helps prepare us for the next. Annapolis is where we planted roots...it's also where we grew our wings.

If you'd like to join the party visit one of the host blogs for information, linking and button codes.