I have a million and a half pictures from our day yesterday. We left early. We stayed out late. It was fun. We went to Rockport, quite unexpectedly so apologies E.M. that I didn't give you a call or anything. We started the day out down in Beverly at Long Hill, a property belonging to the trustees of reservations. They have nice gardens. And my mother in law LOVES gardens. We didn't intend to go to Rockport... or Gloucester. But we did.
We have a tendency to like to go over to Newburyport or Portsmouth NH more when we have guests. I swear I haven't been to downtown Rockport in 10 years aside from a brief interview to do some bitchy art woman's webpage four years ago. It was winter. No one was there. I didn't even get a ticket when I parked in an expired meter and didn't have a coin to feed it with. I hate going to Rockport or Gloucester in the summer.
As much as I like the actual towns and what they have to offer, I hate the...
a) traffic
b) tourists
c) obscene prices for things I'd like to buy
d) parking situation
e) all of the above
They are nice places, honestly. I love to go to them and see them I just wish I wasn't one of 1,900,000,000 people there at that given second. The more time I spend not living on the north shore, the more I appreciate NOT being on the north shore. While it is nice to visit, I think my blood pressure would be astronomical if I actually had to deal with living in either of those two towns.
But I digress. Totally.
Here are some pictures from yesterday.
Long Hill, Trustees of the Reservations (follow the links to learn more about the beautiful places in this state you can visit...)
 |  |
| The garden gate - made of twisted branches. I loved this! | Geoff in front of the garden gate, with his far lookers and a map. He's gung ho! |
 |  |
| They had three beautiful lotus ponds, four feet deep and still as glass. I love the way the clouds are reflected here, and the flowers were blooming so sweetly | The house has a huge wisteria growing up the back side, and it was just lovely. It is modeles after homes in Charleston SC., from the entries to the porches to the terraced gardens. |
 |  |
| lace cap hydrangias. I hate hydrangias, but these were so beautiful. and while I admit to hating hydrangias, yes... i have a ton of them in my garden... don't ask me why. | Interesting bird hanging out in the garden... |
 |  |
| Jessica takes advantage of meditation time by the lotus pool | Geoff on the "wobblyboard" bench. The kids could have stayed here all damn day if we didn't drag them off. |
 |  |
| Geoff met one of the staff members, John, who is studying botany in college. John was very intriguing to Geoff, and Geoff followed him around asking him questions. | John asked Geoff to help him use a tool to pull up saplings growing up in the garden. Geoff was more than happy to oblige... |
 | |
| | |
Essex, Rockport, Gloucester
 |  |
| The Salt Marsh from Farnham's parkinglot while we discussed where we were going. | Motif 1 in Rockport, with "The Formidable" very small tall ship by its side. |
 |  |
| Door florals... very lovely. There was a lot of lovely gardening happening on the Streets of Rockport... | View from the Backside of the Teddy Bear Inn |
| | |
 |  |
| Too damn cute. I vomited. Thanks. Kidding. | Dude was WAY too into lighthouses, I could tell. He was enthralled by the fishermen pulling the catch of the day up onto trucks... |
 |  |
| Beautiful view of the little harbor of Rockport. | This dog cracked my shit right up. He hopped right up on that post and sat there like that while his owners went in and bought fudge. Holy crap I laughed. |
 | "Once had a love, but it was a gas. Then turned out, had a house of glass..." "Uh, no Blondie, try the lyric HEART of glass there, see if it works better... take nine hundred, thirty two..." |
 Sunset at St. Peter's Square in Gloucester... and Jessica at the St. Peter's Square Buoy. |  |
I'm pictured here with a giant crow's feather in my ponytail. It was in our backyard... and we brought it for the cache, only it was too big to fit in the box, so I carried it with me the rest of the day.
It was fun taking my inlaws, much more fun than I thought it would be ... it was an easy hike, and they love the outdoors but I don't think they get out into it too deeply often enough. It was a very easy geocache, and my mother in law impressed me with her sense of humor, one of the biggest things I love about her. Geoff was in awesome form today, behaved pretty damn well, and showed them the way on the hike... he is such the trooper.
We had a lovely barbecue dinner with fresh corn from a farmstand in New Hampshire. I'm ready for bed, and should go be more sociable. They're watching the Black Adder movie that Doug got me for my birthday. It's the one where he travels through time. My favorite part is when he beats up Shakespeare and yells at him "this is for every high school student ever who had to study your horrible plays," and kicks him saying "this is for Kenneth Brannagh's version of Hamlet." Hugh Laurie is in it of course, and he's genius. I love him.
Rupa got after me the other day saying I should write more about stuff that I think, rather than the day to day activities. She has a point. It being summer, and me being willing to act crazy and run around with feathers sticking out of my head, I have kept things rather light. I'll think of something weighty to write about opinion wise, and post something eventually. I could do a whole tirade on dog crap, hence the picture at the very top of the page today, because I have serious issues about people leaving dogshit on sidewalks... I've talked about it before in the Marblehead memories of my crazy psychologically imbalanced former neighbor. So I'll come up with something Rupa, I promise!
No comments:
Post a Comment