View From La Foce

 The gardens of La Foce spread themselves out over the hills of Tuscany. Planned out a hundred years ago, parts of it feel much older. By early autumn, the roses are fading and the wisteria blossoms are long gone. Autumn is when it's easy to appreciate the beauty of sunlight filtered through the greenery—so many shades of green and gold! Lichens creep over the stonework in dots, speckles and feathery dustings, doing their best to integrate these manmade structures into the growing, breathing surroundings.

Architectural Salvage

 A collection of remnants rests, half forgotten, on the edge of property owned by a museum. Weeds grow among the stone columns and lamp posts. Dentils carved in scrolls and leaves support nothing. Terra cotta ladies stair up at the ever changing sky, hair flowing among the creeping greenery. They are survivors from a more elegant, more decorated age, waiting to be discovered and repurposed.

Elevator Door

 Step into the lobby of many buildings in midtown Manhattan and you may find the remaining accoutrements of a more elegant age. This detail of an elevator door is an example of the design revolution that took place in the 1920s and early 1930s. The sinuous vegetation of art nouveau was never big in New York but Art Deco, with its more obvious geometry really took off. Straight lines, zigzags and spirals with Machine Age finishes were all the rage in the skyscrapers that were going up all over town. It's a reminder of a more elegant age.

Spiderwebs In The Morning

 A cool morning finally brought a change from our hot, dry summer. Weighed down with droplets of dew, the webs of all the neighborhood spiders were no longer inconspicuous. Each web, meant to ensnare, had become a jeweled hammock, sagging under the weight of those glistening beads. No small moth or fly could help but notice such fancy, glistening structures. The spiders would have to wait for their dinner. 

Bee and Passion Flower

 A passion flower vine has crept along a chain link fence, completely upholstering the fence with leaves, buds and now flowers. You can smell the scent from a half block away. One particular type of big, slow bumble bee has found the vine. They ignore me and work each flower, their backs covered in bright pollen. Two or even three bees can share each flower for a short while, never bothering with territorial squabbles. They have a job to do and there are more than enough of those heavenly flowers to go around.

Wall Plaque, Marylebone, London

 Wandering the streets of a city is endlessly entertaining. Walk down a side street and you may discover a seemingly random bit of ornamentation remaining from when a building was first erected. Set into a brick wall, this potted apple tree has all the design hallmarks of the years when Oscar Wilde was still tossing off bon mots. I wonder if it is terra cotta and whether, under all that tasteful fog gray paint, there might be original now-unfashionably-bright colors. No matter---it survives. In its current monochrome, we can still enjoy the simplified dimensionality of this remaining example of late Victorian design.

Little White Stars

 The ferny-leaved stems grew all summer until they covered the fence in a delicate green blanket. Then one day, small stars began to open, a few here and there. They don’t form clusters. Instead, they scatter themselves, becoming daytime stars in a green sky. They are not showy, just a small interruption in that swath of green. Just enough to add punctuation to this leafy wall.