Savannah!

I no longer wait for the spring.  In touseled-headed splendor, mid to late spring waited for me in Savannah— azaleas, vines, especially wisteria, sagging with lavender bundles of blooms and going wild, dogwoods, pear trees past blooming and now in darkening leaf . . . From starting as a beautiful old city, Savannah has gone to being knock-out gorgeous!  The best sketchbook would be one filled with page after page of color splashes, very little drawn imagery.

On Tuesday, my most musical friend Sharon and I drove around and about the city while our husbands judged a district choral festival.  We had lunch at Clary's, then drove to Bay Street and took the precarious stairs and cobblestones down to River Street, where we sought ice cream.  Sitting by the river was a slow-you-down experience, and it put me in the Savannah State  Of Mind, which is several notches slower than Atlanta.  Much nicer.

Wednesday was the end of Charles' working at the choral festival, as a judge, and we drove out to Tybee to the Mermaid's Tale Cottage, our home until Monday morning.  My sister, Michelle, and her friend, Billy, met us there.  The next day, her daughter, Nahum and friend, George, arrived.  And Friday night, Julie, Jordan, and the Adorables drove up, so that, on Saturday morning, we were a big group around the breakfast table.

The Mermaid's Tale is a cottage decorated for families with children.  There are mermaids in every room, up in the chandelier, in a screen in front of the fireplace, swimming across the walls, guiding sea horses above the kitchen sink . . .  And finding them became the focus of Bethy's morning.  There were squeals of happiness when another mermaid was discovered, and even Ethan got into the action.

But on Sunday morning, Ethan and Bethy came creeping out of their room.  Ethan looked at my sister and me and said he was looking for someone who was fixing breakfast!  Being three years old and thinking of your stomach before anything else must be a wonderfully uncluttered way to live!

At the beach with the children, there were so many interesting things to look at, so many patterns and subtle colors . . .

If you click on the photo of the wave breaking, you can see the stop-action capture of the droplets.  Waves can be endlessly fascinating!

After the Adorables left, the cottage was too quiet, and Michelle and I drove to Bonaventure Cemetery.  These pictures show how beautiful and peaceful the cemetery was.

I have a soft spot for picket fence gardens, remembering my grandmother's yard.  This one is from Bluffton, just a bit up the coast from Savannah, where friends live:

It could have been a perfect visit, but a storm came to the island in the evening and continued into the night.  I woke up at 2:30 a.m., and for a moment I thought my eyes were gummed together, the darkness was so thick and deep.  I felt my face and discovered my eyes were, indeed, opened, and this darkness so intense you could almost feel it came from the entire island being without power!  The next morning was wet and cold— down to 45˚F from the 84˚F of the day before!  Everything was penetratingly cold and damp, and we turned on the heat in the car to make the five-hour trip back upstate.

Home was a welcomed sight, but cold— it had stormed here for two days.  The heat has been running for four and a half hours and is not up to more than bearable temperature yet.  Brrrr!  I should not have dismissed the winter so casually last week.