Home

I am home in Texas this week.

My house is a magical place, the kind you hear about in stories with happy endings.

(this is from a few winters ago when we had a snow storm)

Below is the view I have from my bedroom balcony

and yes, my grandfather has peacocks

He is slightly eccentric.

He also keeps his artwork in all of the bathrooms.

The picture above is a self-portrait of my grandfather in sculpture form from many years ago when he was sporting a good moustache.

He also collects old books from France. The two below are from the seventeenth century.

Also, we have the best bathtub in the entire world. It has jacuzzi jets, and when I was a little girl, I used to pour half a bottle of bubbles into it and let the jets build me a mountain of foam. There are many humiliating naked pictures of me doing this.

My grandfather also still keeps his antique 1960's home exercise bike on his bedroom deck.

Below is just a small portion of the books in the house.

My favorite place to sit in the whole house, the piano:

Also, have I ever mentioned that my grandfather has a green thumb the size of Texas?

My grandfather's green house has real mourning doves flying all over the place and nesting. There were once many more, but a possum got most of them.

When I was a little girl, I helped my grandfather make this mosaic stepping stone. It still sits in my portion of his garden. (My portion meaning that once upon a time I asked him to set aside a small area for me to garden, and he ended up doing all of the work)

My swing. Many a good book has been read while swinging here.

This bell hung on my great-grandfather's naval ship during WWII. Now it hangs in the garden and we ring it every time we feed the koi fish. Did you know that you can train fish? Every time they hear it, they swarm to the surface and look for fishy food.

Some green shoots in the green house. These will become beautiful flowers and vegetables to put in the ground in a few weeks.

I loved growing up here. Many of my happiest childhood memories took place in this house and garden.