Flowers with History on Mother’s Day

20180506_175353

Today is Mother’s Day in the States. They celebrate it here like we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8.  The only difference is that 8 of March is a day off, but Mother’s day is always on the second Sunday in May. However, we are always happy to celebrate Mother’s day again. And again. After all, however many times we celebrate this day is never going to be enough, since our mothers are our everything (and even more) and we can only hope that our children will be able to say something like that about us.  Now for a little story, very suitable for this nice day. In the photo I post peonies.  However, these are not simple peonies, but flowers with a history. They grow under the windows of my neighbor and friend, Ansley. Several years ago Ansley bought a house in my neighborhood. At Christmas, she received a postcard from former owners of the house, where they asked her not to dig up the land near the garage windows. The postcard came very timely, as the husband of Ansley, a great lover of beautiful landscape designing, had already set his sights on this part of the yard and decided what to plant there. From the letter of former owners, it turned out that when the former landlady gave birth to her daughter and came from the hospital to this house, her mother presented peony bulbs, and they planted them in the sunniest place under the windows…. Since that time every year on this place bushes grow and they bloom on Mother’s Day. Ansley, of course, waited for the spring and it happened: beautiful bushes grew up and blossomed with pale pink buds on Mother’s Day.  Ansley has two wonderful children: a boy and a girl.  Now every year Ansley along with the children carry flowers to the neighbors and congratulate everyone: the flowers are so heavy that the bushes are leaning towards the ground under the weight of the flowers, and she cuts them in dozens every day. I can’t describe how much these flowers inspire me:  I photograph flowers, I put them in different vases, I am about to eat them, – how much I enjoy it.  And here I give them to you virtually! Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

Advertisement

The Azores: 50 Shades of Green Islands

IMG_20180106_170022_216When I first heard about the Azores, I didn’t know where it was. As a person who travels extensively, I felt ashamed. I had to google it. When I saw the pictures, I was mesmerized in front of the computer, such lush greens and deep blues. When we hear the word island, we subconsciously think-beach vacation and scenery, maybe a sunset over the water.  Some beach scenery Continue reading “The Azores: 50 Shades of Green Islands”

Happy New Year: a Year of Dog

20161021_140038

Dear all, Happy New Year!  We had such a huge New Year party in Russian way, that it took me some time to recover. According to Chinese Horoscopes, this 2018 is the Year of the Dog. All my family are Big Dog Lovers. I grew up with dogs and I love to have them around. I sincerely think that dogs combined in them all the best humans qualities. For several years we babysit different dogs (I have several posts about it) , but  we didn’t had our own.  My son begged for that, but with our intensive travel schedule, I was hesitating to have a dog.  However, we always keep saying to him “later, one day, we’ll see”. So, after all trials with different kind of friends’ dogs, we finally decided to take our own.  We simply ran out of excuses for our son.  We came to Atlanta Humane society to find a dog for us. My son saw one, dragged us towards his cage, and we all fell in love with him at first site. Despite the fact he was only 7 months old, he already had a history.  He was found as a baby and adopted by someone, when he was 2 month old.  However, his “family” returned him when he was 7 months old. The same day we met him. He looked very sad and scared of everything. I had a lot of concerns why his family returned him. Maybe he was not house trained? Maybe aggressive?  We didn’t know.  I knew it was risky to take him right away, since you can’t return dog again – it would be really cruel. But we followed our instinct and took him with us.  We changed his name (it was probably fifth time because we didn’t know his previous name, only Humane society one), bought him toys and bed and took him home…

… It happened 3 years ago. Now, our dog is a spoiled baby. We love him and he is a part of the pack. He knows it. He still have a separation issue, and cry when we leave him even for a ten minutes, but we are working on that.  He is our little philosopher, looking at life with his deep dog’s look.

This year is a Year of Dog. I wish you all to be surrounded by people with the best dogs’ qualities: faithfulness, dedication and kindness, by people who love you without any reason, no matter how do you look, and always ready to forgive you. Happy New Year!

Labor Day is over

Labor Day weekend is over. First time I didn’t go anywhere. Before, we always tried to go somewhere far to catch the last summer fun. (For example, last year we flew to Budapest, Hungary-we bought tickets at 10 AM for 5PM flight the same day). Well, this year Continue reading “Labor Day is over”