The castle loomed large in the train window even from a distance. Sitting on a hill nestled by its quaint town it was an imposing place. A castle! A real life royalty-and-feudalism sort of castle with a bloody medieval history and a deep well under a rusty grate and a garderobe and coats of arms and rough-hewn stone and at least nine Van Dycks, all portraits of the castle’s noble family members. A castle with its own medieval chapel and an armory room with a Medici table and Queen Victoria’s coronation homage chair and a Casali and at least three Gainsboroughs and an execution order signed by Queen Elizabeth I for Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk.
Spring is for new beginnings. Cliche, okay, but it's the season whose whole purpose is building and growing, so this weekend I built and planted. My work is sponsoring a house build through Habitat for Humanity of Orange County and as part of the sponsorship several of my coworkers and I volunteered at a build site on Saturday.
What do you do when it's spring and the azaleas are blooming and you've got a bulldog you're trying to photograph running around like crazy all over the front yard? You just keep shooting. And shooting. And shooting. And shooting...
I am terribly neglectful of my garden, but every year when it starts turning green I get all ambitious in my backyard. "Pumpkins over here and lettuce over there and potatoes in this bed and herbs in these containers!" It gets a little out of hand.
