August Morning

It is a lovely Summer morning. The yard is fine for a day or two. The housework is caught up. I have time to sit on the deck, under the new umbrella, and remember happenings of the past few weeks.

We spent a weekend in California, visiting a daughter and her husband, sightseeing, and just having a good time. We did a lot of eating too. The main draw to California, at this time, was a chance to see a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Orinda, CA. The  home is going up for sale and an open house was planned for a Saturday and Sunday. Our daughter was able to buy tickets for the four of us.  We drove to a BART station and a bus drove us to the property.  The home was tucked away at the end of a lane, metal gates at the edge of the driveway. The property is large, with two streams and lots of trees and gardens. The home was built in 1948 for the Buehler family. The  construction was very interesting, cement blocks became the inside walls as well as the outside walls. No painted walls to speak of.  There were walls filled with redwood siding, redwood cupboards, redwood doors. Most of the furniture was built into the walls. In the frontroom, or gathering room, the windows were met by the backs of built in couches. The ceilings were quite low, in some places low enough to catch the forehead of a few observes . The diningroom and livingroom both had gold leaf on the ceilings. The backs of the dining chairs were low. Mr Wright did not want them to obstruct the view into the gardens. We were told not to take pictures inside, but we could take pictures of the garden.  I had a very fine time looking at the home and garden built so many years ago by a famous man.