Friday Fun: Mediterranean Inspiration

You don’t have to live in the Mediterranean to be inspired by its architecture and allowing the outdoors indoors.

Hobbit house and modern Med inspiration for this house in Africa, from designrulz.com

Like floating on your own island in the US, photo credit: Hardwood & Hemingway on Tumblr.

New Zealand house with restricted garden space, from NaturalHabitatsLandscapes.

Cape Town beauty from the 1960s, from contemporist.com

The plant life may be different, but what a holiday feeling for this Med inspired villa in Vancouver, from onekindesign.com

Even Russian oligarchs get inspired by the Mediterranean, photo credit: Roman Vlasov from photogrist.com

Echo Poetry

A really fun prompt at dVerse Poets Pub today: to write ‘echo poetry’. An Echo Verse is a poem where the last word or syllable in a line is repeated or echoed underneath to form a rhyming liner. My attempt below is just a quick sprint, inspired by conversations between my parents (and of course the first line of a poem by T.E. Brown). But there are some far more wonderful examples linked up to the site, both funny and thoughtful,  so I strongly urge you to check them out.

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Hot?
Even in a heat wave, there’s bliss to be found.
Around?
Ferns, palm-shade, pool to cool us down…
You frown?
Flowers burst forth in coloured refrain.
Again?
Oh, you’re such a philistine and bore!
Once more.

Friday Fun: Let’s Pretend It’s Summer

The snow isn’t here yet, it’s just miserable and grey. So let’s escape into summer with these inspiring pictures of gardens, terraces and patios.

housebeauty.net

piximus.net

Roof garden in Maine, Robert Passaldo in Architectural Digest.

Laura Silverman’s home, from Anafternoonwith.com

Garden Room Studio, Model London.

Asian pool, from Houzz.com

Or maybe we should contemplate moving to the Southern Hemisphere. I once knew a university professor who was teaching in Brazil September to February, London March to June and spending the summers in Italy…

Summer Idyll

Copyright: M. Thomson, http://www.bbc.co.uk

Summer at last and the heat is going to our heads over at dVerse Poets Pub.  Here is a remembrance of things past and a vision of things future.

Our summers no longer the buzz-filled lolling

in hay mounds

or stooping for details

and blow-squeak through grass stalks.

No more lifting our gaze for cloud-naming, tongue-hopping,

when laid-back wonders were open to all

and the neighbours’ cherries the sweetest by far.

 

Now lazy means each one tucked snug on our planet

in a bubble of tablets and phones,

convinced we’re connecting

enthralled to go global

we feel the roar and hum of the entire world in our palms.

 

While bees expire by installments around us…