Room & View

Am still in process of setting up a small room (probably originally a nursery) as a library, integrating many of the relics brought home from my office at the university library when I retired last week. A few of the books now shelved in this room are visible below.

The dinosaur wall-clock was with me at my job for at least the past twenty years, and now it has entered civilian life along with me too. The painted bear was a gift my daughter made for me.thirty years ago when she was a gifted child.

The work table and serviceable blotter and chair were already in the apartment, but the rubber dragons made the trip (and are making the adjustment) along with the clock and the bear and the aloe plant at top (another daughter gift) and my favorite photograph of Mabel, floating between plates of heavy glass.

Then, at the end, I have tried to convey the leafy view out the window where I sit. It is far more beautiful than my pictures, a little forest of mature birch trees mingled with redwoods and hidden away from the busy San Francisco street life.

Obelisk

On the afternoon of Halloween Mabel wisely took a two-hour nap, preparing for excitements ahead. While she slept I had a chance to look through the camera lens at the new dispositions of the living room.  

Cake Stand

The birds on the cake stand were certainly numerous when this photo was taken. Usually I only expect to see one or two birds on the green cake stand that has lived on a high shelf in Mabel's living room all her life. Without discussion, this dimpled glass structure has always been understood to fulfill the function of bird-platform or bird-plinth.

The pictures grouped here were all taken after Mabel's birth, and now come in handy for evoking the textures and moods of her nest. 

These plants once witnessed Mabel's presence, and she witnessed theirs, but she witnesses the presence of other plants now.

There was a time when Mabel was so eager to get into the kitchen, and so tiny and likely to be injured there, that her parents obtained a transparent plastic barricade gate.

Mabel often suggested (or commanded) that I climb the gate, taking her along with me. The way I recall things, her parents did actually grant permission for us to execute Mabel's carrying-in-triumph maneuver – on one occasion only – while the baby beamed with glee in all directions. 

Flowers

Many bunches of flowers or pots of flowers have given their lives to the cause of embellishing Mabel's surroundings. With all this familiarity under renovation, there is an impulse to summarize the visual epoch now rounding itself off and discovering its conclusion.

Mother's Day Terrarium

Mabel and Daddy picked out this surprise to hang in a window-pane as Mamma's present on Mother's Day. She pointed it out to me on Tuesday as one of the best gifts ever picked. A bubble-terrarium with air-plants and mosses, like a miniature world. My son-in-law told me he discovered it at a little place on Polk Street.