Two Points, Illustrated with Photographs for your Enjoyment

Point of the first: The view out my window is pretty.
Mansfield College butts up against our side, so my office looks out onto it:


Straight on from my office (which has solid glass walls along one side) is the Princess Margaret Garden, dedicated in 2002, when she died. It's a little stone rectangular platform with trees and a tiny pond and rosemary shrubs. Very organized, and a little zen.




Point of second: The thing about Oxford, outside of the super-pretty parts that everyone sees, is that there are teensy bits of pretty everywhere. You're just walking along, and there's something nice. Mostly, it's vegetation, but sometimes it's embellishment on the houses. One thing I couldn't get a photograph of is the cap-tiles on the dormer windows. Along the tops of the rooflines, they lay terra-cotta tiles. These tiles are sort of zig-zag looking, like the roof has a hemline. When the reach the ends, though, they have corner-pieces. And those are the bits I like. The corner pieces vary, just a little, house by house. So this one will be a cylander with a ball tip. The next will have a sort of Viking ship design. The next one will be a pointed tip, like a spear. And so on.

First, the lintel of a house we walk by on the way to the library every morning. Click on it to see the design.

The second image is of a form of hydrangea, I think, climbing up the side of a row house. It's making those half-flowers that hydrangeas make, where the petals don't all open, but along the edges the petals open. Lovely. Or, as the British say, "Oooh, lovely!"


Lastly, this picture. There are a million steps like these. And they all seem to have these pretty little violet flowers growing in them. So even when the house itself isn't really so attractive, the steps are cheery and soft. I'm having some trouble paying attention when we walk, because of this and something else.*






*The something else is (Kathy, are you listening?) that the women of Oxford have some fabulous shoes. I'm constantly staring at their feet. I'd provide pictures, but I don't want to be arrested for snapping strangers' feet as they walk by. But let me tell you: high heels or flats, boots and sandals, these women know shoes. What's strange about it is that the shoe shops seem kind of dumpy. So I wonder where these ladies buy the fabulous shoes. Charles says London. Maybe. I probably shouldn't go there, huh?