gardens

July 29, 2010Here was a missed opportunity, the Queen Street Grocery. Apparently it is the be all and end all - good local and organic foods, excellent crepes and wine! Who could ask for anything more? This should be a fixture in any downtown, a nice corner market where you can stock up on a few groceries from the CSA, buy a newspaper, have a coffee, catch up on the gossip and oh, maybe buy that nice bottle of wine for dinner. Their slogan is "Local Fresh + Organic Deliciousness." I just liked it for the beauteous "Q" on their window. People who get the typography right might be ...

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When you go to Charleston you must tear yourself away from the glories of the gardens and window boxes and your new friends, the gardeners. You simply have to visit Blue Bicycle Books at 420 King Street. The facade is narrow, but the shop itself telecopes and extends magically back from the street for miles! The Tall One and I had to make two visits because we were overcome with Stendahl's Syndrome after the first go round: the sheer number and array of books was too much for us.We had a restorative lunch at The Pita Pit (351 King Street) another little, narrow, crooked-fence sort of ...

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July 27, 2010Double secret probation bird's eye view of a garden on Meeting Street.I imagine this is the what the Tall One might have seen (had he stirred himself from bed, early one morning during our Charleston trip) strolling up Meeting Street. Once again it was just me and the gardeners and a few people scurrying off to their jobs. It was too early for the horse drawn carriages and rubber-neckers, so I found lots of almost-legal places to park as I wandered. Two Meeting Street has architecture that challenges my liberal arts college art history training. The Calhoun House has a ...

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July 26, 2010 This is the Charles Drake house at 50 South Battery. The garden echos the strange melange of architecture: Sweet potato vines! Colonial Revival! Shocking pink crape myrtle! Queen Anne! Asparagus fern! Arts and Crafts style!Heavens to Betsy, this house has it all. Circa 1890, it is a veritable newcomer to the neighborhood. The Drakes eclectic tastes called for a stone foundation with a paneled, shingled and clapboarded second-story. There is a porte-cochere, an arched arcade and curved windows, interior and exterior shutters, gingerbread, columns, capitals, balustrades ...

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