A Sunday Afternoon at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens

If you read my , it was last Friday and I was preparing for an opening at LoveBirds Cafe of Five Foothill Artists. We had a great opening Saturday night with a steady stream of appreciative guests from 6:30 until we shut the doors late at 10:00 p.m.

All of the art is created by professional artists and very worth seeing and some of really noteworthy but as I am also one of the exhibiting artists I'm not going to review the show here. The show will be up until August 14 so I hope you will check it out at 921 LoveBirds Cafe, weekdays from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.

To continue the weekend, we had friends up from San Diego that we have known for many years. My husband Eddie Truman, is a trainer at Santa Anita, and every summer we make the journey to Del Mar for the Race Track season.

For the last ten years we have been staying in the guest cottage of our friends Jett and Paula, who joined us for the weekend. You know how it is with old friends. It's easy to spend hours together, you settle into comfortable routines of activities, catch up on their families, children, passions, pursuits, travels.

You are grateful that you have these people in your life and that they are part of its continuity. They remember that six months ago you had taken up a new effort and they are interested in how it is going? They ask meaningful questions, crack jokes about your quirks, ask you to take them places they haven't been and you are excited to share familiar experiences with them.

On Sunday, we all went to Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens for the day. There was a plant sale in the open park in front of the entrace which we decided to catch on the way out. For five hours we walked, talked, pondered Chaucer, Shakespeare and the Gutenberg Bible; and discovered vellum was made from the skin of mammals among many more weighty facts. In the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art we saw the beautiful Greene and Greene exhibition and another exhibition of paintings called Taxing Visions, Financial Episodes in late 19 century American Art.

After wandering through the Rose Garden - which is in full bloom - we had lunch in the Rose Cafe and then on to the Chinese Gardens, then the Zen Garden, (the Japanese Garden is closed for restoration).

We took a long stroll through the different gardens then the Western and Australian, Subtropical Garden, and lastly finally through the Desert Garden. This garden is absolutely one of my favorites, being one of the largest collections of cacti and succulents in the world and nearly 100 years old. And now is the greatest time to see it, as it is coming into bloom and the flowers are not to be missed.

Not to spoil your own experience, I can only say that at the end of our hours at the Huntington, we were sated by the beauty of nature, inspired and uplifted. We headed back up the hill and had a cup of refreshment at Beantown.

Later, we shared a meal and a movie at home called, "As it is In Heaven," an Oscar nominated Swedish Film.

One of the lines in a song in the film is, "I want to feel I have lived my life."

And this weekend, I did.