Flower Friday : : Chicory

What I love about this little bright blue flower is that just when everything is turning brown and crispy, it appears, a cheerful little patch of almost leafless flowers in a dry landscape. Its roots can be dried, ground and used as a coffee substitute, as it was during the Civil War, or just added to coffee for an enhanced flavor as with the coffee at the famous Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Of course, what I like best about Cafe du Monde is not the coffee but the beignets, delicious little donut-like pastries absolutely covered in lashings of powdered sugar. I think coffee and beignets are the only things offered and the queue to get in and order is legendary. You can look inside and watch them being made as you stand in the queue. It must be quite a job to get the powdered sugar, administered with liberal shakes from big shakers, out of all the nooks and crannies. If there are any seats inside, I don't remember them. We sat outside and watched the world go by...a quintessential activity in New Orleans. 

There was a bistro du Monde in downtown Santa Rosa, with a creditable beignet, but the seemingly concerted effort to kill the downtown with stiff parking fees, a brutal, barren central plaza and a generally unwelcoming feel drove it out. It seems as if the best shops are moving to Montgomery Village, the outdoor shopping mall closer to us which is being updated and is wooing a fresher, more upscale market.

We drove past the plaza, the brutalist buildings that make up the city hall and other administration buildings and all the way to the so called Arts District, a two block area of cafes and artists' studios huddled in the shadow of the freeway, where we met with our usual coffee group.  John brought his box of birthday cookies, baked by Tim, to share since he, Bob, Gail and Mamadou all have had birthdays recently. 

Caroline came today before we left for coffee and the house was clean and dust free, for a minute, by the time we got home after running a couple of errands, including picking up Blake, on the way home. He will be staying with us for the weekend as Dana and Jim are going to a wedding in a little town in the Sierra foothills.

I went outside to do a couple of things in the garden, but it was too hot to persist so I retreated to the almost too cool house and  spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to create a simplified version of the Klee painting  in a quilt. The hardest part is figuring out how to scale it up and create a pleasing pattern without losing the basic feel of the painting. A pleasant challenge.

Thank you as always to Biker Bear for continuing this challenge.