Green Thoughts........

Royal Golf - which we use as a drop off and pick up spot when we are meeting friends who live in the country - is just outside the medina and is a positive oasis of green.......



I like the reflections of the palm trees on the grass...........



and walking round admiring the luxuriant trees...........



This last picture was taken, of all things at the bus station, but it looks nice and gardenish...........

Light Falls........

................on a House on Rue Prince Moulay Rachid just off the main square. I love the soft green of the window frames.
A palm tree casts a wonderful reflection over the front door......



This is the bank next to the previous house. The interior is wonderful French colonial architecture - but they won't let me take photos there.



This is at the Bahia Palace; the scalloped looking shadow is the edge of the roof tiles.



Also Bahia Palace where there are no windows but the light falls from above.



A long hallway..........

Tuesday Morning in the Jardin Majorelle

I have a great friend from Long Island, and one of her friends staying. So I'm in tour guide overdrive.
I am very fierce since I hate tourists and crowds.
Why do I live here? Hmm.


Anyway, it means I make the poor jet-lagged friends get up very early.
So we are the very first people anywhere.
The man at gate of The Jardin Majorelle told me we were numbers one two and three for the day.
The light is also better.



The colors!



They have repainted the little pavilion..............


Such fans of palms!


I always used to think I liked old houses - now I like the simplicity of things 'moderne'.

Effects of Light

The light in Morocco is so pure and bright that it takes on almost the intensity of an object.


On Sunday afternoon, we went to Cafe France and then wandered around for a little while.
We went into the souks.
Here the two shopkeepers appear much less important than the stripes on the building.


The sunlight falling through the slatted roof superimposes another design upon something already patterned.
What Byzantine layers of complexity.


The teleboutique in the Spice Market is probably getting less use lately because everyone, except us, has a cell phone.


Light glitters and flows almost like a river over the winding lanes of the souk.


In Kennaria a man bicycles under a tunnel and emerges into the light.

At the Farm

A flowery meadow from Eden. Geraniums, a whole path lined with daisies. Olives and willows.


More of the same..........


and a grape arbor near the house.............


A path through the olive grove where the earth has been plowed.


If you look very carefully, you will see the actual plow nestling on a bed of hay in a very unobtrusive fashion.
A donkey was borrowed for the big event.


The cow was the star turn of the whole day as far as the two little boys were concerned.
It obliged us by saying 'moo' - or the Arabic version thereof.


Heading back towards the house ...........


for an open air lunch

Pink and Red, Blue and Other Colors

In the late afternoon, the sun sneaks briefly into the courtyard and falls on the wall behind the dining table.



In the morning, if you look directly upwards, you see that the sky is a heavenly blue............ and that the inside of the courtyard will need painting soon.



No messing round with pastels or tasteful black. I've noticed lots of brilliant scarlet lately.
This woman and her son are walking through Djemma ElFna quite early in the morning before it gets crowded.




This little pink flower is entwined in the white jasmine - though it isn't the jasmine itself.
The jasmine is recovering from Ismails's regime and is now much improved.



The usual experiments with sort -of still lives.



A triumph to find flowers other than roses - here larkspur(?) or a form of delphinium (how one longs for BLUE). Also the first time I've seen astromeria .(As you will have noticed, spelling is not my forte.

Sea Side

We will get back to Marrakech next Sunday, after visiting family in England. (To buy tea-bags and Marmite)
So this week it's all file photos. Sorry.

IMG_1455.JPG, originally uploaded by schmidwix2.

However this beach is amazing. Atlantic waves, hard packed sand, weird fish in rock pools, and a cafe atop the cliff.
It is 25 km. north of Essouira and I gather a film crew were there in the summer for British TV. But they are long gone and we'll get back there at the end of April - Inshallah ( God willing).

Moroccan Color

Long time readers of this blog will find it rather stale news that I love color and texture - and windows, doors and walls.
However a small selection below.



A window at Dar Cherifa.



A window at the rental we shared outside Essouira last summer.
The whole villa was astoundingly oddly decorated but provided wonderful respite from the heat of Marrakech.



Work in progress and a lovely fall of light at the elegant Peacock Pavilions. We can't wait.



Derb Snane off Mousassine on the way to have tea with friends.



An exterior staircase at a friend's rental in the countryside.

Complicated Patterns

This is a light in my study.
The metal light cover hides the awful naked bulb and throws patterns onto the wall.
The best light like this was a lantern in a castle south of Ouazzazatte -it had a candle inside rather than a light bulb.



This woven bamboo acts as a partial sunshade on the roof of Sherazade a small hotel on rue riad Zitoune.
The little tower you see (lower right) is the mosque next door.



As you walk down from the roof terrace there you see the wicker fence
and the reflection of the wrought iron railings.



These are old doors for sale near the Musee de Marrakech.
You have to fix them on the outside of the door entry.
Some of these doors come from south of the Sahara.



Back to my study with all its crazy patterns.
The curved bit is the shower floor with bejhmat tiles and the black and white swirly tiles are new, made by enterprising American friends here who have started their own tile company.



This is a plaster decoration over the sink - and another metal light cover which doesn't match the one at the other end of the room.
The metal light covers cost about $4 US each............
When we first bought them, with their artistically rusty-on-purpose patina, Sayeed, who was painting the house, urged us to let him paint them too.
He said the rust would be bad for our health.

The Studio

IMG_0154.JPG, originally uploaded by schmidwix2.

Robert has his studio on the second floor.
The drawing on the back wall is a collage of different people he saw walking through Djemma El Fna.
Our painted doors do not rival the ones at the Bahia Palace...........
The plant outside his room isn't looking too happy.

Looking Upwards

Moroccan ceilings are very often elaborately decorated.
I used to think that they were painted in situ - like Michaelangelo did the Sistine Chapel.



But, in fact,they are painted at ground level and then put up later.
These first two pictures are from Dar Mimoun.



The last three pictures are from the Bahia Palace - where you can see wonderful examples of all sorts of painted surfaces. Here the shape of the lamp echoes the sklight.



Because there really aren't windows on to the outside world, it would a be a delight to look out through the roof.



There is a lot of painted cut plasterwork too.