We went out for tea at the one and only tea house worth visiting, Teazers, in the Tower District. While there I thought it would be great fun to walk through the old neighborhood and check out the gorgeous architecture of the homes in the area. Most of the homes were built in the 20's and 30's, during the heyday of the old Fresno College (formerly Fresno State College, currently Fresno City College) ~ the wide streets are lined with California bungalows, Spanish and Mediterranean style mansions, Tudor mansions with low rounded roofs, multi-windowed one-story mansionettes surrounded by cool gardens ~ it's a beautiful area. It was very quiet walking through the neighborhood, not many cars were on the road, a few folks were sitting on their porches and lawns catching the cool breeze. It reminded me of years ago when I was a kid and this sort of thing was normal ~ walking down a quiet street just enjoying the day. No worries. Easy walking. What impressed me most about this walk were all the gorgeous flower gardens growing in front of the homes ~ bright pink bougainvillea climbing up porch columns and over balconies, crepe myrtle bursting with colorful shades of violet and magenta, wild little pansies in blue, red, orange, yellow & purple lay in dark, loamy soil, and dark, leafy ivy surrounding and ambushing pine tree trunks. The old trees in this neighborhood, mostly Japanese elm, rise high above the road creating an arch that darkens everything with an eerie misty green shade. The entire effect is really quite magical. The annual perfume class I teach is coming up in August. I roughed out a primer for this class about two years ago, for myself more than for my students. The last class asked for more handouts, especially in regard to safety, so that's what I had planned to do ~ print up a few pages of safety information for them. But I got a little carried away with the primer, aka teacher's manual, and ultimately ended up with a student primer. I sent it to a couple of perfumers for peer review. That's kind of scary. I'm confident as a beginning student's primer that there won't be any huge problems with what I've put together. Nothing that can't be edited in time for this next class, anyway.
This year's students get a primer. I'm pretty excited about that.
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