Shangri La

I know there are so many people that have favorite places around the world. Some are in a cabin in the woods. Which is nice....
 
Or a resort on the beach somewhere exotic and tropical


Alot of you, your favorite place is home. Mine is sort of like that. Mine is where my dad grew up. We call it Shangri La sort of as a joke but for the people that get to go there. It truley is like that for us. My grandfather was an orthopedic surgeon in Kansas City and my grandmother a nurse. They decided that living in mission hills was nice for awhile but with 6 kids they wanted an escape. A place for their kids to grow up, a place where they could have room to breathe and secret spot that was just theirs. They call it Dunford Place. (My grandmother grew up in a beautiful home on Ward Parkway that was on Dunford Circle.) It was a newer improved sanctuary from her dreamy childhood estate that she could call her own and make for her own kids.

This place doesn't feel real to me. It's now had neighborhoods grown around its thinning shrub boarders and is surrounded on all sides by quaint little houses and busy streets that were once dirt roads.

When my grandparents bought it, it was out in the country. 9 acres all to themselves with nothing around but pure country (and still just 20 minutes outside the heart of downtown KC).

The entrance gives me this giddy feeling of being a kid again, the excitement of showing my grandparents a new toy, eating an incredible dinner, being surrounded by old music by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Johnny Mathis and being with my dad. "Pure Heaven" as my grandmother says.

I love that the driveway is so long that you can bearly see the house...and then....through the clearing it appears....

It now is a butter yellow color, with white wicker chairs and tables all across the front porch, perfect for gazing into the lilly pond and watching the summer bullfrogs jump from the gravel path into the cool water. (also great for ice skating in the winter...if you are brave, I was a little too brave one winter and my feet fell through the ice...whoops.)

You pull up the drive park and then I basically run into the house. I never can wait very long to see my grandmother and my aunts and uncles. P.S. My dad lived in the carraige house (the apartment above the garage) when I was a baby and then again for the last 3 years of his life.

The dogs always sit on the cool stone porch.

The Kitchen always smells like garlic and is covered in a buttery film that my grandmother leaves as she scoots along the counters while cooking with messy fingers. It sounds gross but it's become a comforting reminder of her presence.

It's always full of people too. Which is the best part.

The dining room looks like it should be in the Queen's palace to me, or at least it did when I was little.

My Grandmother's chair, she sits in closest proximity to the mini-bar (behind her chair) and closest to the fire.

Her plant room is completely glass and she babies her plants year round and brings the more fragile ones inside during the cold winters until it's warm enough to move them outside again.

The library always has a fire lit and we sit around and have a drink (a martini if you are my grandmother, dirty with 3 olives and no ice..."we don't water down good alcohol" she says)

I still run past the large grandfather clock that sits on the landing of the stair case, even as an adult. It used to terrify me that it's booming chimes would ring while I was standing too close.

 

This place holds so many memories, I can't begin to even name a few. The acres of gardens nestle my doll house that I used to play in.

"The tea house" a glorified screened in porch, used to be my fort for spy games, the home base with water balloon refills in buckets, and the location for my most favorite tea parties.

The barn used to house horses, goats, geese ect when my dad was little. Then when I was young was the "home" for many peacocks....I said it...Peacocks. My grandmother has a love for birds and what better bird to walk around acres of gardens but beautiful exotic peacocks.

She was right. They were amazing and her gardens and peacocks were even in several better homes and gardens and even a coffee table book about the women of america and their gardens called "earth on her hands"

 

The is a picture of her hands inside the front cover holding the earth and a tiny plant. The picture is so beautiful and so telling of her passion to nuture beautiful things.

Someday maybe I will have the opportunity to create a shangri la of my own, who knows where or when and maybe it's just my own house but I want my children and grandchildren to be able to have their favorite place be mine too.

***************************

Disclaimer: There used to be pictures here in this post of her house and gardens but Betsy Overesch took them 10 years ago and was threatening legal action for posting them without her permission because of copyright infringement. So sorry this one is a little lacking in visual appeal.