the chelsea flower show opens to the public today. i am gutted i am not there. years ago i joined the royal horticultural society (i knew back then that i would turn out to be a garden dork) but never made it to chelsea. now i live 5000 miles away i am kicking myself at missed opportunities -- not to mention the fact that it's one year where the sun is shining like crazy (it's usually wiped out on at least one day with rain, hello british weather).

paris's champs-elysee was transformed this past weekend into the most amazing and gigantic farmers market. i would have loved to have experienced that. what a transformation it would have been to behold -- 6 lanes of crazy parisian traffic transformed into probably the largest stretch of market ever!  the french farmers were reminding parisian folk of the importance of their currently struggling farm industry.