Hints and tips:
...Her “chief pleasure in a dearth of pleasures” during that “uncertain spring” (a phrase borrowed knowingly from Virginia Woolf) is observing the ephemeral blossoming of flowers — magnolias, cherry blossoms...
...Yet again magnolias were early, prolific and wondrously beautiful....
...The Soviet hand remains visible — in the elderly waitresses’ lipstick in the unfunky spa café; in the floating chess boards; in a general air of desuetude....
...Previously a shabby magnolia-painted interior, it has been tarted up, its rich, tacky-Edwardiana plaster details picked out in gold....
...On the way, I’ll stop at Rocket + Basil, a Persian/Australian café run by my boyfriend’s sisters, where I might buy lunch for my team....
...The finest dried bamboo shoot slices are known as “magnolia slices” (yulan pian) and used in many traditional banquet dishes....
...The woodland had great potential, with oaks, magnolias and much else, but wooden duckboards, those hallmarks of Japanese landscape parks, had been laid to guide visitors a little way into it, towards artwork...
...Everybody: A Book About Freedom, by Olivia Laing, Picador, RRP£20/WW Norton & Company, RRP$26.95, 368 pages Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café...
...They can organise a tea ceremony in a separate house called the Rakkojae Culture Lounge – magnolia tea served in beautiful bowls dating from the Joseon dynasty, with handmade Korean desserts on the side....
...Inside, Ebi Sushi is half-clad in stripped pine, half-painted in deepest magnolia. There are plastic chairs and paper posters....
...Idam is open in the evening only, but during the day there’s a ground-floor café catered for (much less expensively) by the same kitchen – which also supplies a stunning waterfront café in the crescent-shaped...
...Japan’s Shiseido designed two perfumes for Expo, for example, with bottles in the shape of a magnolia, the symbolic flower of Shanghai....
...The generous spaces, artificial lake and an outdoor café make this another supremely pleasant place to be. Both collections are superb....
...But the next morning, up to catch the early ferry, I have the joy of pretending to have been up all night like the real clubbers who are also at the café for 7am breakfast....
...A parade of magnolia down the centre of midtown Park Avenue; a flowering dogwood on the roof of an office on Third Avenue; a splash of red tulips at the entrance to a parking lot....
...“Inside the nice new magnolia house we had a few glasses of wine. To pacify our nerves, I asked what they did for a living....
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