Midwinter

This weekend is Troy High School's Midwinter dance. While it is a formal, the tradition is that is it sort of a Sadie Hawkin's dance...the girl's ask the guy to go with them.

My daughter said that they all try to do it creatively. Here's how she asked the original guy. She baked little cupcakes and frosted them with her trademark home-made chocolate frosting. She picked out the sugar decorations to spell out "Midwinter?" She handed the plate to the guy in order to ask him.

We purchased a deeply discounted formal last year in her favorite color. The only problem was that although it was marked a size 7 (and she is a 6), it is more like a 10. I have had to take it in 2" on the sides and 1 1/2" off the strap length. I'll also have to shorten it. The issue is that it is fully lined. I've been ripping and re-sewing and struggling. The correct thing to do would be to take the whole thing apart, take in the side seams and cut the underarms deeper and then put a new zipper in it as I am sure it wouldn't survive it. Only I really don't want to do this. So...I just decided to take the coward's way out and I just basted it...right through the lining. She'll never wear it again, and at this point since I only have $30 into it, that's how I'm going to do it.

It's hard to believe it is really almost midwinter, but the thermometer tells us it is. It has been in the teens during the daytime. This is still last weekend at the Franklin Park conservatory. I don't think this is actually a Chilhuly, but merely a garden ornment. I might be wrong. It is in the little area which is usually filled with plant material in the summer time. You can't get in there at the moment as all the doors are shut.



This snow covered ball, however, is a Chilhuly.

















When we woke up this morning, the world was covered in hoar frost. It was gorgeous. Our neighbor called at 8:00 to make sure we were up and had taken notice.

Even though it was 10 degrees, while Carlos went to church, I went outside and started taking photographs. I must say that the camera began to balk a little.

This is my neighbor's blue spruce which now has frosting.



I thought my sedums had a really cool look. I look around at my yard with all the plants other folks quickly cut down in the fall, but I leave up for winter interest and am satisfied that although I'll have a ton of work to do in the spring, indeed as soon as it warms enough that I can do some of it, I still have the better part of interesting things to look at.

Franklin Park Conservatory Chilhuly Exhibition part II

Cobalt blue is one of my favorite colors....and several pieces in the show are in this wonderful color. At left is a detail of the larger installation seen below. Arranged in a boat, it almost vibrates with energy.

One of the fun things about this is that they have a children's area where there is a wooden boat with holes in the front. Children can take plastic blown shapes similar to the ones used in Chilhuly's work and arrange it in the "boat." Or they can just play in the boat.

Several interactive items were designed for children in the lower level. One which intrigued my husband was an image of one of Chilhuly's works with magnetic plants. You could then arrange the "landscape" with the magnetic pieces to understand how they worked together or didn't.











There is also an outside pavilion where a glass blower is working with two furnaces. Here you can see the gather with the partially shaped piece being put in the furnace. Everyone wanted to get closer because we were freezing while the artist was in a short sleeve t-shirt.


This multi-color piece is a portion of one of his overhead installations.

Chilhuly Columbus!

Yesterday, my husband and our neighbors went to Columbus, Ohio to see the Chilhuly exhibition. I have seen the glass works of Dale Chilhuly in Washington state as well as his trade blanket collection and exhibition of works inspired by the blankets at the American Textile Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Currently, three locations in Columbus are highlighting his works. You can find the details here. We visited the Franklin Park Conservatory and the Columbus Museum of Art. If you are anywhere in the area, I encourage you to visit them.

Conservatories are great places to spend a winter day. I had never been to the Franklin Park Conservatory and as we drove up, I was enthralled by the wonderful patterns made from the great "bones" of any good garden--the bare limbs of trees, grasses and spent flower heads left for interest. Evergreens lent their own charm and the wonderful pattern of light and dark against the snow with the highlights of buff from the grasses and incredible blues, greys and whites of the cloud broken sky was just fabulous. I can't wait to come back and see the grounds in better weather. 23 degrees isn't exactly the temperature in which you want to walk around taking pictures.

I wished I could have found a better vantage point to show these wonderful glass sculptures, but it was pretty much enclosed by building. I would have prefered to be able to see them against the snow and the sky. Even so, I think you can get a sense of the wonderful pattern these showed.


Inside was warm and wonderful. As you walked through, not only were you taken by the great horticultural examples, but nestled amongst the green were shots of Chilhuly's pieces.

Some were fairly obvious and were placed so that the lights in the conservatory hit them. Others weren't so as when we entered the conservatory, the sun was hidden.

Chilhuly himself noted in DVD which was playing how much greenhouses inspired him. I have to agree. I took over 200 photographs yesterday between the Conservatory and the second location we visited, the "Chilhuly Illuminated" exhbition at the Columbus Museum of Art. I'll highlight that in it's own post and no doubt over the next months I'll return to show more photographs of the Conservatory.


These wonderful "flower baskets" were at the beginning of the Conservatory's show. They're huge, I think most about a yard across at the top.