It was a wonderful event, a bit rainy but that did not dampen anyone’s excitement. I’ve seen the ponies from time to time as they were being worked on and have ridden on the almost finished carousel in its temporary home but this was different.

Name in cement and in her new home!

Sitting joyously in its clear pavilion (designed by French Architect, Jean Nouvel), jutting out into the East River it is spectacular. From the stainless steel lettering laid in the concrete proclaiming that this is “Jane’s Carousel made in Philadelphia by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company” to the ribbon for the cutting ceremony every detail was complete. Guests were even given a special horseshoe as a souvenir! (Vincent Farelli would have loved this!)

Ribbon for cutting ceremony!

If all this wasn’t enough, when night falls and the doors are closed, large concealed curtains descend from the edge of the ceiling and shadows of the rotating ponies are projected from within. Magic!

Spectacular view and at night!

Some online links for this are:
Official Site
First Ride
At Night

Bob visited with Joe at work and photographed along the coast while Margie and I headed north to meet Sally and Pam at the Maine Botanical Gardens for this years Garden Hoax. Words don’t do justice. It was misty (as all our garden events seem to be) giving the garden an ethereal feeling. We’ve been to lots of terrific gardens but this was different. It was a Maine Botanical garden. Where elsewhere beautiful flowers are planted to create vistas and swathes of color and texture, here the texture is of Maine. It is a garden in a forest.

Pam and I are in the rain in this pic Margie took
and House in the children’s garden with a cat fence!

Back to Margie and Joe’s for a bowl of home made chowder (what else) and the next day Bob and I headed north to Waldoboro where we stayed at the Blue Skye Inn, visited Pam and David, and ate Ginger Ice Cream in Thomaston (my mother has always raved of the Ginger Ice cream she ate in Thomaston, ME as a child in the 1920′s).

Alpaca

Bought alpaca from an Alpaca farm to card with some wool I have for spinning—this winter’s stress reducing project! and then home driving in one of this summer’s wild rain extravaganzas.

Short and sweet and lots of fun!

More fungi!

We had a great two days sitting on their porch over looking the pond and eating lobster at Abbott’s!

View from the log house!

Eating lobster with Senter and Bitty!

When we left we stopped at the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge which has wonderful wetlands which go right into the ocean. We hiked and photographed a bit, saw turtles, osprey and snakes.

As ever in that part of VA the quiet of the tall grasses and the beauty of the marshes is contrasted by the roar of the planes from the many military bases. My Dad was an air force test pilot and my Mom feels right at home. What others might find loud and jarring she finds quite wonderful and almost reverent.
The new header image is from Back Bay

The Distaff Side

This structure is based on an accordion book with separate back and front covers, allowing it to be read front to back and then continued back to front on the other side. The first side features my mom, her mom, two grandmothers and a great grandmother. Each image opens out to reveal additional information about each women. The back side lists known women alternating with block prints of a distaff.

I made this years ago for another friend, Mary—we met when we were 13, and I was riding my bike trying to get up nerve to say HI to the new girl and found out later if I had gone past her one more time she was going to throw dirt balls at me! We’ve been best friend ever since!

Mary’s Book

New Beaver Pond in Connecticut.

Spent the weekend in CT visiting Senter and Bitty. They live in a log home over looking a wonderful pond and fields, where they have created a sort of sanctuary for lots of critters. Birds of all sorts, deer, wild turkeys, muskrats, frogs and, it seems, a beaver. Back in the back pasture, which Senter keeps mowed better than most front yards, off to the right is a small stream that beaver have dammed up, creating a whole new environment. Of course this required a trek through the woods to see it.

We also took a trip to the Fisher Museum at Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA to see their forest dioramas. That was more than a trek through the woods, but it was a beautiful day, through small New England towns. I had read about the dioramas when I was at the Arnold Arboretum a few weeks earlier with my garden gals. The dioramas were created in the 1930′s and are incredible. They have to be seen to be believed.

Later that day, my nephew, Senter, came for the weekend. He has a Mooney airplane which he gets serviced in NJ once a year. As he lives in Alabama, he used the trip as a chance to visit his folks. That was a bonus to the weekend we hadn’t expected.

On the way home on Sun we stopped at Storm King in NY for a few hours. I’ll save that for my next post. Right now I’d better get busy with work.

This year my garden friends from Moore College of Art went to Brookline MA outside of Boston. Visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Wed and the Arnold Arboretum on Thurs. Sally couldn’t make it as she had horsey things to do and Jane had to leave early Thurs but here are Mike, me, Marge, Jane and Pam at the Arnold on a rainy day by the Smoke Bush!

(Several people have asked me about the use of the word Hoax. It comes from a friend, Joe, who used it for a trip which was mainly for fun. Our garden trips are educational but the true purpose is to have fun together. I suppose, today, getting away to just have fun is a bit of a trick.)

We’re part of a group that has theme dinners each year and we did “Spring in France”— made a Mediterranean fish dish and everyone brought wonderful things. Had drinks in the garden but the roses were best the weekend before – mind of their own! Last weekend did a lot of cooking, food for a memorial day picnic, then house guests with dinner and a brunch, then another picnic. Lots of cooking for me anyway, anymore.

Had a quick Public Service Announcement Video to make in one day – not too bad but wish I had more time. Working on a pro bono job for a neighborhood organization, and teaching my self PHP coding. Revisiting our web site to add the video we’ve been doing. All in addition to my normal client work.

Next week I go with friends on our garden hoax to Boston. Will visit Holly and see Jane and Jane and Marge and Mike and Pam. Will miss Sally!

My goals for the summer are three fold: 1. Up my technical skills—working on php, 2. Work on creative skills—my drawing gets short changed during the school year, and 3. Get in shape. Been drawing and working on the computer—but getting in shape . . .

We’re driving down the Delmarva peninsula and it is still cold, but I hear it’s already over 50 degrees in Virginia Beach. So that’s good! Here the ponds are frozen and the fields which will soon have green things growing are all brown and stubbly but the sky is full of birds in “V” formation—I wish flying to Canada but that won’t be until around March. Yeah, I know, in Philadelphia, I still have to deal with Feb. and March but the days ARE getting longer and stuff is starting to grow. Really!

Get’s me making plans for my garden— the catalogs have been coming for almost a month now and we have been having snows that melt slowly watering the ground so I hope there will not be any dry spells this summer to turn my world into a dust bowl.

My back yard has a place that needs seeding but other than that it’s pretty ok—just maintenance and veggies. But the front – under the living room window, is a shady place that is just a mess of pacasandra and a stunted azalea bush that need work. There’s a project to think about.

Or perhaps along the side walk—we could revisit that as well. I like to plant seasonal things along my way from the house to the car. Then, if I’m busy at work and don’t have time to wander my garden, I don’t miss the changes.