Each Little World

A bittersweet journey

Mark and I left Madison on June 1st to drive to my sister Meg's Memorial Celebration in Woodstock, Vermont. I set up my blog posts before we left and stayed off digital media while we were away. That's why I haven't replied to your comments or visited your blogs.

The memorial event was held at this beautiful woodsy sculpture garden that was a favorite of my sister's. A large crowd gathered on a beautiful afternoon under a big tent. Friends and family, including her daughter, spoke. There was a bagpiper! Then we adjourned to a beautiful buffet and looked at photos, memorabilia and shared stories for the next couple of hours. I really had not been looking forward to this day, but it turned out to be the perfect way and the perfect place to remember Meg.

The day after the event, family members went off on their own, meeting up by accident and intention all over Woodstock. It's a town that is so lovely it feels like you are walking around a movie set with historic houses, a covered bridge and Paul Revere church bells. I bought a bagful of books at The Yankee Bookshop ("Eat. Sleep. Read.") and a big blue and white china cup and plate at a dreamy antique store.

But the most memorable moment of the day happened when we walked over to look at the town's library where my sister worked as their techie. This sign was on the door. I spoke to the librarians the day before at the event but had no idea they had closed the library on a Saturday afternoon to attend.

Mark and I decided not to push ourselves and spent three days driving from Wisconsin to Vermont. On the way home, we spent time with one of my other sisters near Chautauqua Lake. We made an overnight stop in Cleveland in order to spend time at the always inspiring Cleveland Museum of Art and have dinner at our favorite restaurant, L'Albatross.

To avoid the stress of driving through Chicago, we drove up to Muskegon, Michigan and took the Lake Express Ferry across Lake Michigan to Milwaukee. The ferry was the first high speed auto passenger ferry in the United States when it began operation in 2004. When you get out onto one of the Great Lakes you realize how big they are, as this photo Mark took of the boat approaching Milwaukee illustrates. 

We got in at dinner time and managed to get a seat at a favorite spot, stayed the night and went to the Milwaukee Art Museum where we saw more great art. Mark and I both took tons of photos which I will share later. 

Holiday landscape at the Museum of Wisconsin Art

These big bowls were filled with greenery and birch branches which should look good for most of the winter. Though it was a rather dark and dreary day when we visited MOWA (Museum of Wisconsin Art), the huge white globes were not lit. 

These big planters line the area from the parking lot to the museum entrance. This shot is from just inside the glass wall surrounding the front door.

We walked across a bridge that led from the museum over the Milwaukee River to this pathway up to the main street of downtown West Bend. The same lights were used throughout the area for a consistent look. 

The museum is beautifully landscaped with six groves of 800 Aspen trees mulched with fine black gravel. We will have to make a return trip to see them in the fall. They must be quite a sight. 

Along with the Aspen trees, there are 1,500 Hydrangea plants. There are areas for walking as well as space for public gatherings. 

Garden blogger influence

I am always swooning over plants I can't grow, whether they're from the UK, southern California or the Pacific Northwest. It's the downside of reading garden blogs from distant locations. Since such plants are not hardy here, you rarely even see them for sale. When I spied this charming Echevaria 'Red Velvet' at my favorite grocery store last weekend, I did not even consider resisting. Buddha's given my choice his blessing.  

TOM SCHMOCK PHOTO

A break in the weather

The forecast for today's high temperature has dropped to only 92°F instead of 94°F, but it's not enough to draw me outdoors. We're supposed to go back down into the 80s and even a few days in the 70s next week. We'll see if that really happens, but I'm hopeful.

I spent Tuesday evening sweating my way through beautiful local gardens of members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society that were open to visit. The next morning I was up early to make a 7 a.m. bus departure for a day-long WHPS trip to Chicago-area private gardens and the wonderful Chicago Botanic Garden. Too hot and sunny to get many good photos but I managed to snap a few to share at some future date. For now, here's Hemerocallis 'Little Grapette' and Lilium landini in my garden after the rain. We've had a little over two inches in the last two days with more forecast for the weekend. 

It could always be worse

Saturday was a day of on-and-off freezing rain. Luckily it warmed up later and turned to rain which helped the trees, shrubs and power lines to shed their icy coatings. We woke yesterday morning to more snow and gusty winds. Snow is forecast — to varying degrees — every day this week. The weather is all anyone is talking about in person or on social media.

It is a frustrating winter but it is much more what a typical Wisconsin winter used to be like. Having grown up in Buffalo, New York — a city with a notorious reputation for wicked winters — I've always joked that Wisconsin doesn't really have snowy winters. I used to go home for the Christmas holidays until I ran into bad weather one too many times. One of the last times I went home in the winter was just before the record storm of 1977. The city had already broken snowfall records with about 100 inches before the big storm hit. You've never seen snow if you haven't experienced it coming across a Great Lake with winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour. Here are a few photos from the storm. 

. . .

These are Red Cross volunteers traveling by snowmobile to check for passengers trapped in vehicles. (News file photo)

Hundreds of cars were abandoned as people attempted to walk to safety and shelter. The Army Corps of Engineers and the National Guard were both called in to help deal with the situation.

People attempting to dig out their cars. 

The weather here in Madison this winter has been frustrating and at times a bit challenging, but these scenes put it all in perspective. 

Wednesday vignette from Cleveland

This small pond and waterfall were part of the exterior landscaping around the main building and fenced gardens at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens which we visited last summer. I thought they did a lovely job of landscaping the edges. Lots of texture and color. The plants draping over the water at the back are particularly effective.

I also thought this mini dry stream was a clever way to funnel rainwater away while providing an attractive design in dry weather. 

My last post about the Cleveland Botanical Garden is here; and my review of the nearby boutique hotel is here.

IVOM: Cape Fynbos Flowers

Given our recent killer cold weather, I obviously don't have anything from my garden to put in a vase this week. It's even been too cold to try to get flowers from the grocery store to the car to home without damaging them. But I've had this "vase" ready to pull out when I needed it and that time has come. 

One of our good friends accepted a job transfer from Madison to Cape Town, South Africa. He and his husband were home a few months ago for a friend's wedding and brought us this gift when we got together. We are all gin drinkers (mostly Martinis) and like to try different types. Fynbos, meaning fine-leaved plants, is a small belt of natural shrubland vegetation in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. The area is described as mainly winter rainfall coastal and mountainous areas with a Mediterranean climate. 

According to the blog, Notes from a Cape Town Botanist (and Wikipedia), Fynbos is known for its enormous diversity of species from several families: Restionaceae (restiads and restios), Proteaceae (Protea, Banksia, Grevillea, and a few others), Ericaceae (heaths and heathers), Rutaceae (rue or citrus) and Iridaceae (freesias, gladioli and crocuses to name a few). Table Mountain alone — which overlooks Cape Town — has more plant species than the entire British Isles. The Fynbos Biome has more than 9,000 species of plants within an area the size of Portugal. Two thirds of them occur nowhere else on earth!

Cape Fynbos Gin has "elements from more than 30 indigenous botanicals, sustainably hand-harvested for their bark, roots, berries, flowers, stems, peels or leaves." It prides itself on being hand-crafted, small batch and copper distilled" as well.  

It's a lovely reminder of our absent friends, an excellent gin and it's in the most beautiful packaging I've ever seen for a bottle of booze. All those images of plants on the label, nicely named in Botanical Latin, are a magnet for a gardener. 

To see what other gardeners have found to put in a vase today, jump on over to Rambling in the Garden where Cathy hosts this weekly floriferous meme.

Beauty between the storms

Mark drove out to our monthly book club meeting yesterday while I stayed in town to go to the opening of the new textile exhibits on campus. He bundled up and allowed enough time to capture these scenes with his camera.

First stop was to fill up the gas tank of his truck. You never want to chance country travel in the winter without a full tank. We're the only members of the book group who live in Madison.

The big "barn" on the Epic Systems campus. 

I'm always amazed at how quickly one leaves the city behind and finds oneself surrounded by farmland.

Mark rarely passes this cemetery without stopping and taking a few shots. But the snow lumps indicating low gravestones were a new sight. 

The spillway in Blanchardville.

It's a balmy 20 degrees F. (-6.66 C.) and snowing as I write this on Monday morning at 10 am (Central time zone). The temperature will get down to single digits tonight and below zero temps overnight. Though it was cold yesterday, it was a sunny and beautiful day. 

The Glidden House

We discovered The Glidden House a few years ago when we checked the Cleveland Museum of Art's website to see if we could find lodging nearby. This boutique hotel, located in a historic building, is right in the midst of University Circle, the city's art and cultural area. We could see the botanic garden from our window as we ate breakfast and the art and natural history museums were within easy walking distance. 

The building was once the home of the Glidden family whose name was synonymous with paint. There are well-throught-out new additions to the original structure giving them room for conferences and weddings without detracting from the beautiful old house. 

Though the building feels spacious inside, it also manages to maintain a comfortable, almost homey feel. Well, a rather fancy home! There were a lot of cars around the entrance when I took this photo as there was some kind of business meeting in progress. But we have been able to park adjacent to the hotel on our visits and we've just left our car and walked everywhere. They even let us keep our car there after we'd checked out but wanted to go back to the museum for a while. 

We  snapped this photo for the beautiful construction materials and for the rocky solution to a problem area. We have a similar narrow, sloped space and are thinking about using the same solution. 

Opposite this painting is the check-in desk. On the coffee and side tables are the latest books about the exhibits at the art museum. This is the only hotel I've ever been in where I was so taken with the art and art books that I could hardly pay attention to registering!

We ate breakfast in the garden room adjacent to the original dining room on the other side of the brick wall. The Glidden House offers an absolutely fabulous breakfast buffet. 

You can also sit in the dining room with a fireplace and lighted built-in china cabinets around the room. The cabinets are full of china!

Isn't this a great spot to begin your morning!

I had to take a closer look at the beautiful woodcarving around the screen doors out to the patio. 

The dark wood just at the edge of the photo on the left below is the screen door whose carving I photographed above. 

This outdoor seating area is between the old garden room and one of the new event spaces.  

The glassed-in area (above) with the long white curtains is a small cocktail lounge (below). There is a small curved bar area with seating by the big windows. 

While Mark played on his laptop, I had to check out the artwork. There's nothing I like better than abstract mark-making. 

The view out the windows in the lounge. 

And the view towards the street. 

When I think of Wisconsin I picture huge old Oak trees and acres of evergreens. But there is something mesmerizing about the trees that I see every time we drive out East. 

On our walk over to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, we unexpectedly came across this Frank Gehry building.  

It's the Peter B. Lewis Building of Case Western Reserve University whose buildings are spread throughout the area. As Mark was standing on the sidewalk across the street taking these pictures, someone called his name. We looked up and it was one of his Madison photo friends who was in Cleveland for a music conference on the lute! Small world. 

You are allowed to go inside and tour part of the main floor. It was well worth taking a look to see how all those swoops and curves played out in the interior. And we also got to see a ceramic sculpture by one of our favorite artists, Jun Kaneko. You can tell I'm going to the natural history museum and not the art museum by my casual clothes. 

I haven't a clue what this building was originally or how it is used today. But it was too lovely not to capture it with the camera. 

I've written many posts about restaurants and museums and art galleries, but I am not sure if I've ever shared my opinion on a hotel. But should you be in Cleveland, The Glidden House Hotel is a lovely place to stay. And to our surprise, we discovered it cost about the same as one of the big chain hotels we'd stopped at in Toledo on previous trips.

The drive from Madison to Cleveland is a bit longer than we'd prefer to do in one day, but knowing The Glidden House Hotel was at the end of our drive kept us focused. That, and the fact that I'd made reservations a while before we left Madison for dinner at L'Albatros Brasserie (photo from their website above), a wonderful restaurant just down the alley from the hotel. We ate outdoors on the patio our first night and went back the next night and enjoyed a cosy dinner inside by those big windows where we watched a rainstorm. 

Author's note: I am not receiving any remuneration for this post. We've had great service and experiences at all the places mentioned and wanted to share them. 

CBG: The view from the street

When we were in Cleveland three years ago we spent a day at the Cleveland Museum of art and squeezed in a visit to their botanical garden. When we were in Cleveland last summer, we again spent a day at the art gallery but this time added a short visit to the natural history museum.

Since I could see the garden from our breakfast table at the Glidden House hotel across the street, I dashed over to take a peek even thought the gardens had not yet opened for the day. These are all shots taken quickly with my iPad during a break in the rain. These areas are outside the main gardens and are adjacent to the entrance driveway and parking ramps. 

Cleveland's Botanical Garden is in the area known as University Circle which is a museum-rich arts area.

i thought this was a great way to hide this utility vehicle ramp from the main entrance drive on the other side of the greenery. 

You can enter from the sidewalk and I am sure many people walk through this area as a shortcut to work or the other museums. 

I took this photo last June for my Madison garden friends to show them that the botanic garden had lost a big Hibiscus just like many of them. Another result of the harsh winter along the Great Lakes. 

I am a big fan of "true" Geraniums and was impressed that the plant was being used as a little hedge here. 

I believe that is a Lemony Lace elderflower in the background. Or was it a Japanese maple with bright foliage? Too fascinated with the Geraniums to take note of the other plants!

Since this bench is right out in the open, it's bolted to the cement. But at least it is subtle and doesn't take away from this peaceful little scene. 

Note how you can see the street and some of the buildings of Case Western Reserve University right behind this tree. The view from that building must be lovely all year. When I visit botanic gardens I try to take a photo of a plant's label so I can identify it later. But it seems like I missed doing it with this gorgeous tree. If you recognize it, please let me know in the comments. 

A busy street on the other side of this planting. It's such a gift to residents that a large area of this garden is not behind fences and gates. I loved walking through and chatting with the folks already hard at work in these outer gardens. 

Since there is nothing green and growing around me at the moment, I will be showing some of my photos from last summer as a break from winter images.