Gardens & Flowers - Snapshot Chronicles

September 1st

09.01.2008 by Susan Getgood //

Douglas at Shelburne Museum. More Shelburne pics.

Where has the summer gone? Tomorrow we pack up to go home after a month up here in Vermont. My husband has been going back and forth but Douglas and I have been here since August 2d with the dogs. I’ve been working all week while Douglas was in camp except for this last week when my mom came up, and I took a little time off.

We hit our usual haunts — VINS in Quechee and Shelburne Museum out near Burlington, and also checked out the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.

I used my telephoto lens at VINS and was amazed at some of the pictures of the raptors — if the bird was toward the back of the cage, the bars of the cage literally dissolve in the picture.

More pictures from VINS.

On Friday afternoon, we drove over to the Hathaway Farm in Rutland to do the corn maze.

Douglas and Dave, about 3/4 through the maze. More here.

Saturday looked a bit threatening weather-wise, a promise that was mostly delivered in the evening as we were driving through Rutland and the skies opened up. But we decided to take a chance and drive over to Fort Ticonderoga NY to see the King’s Garden, which was not open when we went on Memorial Day weekend.

Then we drove down the western side of Lake George to the town of Lake George and took a one-hour cruise on the paddlewheeler Minnie-Ha-Ha. Lake George looks like the typical honky-tonk beach town — think Hyannis, York Maine or Center Harbor on Winnepesaukee, including more mini-golf than you would ever want to play, but the cruise on the lake is very pleasant with quite a lot to see.

The boathouse is a smaller copy of the house.

Quite a bit of Victorian architecture along the lakeshore.

And of course the Adirondacks.

More garden photos,Ticonderoga’s park and waterfall, and Lake George.

Today, we may go over to Billings Farm; they do special activities on Labor Day that Douglas enjoys. Or I may just read my book. I find that I read more when I’m here than I do at home for some reason. Maybe I’m more relaxed. Right now I am reading the new James Bond novel Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, and I just finished two novels in Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie series, The Right Attitude to Rain and The Careful Use of Compliments. You may know his Africa-based series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency but I find I enjoy the Dalhousie tales set in Edinburgh even more. The new one The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday is due out later this month.

I’m also looking forward to Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3) by Christopher Paolini. While the second book in his trilogy was a bit disappointing, and the movie based on the first book Eragon was AWFUL, I’m hopeful that the conclusion of the tale will be better.

Bye, bye summer.

[tags] Vermont, Lake George, King’s Garden, Fort Ticonderoga, VINS, Shelburne Museum [/tags]

Flowers

05.28.2008 by Susan Getgood //

I’ve been practicing shots of flowers with my new telephoto lens.

A bud from the apple tree in our backyard in Vermont. Macro with manual focus.

Flowers (and a bee) from the same tree. Autofocus.

Rhododendron bud, Hudson. Macro, manual focus

Poppy, Hudson. Manual focus.

A bit of spring in Boston

03.14.2008 by Susan Getgood //

A bit of the Flower Show came home with me.

Last night I went into town for the New England Spring Flower Show. I was invited by the show’s PR agency Weber Shandwick to “Girls Night Out,” a special event at the show with a variety of added attractions aimed at women (duh!).

Being my first “media” invite for something “mom” versus marketing-related, plus the free admission to the Flower Show, I carved out the few hours to attend.

I’ve attended the Flower Show a number of times in the past decade– most recently about 3 years ago with my mum and then four-year old son, an experience I have not chosen to repeat. It was fine taking him to these things BEFORE he could walk. But once he was out of the stroller, forget it.

It’s always fun to get a breath of spring as we watch the “dino” snow* melt in the parking lots and mud season begin up North. Some general impressions of this year’s show:

The theme was Green, as in sustainable. However, it carried through in the exhibits too, with many of them being foundation plantings, shrubs and trees, versus flowers. A particularly striking one was comprised mostly of Bamboo Trees.
There seemed to be fewer exhibits, and they also seemed smaller than in past years. There were, however, the usual number of vendors.
Clearly the special events in the evenings are designed to increase the gate on slow nights. Unlike going on a weekend day as we usually have in the past, the show was relatively uncrowded and I had no trouble finding a parking space. I might even give it a shot again next year with Douglas. They have a kids’ scavenger hunt that he might be old enough for now.
The extra events for Girl’s Night Out that I enjoyed: the wine booth (too bad it wasn’t free), makeovers, chair massages and the pasta sample from Wilson Farms. I observed but did not participate in the Belly Dancing lessons, and did not stay for the door prize drawing so can’t comment on that.

Here are some pictures. More on Flickr.

And just for Kristen Chase at Motherhood Uncensored, I took this picture of a vendor booth:

A final note: membership in the Mass Horticultural Society includes flower show tickets. WIth a $20 admission fee per adult, if you plan to go, membership is well worth it. Would I recommend membership in the Society if you can’t make the show. Hard to say. All I can tell you is that we were members when we were going every year and I let it drop when we stopped. Flower Show ends Sunday March 16th.

* “Dino” snow is the big piles of plowed snow that hang around so long, long after the snow has for the most part melted, that it seems almost Jurassic. The “King of the Mountain” pictures we took of dogs Reva and Cash are on our own dino-mountain in the back yard.

[tags] New England Spring Flower Show, spring, crocs [/tags]