The First Flower

There it is, the first Billberry Ice flower:

It was out there this morning, but tonight it is gone. Here is how the garden is looking:

Vacation Day Five - Uncle Sam's Boat Tour

We had dinner and stayed the night in the Thousand Islands Inn. It was a hundred years old and showing its age. But, you have heard of the salad dressing they invented, right?



Our room faced the park across the street (and the river). The places in the grass that look worn out are where a huge slab of rock shows through.





On the drive from Clayton to Alexandria Bay, we saw a huge nest on top of a utility pole (and a second one a little further down the road). I think that it is a baby Osprey or Seahawk sitting there.



In Alexandria, they flagged us right into the parking lot for Uncle Sam's Boat Tours. We took a three-hour tour of the Thousand Islands.




The 1,700 islands that they call the Thousand Islands are mostly privately owned. Boldt Castle is an estate that is open to tourists, and I think that they said that $30 million had been spent on renovations. The next photo is just a utility building at the edge of the island. (We didn't get off the tour boat and pay the $7 to walk around because we were pretty tired by then.)



At the other extreme were islands with one tree:

Vacation Day Four - Erie Canal Village

Vacation Day Three - Rockwell Museum of Western Art

The Corning tour bus picks people up at a "Welcome Center" where there is plenty of free parking. It then stops at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, the downtown market district, and then completes the loop.

Today we started out with the Rockwell Museum. It has three floors of well laid-out exhibits. It holds mostly art about the West, and not so much Native American art. (No flash photography allowed...)






This painting was massive. It was amazing that the artist could visualize what the whole thing would look like, when he was standing a couple of feet away to paint it:



One floor had contemporary art.



Here are some of our favorites:

Vacation Day Two - Corning Museum of Glass

We spent the afternoon on Tuesday at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Most impressive is the Heineman Collection. This couple collected all kinds of contemporary glass art over about 20 years, and the collection has been donated to the museum. The exhibition displays 240 objects by 87 international artists:






The musuem also puts on live shows of how glassblowing is done. In the demostration that we saw, a very nice bowl was made, and then trashed because there wasn't room to cool it down overnight.

Vacation Day One - Letchworth State Park

We started off with a tour of Graycliff, an estate designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Sorry, no photos.

Then we went cross-country to Letchworth State Park.



We stayed the night at the Glen Iris Inn:


It is just across from the Middle Falls:


The park is huge. Driving across it, we saw a lot of different kinds of wildlife. We saw a fox in the bushes at the edge of the road. We saw a doe and her fawn, and almost got a photo. There were turkey vultures cruising over the river:

Butterfly Garden Planted

The tree nursery before the big change:



Photos of the new garden:

The New Butterfly Garden

Hey, I've been gone from the blog for almost a year. I guess I've been busy.


Here is what's in the works now: a butterfly garden for Momma. Here are the main ingredients:

1. Wild Romance Aster (3)
2. Butterfly Blue Scabiosa (3)
3. White Obedient Plant (3)
4. Black Knight Butterfly Bush (1)
5. Jacob Cline Monarda (3)
6. Billberry Ice Tradescantia (3)
7. Flagstone Bricks (31)
8. Portage Stones (4 or 5)
9. Dirt and Mulch
10. Stray Arbor Day Foundation Trees (4)
11. Stray Bulbs, including Fox's Grapes