Dawes Arboretum

Before this fall becomes a memory (too quickly, certainly), I thought I'd better post my pictures from our visit to Dawes Arboretum, 35 miles east of Columbus, OH, near Newark, on a lovely Sunday afternoon in late September as the leaves had just begun turning. At the entrance, near the reception center, were these lovely purple flowers (I'm not really a nature boy, so I will not be able to identify any of the living things in these pictures except people):

First, we went over to the east side of the arboretum property, which is considered the "adventurous" side, with hiking paths which are of "uneven terrain" and sometimes a bit mudluscious. Hikers who venture over there, through a tunnel that goes under the highway, are supposed to register at the office when they head out and sign in when they leave, I guess for safety's sake, but honestly, the trails there, though not as "polished" as the other walkways, are hardly difficult or even particularly "adventurous." It's a large plain with thickets of trees and fields of natural things (flowers, things that look like wheat--I told you I'm not a nature boy) and the paths are usually much emptier, so you feel like you are, well, out in nature.

The tunnel over:


One of those fields of living plant things that are lovely to look at:


The way in:
I wanted to call this "The road not taken," but we took it:


Injured (to say the least) tree:

The sky above:


When we returned safely to Dawes proper, we noticed a small garden with odd scupltures, seemingly made with natural materials. First, some sort of crazy animal:









Then, some paganish Wicker Man-like figure, bending in the non-existent stiff breeze:










Next, off to the Japanese gardens, with small hills, a reflecting pond, a rock garden, and a mediation shack. Very lovely, except when the impolite families felt it was OK to let their children mosey through the rock garden in a very un-Zen fashion. First, the rock garden:

My friends walking across the pond:

A gentle curve in the pond:

Background to the garden:

Finally, two more pictures on the way out of Dawes:


I imagine the leaves are now mostly gone, but they were lovely while they lasted.

Fall in the front yard

A couple pictures I snapped this morning of yellow leafy autumnal prettiness in our front yard.

Fate, even in Romanian

Our library has a donation room where old books (from the library and from patrons) wind up for consideration for our periodic book sales. Once in a while (who am I kidding--every day) I pop in the room to see if anything interesting has turned up. The other day, I saw a dusty old book, which is like catnip to me, and picked it up. It turned out to be a Romanian/English dictionary from the 1980's (not so old, really), but what was funny was the page to which I opened it. Of course, you have to know that my partner is a knitter extraordinaire to see that this seemed like a fated act:

Now if he ever goes to a sheep and wool festival in Romania, he can start a conversation off right.

A midsummer night's play

Actor's Theatre of Columbus has a lovely Shakespeare in the Park summer series every year, held at Schiller Park near German Village. Back in August, we went to see As You Like It, which now holds the record for the Shakespeare play I've seen performed live the most (three times). This production was a little unusual in that life-sized puppet-type figures (held or carried by the actors who voiced their parts) were used for some supporting roles. The below picture shows one of the actors with two of the puppets:

Folks who sit on the lawn have to watch from their blankets; folks beyond the sidewalk can sit on whatever chairs they bring. We went with some friends and we all brought picnic dinners. Some among us may have broken the open-container law and brought some wine, but I wouldn't know about that.

It was a clear and lovely summer evening with a warm breeze and very few bugs; with the fun play, the good actors, and fine company, we couldn't have asked for a better time, and it was free to boot. As a plus, the handsome male lead, Ryan Hooks, stopped by to visit with our sociable group before the show.

Weren't we lucky?

Sock Knitter goes Green

Actually, my partner, an evil genius sock knitter extraordinaire (hence his license plate, above), has used "green" locomotion for quite a while, but he just traded in his Honda Civic hybrid for a new Honda Insight, also a hybrid, and one that makes driving into a video game. When he's driving economically, his digital speedometer is green (when he's not, it turns blue) and he gets awarded leaves--enough leaves eventually turn into trees. The first time he gets into a fender bender because he was counting his trees, he'll never hear the end of it.

Summer greenery

I do not have a green thumb, at all! I like looking at pretty flowers--I sound like a little kid, and that's about how I feel when I look at flowers, like they're pretty but let's move on to the next thing--but I can't really take care of them, inside or out. For a brief period after we first moved in here, what with a nice front porch area and a fenced-in back "yard" (too small to really be called a yard without scare quotes), we took a stab at some rudimentary gardening, and when I say "we," I mean that he would initiate the project, but I had to do the watering or pruning. So after a couple of years, we more or less gave up. But near the front porch, Don planted some black-eyed Susans a couple of years ago, and they keep coming back every summer with no help from us--that causes me no end of amazement. Here are pics of them at their peak in August. Now, they're just one more thing to miss about summer.

"Wash" "hands," eh?

There is an amusing blog for the grammatically-minded among us (I'm sure there's something wrong with that clause...) called The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations. If the appeal of the blog has to be explained to someone, that person is just not part of the blog's audience. The ridiculous, asinine, unneeded use of quotation marks is a personal bugaboo of mine, but finding them on signs has always been a great joy to me as well, even before the blog existed. Here's one I found today in the men's room at a nice faux-Irish restaurant.

1) So I wonder what "wash hands" really means in this joint?

2) ...and which employee has to "do it"?