Chicago, 2011

Can you imagine Chicago in December warm and sunny?  This has been a unique year with all the global changes in climate.

I went to Chicago for Christmas and my daughter's birthday. She was born 43 years ago in Bangkok, Thailand and of course we had Thai food to commemorate the connection.  On Christmas, we had Chinese food in Chinatown, which was excellent.

My favorite part of the trip, in addition to spending time with Sheryl and helping her celebrate her birthday, was our visit to Millenium Park with the steel "cloud" or "bean" and the new wing of the Art Institute.  Here are some photos of both showing some views of the cloud and the many reflections from the city and people who are attracted to the site.  The museum is an architectural achievement and houses some lovely artwork as shown here.

There are also some photos here from the Bahai church, which was a beautiful building.

Lee Bontecou

Under the bean

Bean and tourists

Bahai church

Inside Bahai church

City scape from museum

Picasso

Inside the new wing

Chagal windows

Bean

Ithaca Garden Club Holiday Decor

The Ithaca Garden club decorates one member's home as part of the holiday celebration and income producing event.  I was assigned to the master bathroom and chose a team to help me convert the bathroom into a winter lotus pond.  We used a lot of natural materials, sprayed silver for one room and gold for another and embellished the scene with locally purchased snow person and skaters.

I think the result is very lovely and the party is this afternoon.  Enjoy the images.

Snow person in the shower

Large arrangement in master back

Left side of the Tub area

Lotus pond with skaters and lotus pods

Lotus pond and right hand side of the pool area

Panorama of the pool that was converted to a winter lotus pond

Rochester

This past weekend, I attended a science teacher's conference in Rochester, NY. The Science Teachers Association of New York was celebrating its 116th conference and met at the convention center along with the two adjoining hotels.

My responsibility was to "man" a booth on "Science matters" which is an electronic network for science teachers to increase the connections for them in professional development and grant writing.  It was a good conference and an opportunity to visit with professional friends developed over the past 20 years.

Sunday evening provide a beautiful sunset and I took several images of the buildings and sculptures across the river from the balcony of the convention center. The black specks in the sunset are a flock of birds!  Interesting!  Very pretty weekend with lovely weather to enjoy during the trip up and back and during the conference.

October in my yard

Ithaca varies from nasty rainy days to luscious warm ones. Today was one of the latter.  After driving to Aurora and back, with glorious colors on each side of the car, I decided to spend some time with the camera in my yard.

There are pictures here of the ever present lotus leaves that are changing rapidly from their robustness to somewhat somber, waiting for decomposition and a new spring.  I love the  back lighting and venation that shows here.

The grasses are majestic centerpieces of some of the perennial gardens.  Their tassels glow in the sun.

Look up and the oak leaves sparkle in the sun.  Many have fallen, but the brightest ones are still vibrant at the top.

The seeds of the Bears Claw are bursting, ready to be planted.

Then there is the vining fall clematis that has very fuzzy flowers, with total translucency.

What surprised me most was to find some forsythia in bloom.  I have no idea what caused that.

Lastly, there are some colored leaves dotting the azalea.  I just noticed that the computer placed the pictures in the reverse order. Ah, something else to learn about.

Enjoy.