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Mom and I went to Kew today, to look at plants and the Chihuly sculptures.
Having sought lots of advice about the Chihuly exhibit, we took most of it by starting at the Temperate House. There's some fine glass art in this exhibit, as well as scattered around outdoors, including an impressive blue-and-white sculpture if you enter via the Victoria Gate. I have seen two other exhibits of Chihuly's work, both much smaller and one of them entirely indoors; this one makes very good use of the large spaces, both indoor and out.
Then we just wandered, and enjoyed looking mostly at plants but also at birds and sculptures. I took some photos of plants and sculptures because I liked them, and of birds in the hope of using them to identify the species of duck (other than mallard) and goose (in addition to the Canada geese) we saw.
After admiring a large old chestnut tree and taking several pictures, I said 'I'm being a tourist'. I used two twigs to pry open a chestnut casing and remove the nut, which I looked at, photographed, and then put down near where it had fallen. (As you know, we no longer have sweet chestnut trees in North America [1]). I was reminded of when Maureen visited the Bronx Zoo with me and Ben Yalow: I was showing off the okapis, but what most interested her in that enclosure was the chipmunks.
[1] There has been a long-term project to try breeding a chestnut blight–resistant chestnut by crossing a Chinese chestnut species with the very few (I think less than a dozen) surviving North American chestnut trees. The last I knew, as of a year or two ago, the project had produced trees that are 15/16 American chestnut and seem to be resistant--and have run into objections from people who think that this is not preserving but attacking a species that is important to them. (This is vague because I don't have time right now to track the information down.)
Having sought lots of advice about the Chihuly exhibit, we took most of it by starting at the Temperate House. There's some fine glass art in this exhibit, as well as scattered around outdoors, including an impressive blue-and-white sculpture if you enter via the Victoria Gate. I have seen two other exhibits of Chihuly's work, both much smaller and one of them entirely indoors; this one makes very good use of the large spaces, both indoor and out.
Then we just wandered, and enjoyed looking mostly at plants but also at birds and sculptures. I took some photos of plants and sculptures because I liked them, and of birds in the hope of using them to identify the species of duck (other than mallard) and goose (in addition to the Canada geese) we saw.
After admiring a large old chestnut tree and taking several pictures, I said 'I'm being a tourist'. I used two twigs to pry open a chestnut casing and remove the nut, which I looked at, photographed, and then put down near where it had fallen. (As you know, we no longer have sweet chestnut trees in North America [1]). I was reminded of when Maureen visited the Bronx Zoo with me and Ben Yalow: I was showing off the okapis, but what most interested her in that enclosure was the chipmunks.
[1] There has been a long-term project to try breeding a chestnut blight–resistant chestnut by crossing a Chinese chestnut species with the very few (I think less than a dozen) surviving North American chestnut trees. The last I knew, as of a year or two ago, the project had produced trees that are 15/16 American chestnut and seem to be resistant--and have run into objections from people who think that this is not preserving but attacking a species that is important to them. (This is vague because I don't have time right now to track the information down.)
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