No words – night of the butterflies 2010

A little excursion to the garden…

Glitter Glue Princess and I took advantage of the extremely nice weather Saturday and visited Meijer Garden for a couple of hours.

We wanted to check on the koi at the waterfall and see how many made it through the winter – there were only 15 or so out of the couple hundred that used to populate it.  We were trying to coax them out with Cheerios, when a little girl hurls a 4 inch rock into the pool and scares the bejeebus out of the poor fish – I don’t think they will probably be as easy to coax out next time because of it. 

Regardless, we took some nice shots:

The new Chihuly piece in the cafe.  It spans across their entire dining room -

Pictures taken by the waterfall -

This picture is by special request, for Suz.

Wordless Post – Night of the Butterflies at Meijer Gardens

Meijer Botanical Gardens Holiday Party – a wordless post

Wordless Post – views from Meijer Gardens this summer

A night with the butterflies

As members of our local sculpture park/botanical gardens, Meijer Garden, we get the benefit of going to lovely members only events. We just attended the “Night of the Butterflies” where we get to see the butterflies that they are hosting after hours. After going to this for many years, we’ve found that it is best to get there early, so the place is not crowded and there are fewer flashlights to aggravate the poor fellas when you are finding them…

My most favorite part is to see the night blooming orchid, but it wasn’t out again this year…. Bummer.

On to the photos of sleeping butterflies…

This is not a butterfly, but is breathtaking nonetheless.

Of course, we always take a picture next to the frog sculpture in the tropical garden. It seems the Glitter Glue Princess is getting a bit big for this anymore…

Lastly, some pictures of something I dearly love, the Chihuly glass chandelier in our garden’s lobby… this picture is upside down, but still lovely…

If you want to see a picture of me, I’m posting the link to it here….

George Rickey and Kinetic Motion

Glitter Glue Princess and I are in awe of the George Rickey exhibit at Meijer Gardens, so much so that the security people were afraid to leave us alone. We weren’t told we were too close, but I could see that they thought so when we were leaning over (and not touching!) the sculptures, trying to figure out how they were assembled. It does make for a great lesson in geometry and balance that would fascinate anyone over the age of 4.

They have a HUGE exhibit, with pieces inside and outside on loan from multiple sources. Of course, no photography of the inside ones. I did manage to get some shots of the external sculptures. Mind you they are not with any nice soundtrack like the polished things on youtube about George Rickey, but they do give you a better example of the movement involved with the sculpture that enamoured us… It is just hypnotic…

I apologize for Glitter Glue Princess’s having to be in all the shots…. It does make for fun video though….

Fore more information:

George Rickey on Wikipedia

George Rickey on Artcyclopedia

Meijer Gardens

Birthday Pictures at the Garden

The Glitter Glue Princess thinks posing is cheesy but fun, as attested in her posing for her halloween costume, but the results are sooo worth it.

A Meijer Garden Art Class

S took the Glitter Glue Princess and Miss K to an art class at Meijer Gardens. Bless his heart, he worked all the nights of the class and basically slept in the parking lot so they could go. The class was about making art for your garden.  They really, really wanted to take the cooking with chocolate class, but it was full before they registered.  They were still happy with the class.  They had the same teacher as they had last year when Glitter Glue Princess took her drawing class.

Here are the works that GGP brought home:

The shells in this stepping stone were collected by Lena Meijer and donated to the garden:

The Thinker and The Falls

This past Thursday was a members only night at Meijer Gardens. S had to work, so Glitter Glue Princess and I went on our own. They were opening the Amazing Chocolate Tree exhibit, which was nice, and put some realism to how chocolate is made. Unfortunately for the Glitter Glue Princess, she has a food geek for a Mom, and we’d discussed the chocolate making process a few times, so it was a bit of a downer. They have added some nice touches, like using ground cocoa nibs for the ground cover around the trees in the conservatory so everything smells chocolatey, and changing the senses garden to be more food oriented.

They had earlier installed the borrowed installation of Rodin’s Thinker, and we were blessed with the opportunity to see it without major crowds about, which gave more time for reflection, and for GGP to really get to look at it.
I really like our permanent Rodin sculpture of Eve, so I enjoyed this too. It didn’t hurt that it was across from our favorite place in the garden – the Waterfall. Here are some really poignant pics of the kiddo…

Hope everyone has a peaceful and poignant memorial day! We are off to the parade…