clear: light breeze: 45ºF

With the shorter days, it is possible now to get to the Garden before the sun rises. Beginning today and ending with the first Saturday in November, we will be able to beat the sun to the Garden. The colors of dawn still lingered when we arrived just after 7 a.m.

The silhouettes of the slender dangling beads of the seed pods on the Japanese Pagoda trees (Sophora japonica) planted near the entrance to the Garden started me thinking about the Dale Chihuly installation that will be coming to this Garden in April. I’ve been a fan of Chihuly’s glass works for a long time. His chandeliers are my favorites. I saw his massive chandelier high above the foyer of the V&A Museum in London and his smaller one over the staircase in the Beach Museum on the campus of Kansas State. I regret never having seen any of the five installations called “Gardens of Glass” that Chihuly custom made for conservatories and botanical gardens. His latest installation is now at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.

Then a week ago that I read that Chihuly and his works of garden glass are coming to this botanical garden. Pinch me to make sure I'm not dreaming. The exhibition will open April 30, 2006—too late for all but the latest of the tulips, but prime time for roses, irises, and azaleas—and will stay until the end of October. Most of the glass works will be installed among the tropical and temperate plants in the Garden’s two large glasshouses. But the pieces I’m most anxious to see are the outdoor installations that will be installed in the reflecting ponds of water lilies and the flower beds. How his fantastical shapes and colors will play with those of the ever-changing plants and blooms will be fascinating to see as the seasons change. Plans for the exhibition include evening walks called “Chihuly Nights” every Thursday. In press release language, the evenings will “offer visitors unique, dramatically lit views of the exhibit in the glow of evening.”

Apart from the glow of the glass, Chihuly will mean good business for the Garden in 2006. A Chihuly exhibition at the Atlanta Botanical Garden scheduled from May to October 2004 and extended to December attracted more than 350,000 visitors. A 2001 Chihuly exhibit at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago drew 450,000 visitors and was extended twice. In an interview with Betsy Taylor of the Associated Press, Peter Raven, director of the botanical garden where I walk, estimates that the Chihuly exhibit will bump attendance up by 20%. The regular annual attendance at the Garden now stands at about 700,000. I think I'd better plan to arrive for my weekly garden walk at 7 a.m. as long as Chihuly is here.

How do they do that? This is the only pot of mums that combines two of the traditional colors of mums into a round arrangement looks like stripes on a baseball. Were pots of budded mums forced together to make this arrangement or were the two varieties planted together in a very large pot? However it was done, it made me pay attention. This is definitely not just another mum.

I like the odd surprises that fall brings. Azaleas often offer a few blooms at this time of year. So do crabapples. Last year I saw some snowdrops that fit better in January or February blooming at about this time of year. Reblooming iris begin flowering from now to killing frost. This morning the surprise was a quince (Chaenomeles speciosa) that I saw in Japanese Garden. Along side the mature full-sized yellow quinces and a few already rotted ones, the shrub displayed some maroon-colored flowers and buds. Four generations posing for a family picture.







clear: calm: 55ºF

The first weekend in October: the parking lots on the East side of botanical garden are covered by four long tents filled with more than a hundred vendors and exhibitors. It’s the garden’s annual “Best of Missouri Market.” Lots of food to taste. I tried breads, scones, cookies, pastries, and pecans coated with honey, sugar, and sweet glaze. I reluctantly passed the five winery booths because the samples they offered were so slight -- their wines were served in cups that could have been used to take a dose of cough syrup. Easier to leave alone for me were all of the hot sauces, pepper condiments, and pepper-laced fruit jams and cheese balls. Hot must be hot with other visitors though because the program listed eight sellers of peppery products, not counting the booths offering hot sausages and jalapeño beef-jerkies.

Aside from the food booths, the stall that drew the most crowds was the one with non-stop demonstrations of a tool called the “Nut Wizard.” Imagine an old-fashioned cage that callers at bingo games used to mix the bingo balls. Then make the cage of flexible metal and add a broom handle to it. Roll the wizard over the ground and it picks up all manner of things that used to mean a lot of bending and stooping. In the demo I watched, the Wizard was picking up sweet gumballs fast and easy. In their promo material, the sellers say the Wizard will gather “Pecans, Black Walnuts, Butternuts, Apples, Hickory Nuts, Acorns, Chestnuts, Oranges, Lemons, Golf Balls, Baseballs, Tennis Balls, Buckeyes, Marbles, Sweet Gum Balls, Hedge Apples, etc... Just about anything round or oval that is less than 4"and greater than 3/8" in diameter.” The demo must have been convincing. I saw lots of folks walking to their cars with their new Nut Wizards in tow.

Of things botanical, the most impressive booth was the plant-filled stall of a grower in the middle of state named Missouri Wildflowers Nursery. The nursery says it grows more than 210 species of wildflowers that grow wild in Missouri’s fields and forests. The stall was brimming with a generous sampling of their stock in four-inch starter pots and was decorated with several jack-o'-lanterns with eyes, noses, and mouths traced in purple beauty berries (Callicarpa Americana). Outside the stall were beauty berry shrubs for sale in one- and four-gallon containers. Each of the shrubs was brimming with tight clusters of the pea-sized purple berries. An identifying sign said that the purple berries were edible, but tasted about as good as zucchini.

The red buckeye tree (Aesculus pavia) in the English Woodland Garden has started to drop its smooth protective capsules that split open when they hit the ground. Show me a person who can resist picking up a few of the newly fallen buckeyes. They have the sheen of polished wood even in the shade. There is a satisfying smoothness about a buckeye that makes me want to turn it over and over between my thumb and forefinger. I had never noticed the flat spot next to the eye until I read an article by George Ellison in last month’s Smoky Mountain News. He thinks that flat spot is the charmed spot on the buckeye. To bring out the magic, he says to rub the flat spot with your forefinger. “If the fish aren’t biting, rub your buckeye seed just so, spit on your bait, and hang on. When the home team is behind and driving for the winning score in the last seconds, place your thumb on the flattened area just so, hold it there, and see what happens. If you get yourself into the right frame of mind and rub the flattened area just so with your thumb, cash will flow from mysterious sources into your bank account.”

After our walk in the Garden, we came back to the market tents to revisit the stall selling bouquets of crested, plumed, and wheat head celosia (cockscomb) in shades of red, purple, gold, orange, and yellow. We left the Garden carrying a bouquet of freshly cut magenta-colored wheat head celosia.