Tag Archives: Missouri Botanical Gardens

Who Wrote the Book of Love?

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Valentine’s Day is just a few days away, and I’m all over it this year. I have already knocked down steps one and two on the guy’s big list of things to do for V-Day. With this kind of momentum going, I ought to be able to cruise into this national holiday that is dedicated to romance, feeling proud, with my head held high. Tuesday night, there will be no last-minute stops at the grocery store for me. Lesser men may be found in the candy aisle then, but not me, not this year anyway.

Orchid Show

Step one is flowers, every girl loves flowers, and where are the best flowers in town found? Why at the botanical gardens of course. I took Anne to the Orchid Show on Saturday. The photos with this post are from there. I can hear the other hens begin to cluck, “Cheap, cheap, cheap”, but hear me out. Last year, I went the grocery store route. I haven’t always been this debonair. I bought her an orchid plant then. It looked nice when I brought it home, but over time, it deteriorated. This time around, even Anne didn’t want to go that route again. The flowers at the show were gorgeous. We both took lots of pretty pictures of them, pictures that won’t deteriorate. So, I can check off step one.

Paphiopedilum Lathamianum

Step two is a romantic dinner for two. Some prefer the hustle and bustle of Valentine’s Day night, but I find it to be too hectic then, besides Valentine’s Day falls on a week day this year. You are always better off scheduling the dinner before Valentine’s Day than after. After just seems like an afterthought. Saturday night, last night, worked out just fine. Now about the choice of the restaurant, this is an important decision, and is best not left to the last-minute. For me though this decision was easy, because I didn’t have to make it. Kubie had already made it for me. A couple of weeks ago, at the bike swap meet, she had scolded me for not taking Anne out to dinner to celebrate the 2112 miles that Anne had bicycled last year. With both Valentine’s Day and bike mileage to celebrate, the restaurant had to be good. Voila, Tony’s was the only choice! Tony’s is the best restaurant in town; it is where Team Kaldi’s friends held the inaugural mileage celebration dinner and it is where I proposed to Anne and she accepted. So, it was simple, see?

The service was impeccable; they even fetched the car, when I couldn’t locate the valet parking. The owner, Vince Bommarito, stopped by our table and chatted us up for a few minutes. The food was great too. We started with salads. I had the Tony’s salad, and Anne had the Tomato salad, with Gorgonzola, and Balsamic dressing. For entries, Anne ordered Tilefish from off the menu, and yes it is endangered. I had Tony’s signature Lobster Albanello. Finally, for dessert, Anne had a Lemon Ricotta Cheese Torte, with Strawberry Sauce, while I had the best Crème Brulee in town. Eat your heart out Danny, but at only eight bucks, it was also the best deal of the night.

Target Acquired

And what about step three you ask? Sorry guys, but I can’t give away all of my techniques. That just wouldn’t be right. Don’t worry though; come Tuesday night, there will be lots of other guys at the grocery store willing to share their great ideas with you. Thanks Sam for the steer to the Theodolite App. It will help me to acquire the target of my affections.

Feathers, Petals and Fur

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This post is both reprise and counterpoint to yesterday’s post. This post shows you all of the pictures that I got all high and mighty about not showing you yesterday. Returning to the scene of the crime, I offer up feathers, in the form of the Silver-Beaked Tanager, the petals of an African Daisy and a mouse in the Climatron’s house. The Clerodendrum photo segues to the City Diner’s chandelier.

After yesterday’s MoBot sojourn, Anne and I hightailed it over to the City Diner on South Grand. We snagged a primo table, in the back, a booth, with side-by-side seating. This gave us the equivalent to stadium seating to the Sunday morning brunch bowl. There were three tables of note. Tables one and two featured two gentlemen each. Each table had one talker and one listener. The third table featured a young couple. Here the man seemed the most animated, the woman looked tired. Leaping to conclusions I assumed that her fatigue was due to too much fun in bed. You know what they say when you assume something? This was silly of me. When the man got up to go to the bathroom, he revealed the newborn-carrier that had been hidden on his side of the booth. Her fatigue was explained. He came back with a baby bottle. Our meal arrived. Afterwards, my attention returned to the two tables of two men. What if I were to mix them up? What would happen if I put the two listeners together and the two talkers together? Would it cause an explosion? Fortunately, the check came before I had time to find out.

Politics is the conjunction of two words. The first syllable Poli- comes from the Greek word Poly, which means many and the second syllable -tics comes from the blood-sucking parasite. So, logically the business of politics must also be the business of many blood-sucking parasites. This is how I view this year’s political landscape from my lofty eyrie, perched in front of my keyboard. I stare out over the blogosphere and study the nuances of the political winds, until I become so bleary eyed that I cannot see the screen for the pixels. I feel like ancient Diogenes, perpetually searching for just one honest politician.

This week I found one and then lost this honest politician all in one short speech. I’m speaking of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Gabby in a short video, announced her resignation from Congress. She announced it now, to give other candidates time to campaign. She waited a year to announce it, to give herself time to heal. After a year, she decided that she would need more time and that the demands of the job ran counter to her needs. She may return to politics someday. She certainly hasn’t ruled it out and the remarkable level of recovery that she has already obtained, trumpets this belief. I’ll relight Diogenes’ lantern, as portent of her eventual return.

No Feathers, No Petals, No Fur

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Nature photography contests sometimes restrict entries by excluding pictures of birds, flowers and mammals. This is done, because most nature photography usually features one or more of these elements and if you’ve run more than a few of these contests, you have likely gotten tired of these three themes. In this post’s slideshow, I have done the same. This morning, Anne and I drove over to the Missouri Botanical Gardens (MoBot). The weather was foggy, misty and grey this morning. The garden’s grounds are mostly in hibernation this month, but with this unusually mild winter, there is already some signs of spring. We quickly decided to bail from the dull, bland exterior and entered the Climatron.

The Climatron is MoBot’s signature structure. A geodesic dome, it was built-in 1960, to replace the crumbling Palm House, which had housed the garden’s palm and cycad collection since 1914. In 1988 the Climatron was renovated. The two greenhouses, the Desert House and the Mediterranean House, that had bookended it until then were torn down. A new Temperate House was erected and this is where we chose to enter the Climatron from. The Temperate House is almost as warm as the Climatron, but nowhere near as humid. The time spent in the Temperate House helped, as did using an electric hand-drier, but my camera still chose to fog up for the first few minutes in the dome. We spent the next hour in this tropical paradise, far away from the winter blahs.

Adhering to the no feathers, petals and fur protocol, one tends to dwell upon a meditation in texture. Fortunately, nature has texture in abundance. In case you were wondering, Anne assures me that the pictured cycad does not include a flower. Evolutionarily, the cycad predates the development of the flower. Photo expeditions like today’s make for great blog fodder. Between the two of us, Anne and I took about 300 pictures, of which you might see 10%. Pictures are nice, but a blog requires writing too. Hence this meditation on textuality, today’s post.

Deer Creek

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Christmas Trees Repurposed as Fish Habitat

Sometimes you have to dig deep within yourself to come up with a blog post, but on other times, it just bubbles to the surface. Last week we received an email from the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance (DCWA), a project of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It explained the progress made on the ratification of the Deer Creek watershed management plan and something dearer to my heart, lots of maps.

Studying these maps, it turns out that the open storm sewer that flows through the neighborhood actually has a name, Claytonia Creek. One of the activities of the DCWA is naming all of these once nameless storm sewers within the watershed. The idea is that people might care more about Claytonia Creek than some nameless storm sewer.

One of the maps shows that our storm sewers are combined with the sanitary sewers. This is a product of the history of our subdivision. Our house was built-in the 1930s, so the streets and the sewers must have been laid out then or earlier. That’s the way they built back then. This means that the metropolitan sewer district must treat both our sewer water and our rain runoff. Most of the city of Saint Louis is like this too, heavy rains, result in sewage spills.

Anne and Joanie drove up north to the Riverlands, along the Mississippi, today, to look for eagles. They saw Bald Eagles, Trumpeter Swans, Canada Geese, Mallards, Golden Eyes, seagulls, a Great Blue Heron and a Kestral. I elected to bicycle in the park instead. I got 15 miles. I took the picture with this post. It shows Christmas trees that have been repurposed as fish habitat in Jefferson Lake. The park is outside the Deer Creek watershed. It is part of the River Des Peres watershed, which Deer Creek is a tributary of. For those of you planning to paddle to the sea, the route runs Deer Creek, River Des Peres, the Mississippi, to the sea.

Year End Post

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Japanese Garden Bridge

The photo with this post is of a bridge. It is symbolic of the journey we take tonight, from one year to the next. It is a crooked bridge, for a crooked path. It is a path more across time than space. So, goodbye 2011 and hello, 2012! We’ll see you all on the other side. Alright, enough of this metaphysical mumbo jumbo, let’s get back to the real world. Let’s go to where the rubber meets the road, the bike tire rubber that is.

Anne and I launched towards the park, but our goal was Lafayette Park and Park Avenue Coffee. Our mission was to deliver a Christmas present to Kubie. Anne had knitted her a hat. We got there early and had pumpkin spiced lattes to while away the time. Mission accomplished, we headed for home. Have I left anything out? Oh yeah, there was our little run-in with the law.

This being New Year’s Eve the SLPD and likely all law enforcement agencies are on heightened alert. On our out-bound leg we were not, but we should have been. We were cruising east on Clayton Avenue, passing by the Barnes Hospital complex, which is always a ghost town on a Saturday. We came upon a stop sign, looked around, but didn’t see anyone. So, we did what we always do, we made a Saint Louis stop and just rolled right through it without actually stopping. We should have checked six, because right behind us was a SLPD patrol car. He chirped his siren, rolled down his rear window and as he moved on, let his canine partner chew us out. Whoop! Woof! Woof! Don’t let the dogs out! Whoop! Woof! Woof! Who let the dogs out? So if you are going out tonight, drive carefully.

We rode 27 miles today, which is longer than we normally ride, and is also counterintuitive to our expected goal of staying up to midnight tonight. The reason for this exercise was to give Anne 2150 miles for the year. And me? In short, I don’t know. At the beginning of the year, I made the zen-like decision not to record my miles for the year. This is the first time for that in seventeen years. Anne thinks that she has more miles than I and she may be right, I just don’t know. If she is right, then this would be the first time for that in seventeen years too. As a new years resolution, I promise to record my miles next year. This ought to keep those of my bike buddies happy. I’m speaking of the sub-genre know as the mileage weenies. Happy New Year all!

What I did on Christmas Vacation

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So, what did we do this holiday week? The short answer is, not much. With everyone home this week and off from school or work, we should have more to say for ourselves then we do, but that’s life. Since this is my first real extemporaneous blog post this week, so let’s have at it.

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was very Steampunk. For the unenlightened, Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used, like Victorian era Britain. It was also very action oriented and not particularly cerebral, like Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be. The Esquire was also charging “special” holiday prices, $12.50. Fortunately, we had free tickets and gift cards from work, lucky us! Anne and Dave liked the movie. I found it meh, but I’ll probably watch it again, when it comes out on DVD. At least now, I can check off the holiday movie box.

Anne and the boys got to visit the Floss Nazi this week. “Ve have ways of making you floss.” I visited her last week. “Is it safe?” I got Dave’s car checked out and the da boyz need to get new glasses. This will have to pass for housekeeping.

We biked. Since the Cyclopath post, I biked 16 miles by myself on Wednesday; Anne was still suffering from her turn in the chair, with the Floss Nazis’ enhanced interrogation techniques, so begged off. “Is it safe?” “Is what safe?” It was way nicer weather than the previous day’s ride and I saw plenty of other bicyclists.

Thursday, we biked together and got 20 miles. This time it was my turn to feel punked out. “Is it safe?” “Yes, it’s safe!” “Is it safe?” We had lunch at Local Harvest, on Morgan Ford, near Arsenal. Believe it or not, we enjoyed patio dinning in late December. Afterwards, we toured the Botanical Gardens. Anne took the photograph of bamboo in the Chinese Garden. Anne also embarked upon an alphabet quest. Her quest involves finding shapes in the real world that look like the letters of the alphabet. This is not our original idea; we’ve seen examples at art fairs. Anne has a quest for a particular word or phrase. Can I have Words for $20? Look for it in the future.

Purdue beat Western Michigan this week, in the Little Caesar’s Bowl, in Detroit, but we ordered Imo’s Pizza instead. Yes, we now have another Big Ten school to root for against Ohio State. How many does that make now, eleven, or twelve? Imo’s is archetypical of Saint Louis style pizza, thin crust, square of cross-hatch cut, and with a sweet cheese topping. It is the square beyond compare.

In truth, it is only Friday morning and I have another holiday day weekend stretching out before me. So don’t give up hope on us yet, we may yet do something blog-worthy this holiday break. Afterall, to paraphrase Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another blog post.

Pretty Much A Play Day

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Friday night, the Maplewood business district had their Arts and Eats Walk. We walked around taking in the sights and sampling some of the food stuffs too. Anne knew everyone there, or at least everyone there seemed to know her. We eventually ended up at Las Palmas for some Mexican. Anne and I both wanted a margarita. We then made the mistake of ordering a pitcher of margaritas. I thought the waiter said that a pitcher was the price of three margaritas, plus you get another one, essentially free. Since Anne and I were both ordering one already, it seemed cheaper to order a pitcher that way we could both have a second one, for one half off. What came instead was a full pitcher, plus two full glasses of margaritas. It was way more than we could handle. After dinner, there was still plenty of margarita left. The waiter tried to get us to take go cups, but we both had already had enough.

At Las Palmas we caught the end of the Brewer’s defeat of the Diamondbacks and the only run scored in what would eventually become the Cardinal’s 1-0 victory over the Phillies. The Card’s win was a serious nail-bitter, one that I could not bear to watch. If I had tried, I would have nibbled my nails down to the second knuckle. Those of you that have seen my hands know that I am not joking. Chris Carpenter, the Cardinal starter, went the distance and pitched a three-hit shutout. He actually threw for 28 outs. A Philly batter made it to first base, after striking out, when the catcher dropped the ball. Now we face the Brewers. It will be a battle of the suds. I expect Saint Louis to institute drug testing for Miller products this week. It is high time an end is put to that sort of high life. I’m glad to see that the Tigers advanced too, and I wish them well against Texas.

Saturday, we drove out to Gray Summit and the Shaw Nature Reserve, for some birding. I should say that we have enjoyed an almost two-week period of uninterrupted crystal clear blue skies and balmy, but not too hot and not too cold temperatures. It is almost like living in SoCal, but cheaper. The Shaw Nature Reserve is part of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. In the 19th century, when coal was king, its smog was also killing all of the trees in the city of Saint Louis. Henry Shaw, the garden’s founder, bought land in Gray Summit, as an insurance policy for his garden. The Flying Wild Festival was featured. With kid’s activities and a guided walk, it seemed like an interesting event. It was actually a little bit too tame for me, but I did enjoy walking around the reserve. It is like the gardens, but bigger and cut to a rougher hew. The high point of the festival was the release back into the wild of a Red-Tailed hawk. The folks down the road at the World Bird Sanctuary brought the pictured rehabilitated parolee to the party.