I spent most of November and December eating lunch at my desk at work. Now that things have slowed up, and the weather is not so bad, I have an urge to spend as much time as possible outside. So one sunny day this week I headed over to the Missouri Botanical Garden at lunch time to take a walk. Although I get irritated that the Garden has seemingly chosen to develop every square inch of space that it has and leave no open green space, (not to mention plastering donors' names everywhere in incredibly tacky ways) it is still generally a nice place to visit.
The Garden was originally the country estate of Henry Shaw. Here's his country home, Tower Grove House, today.
It must have taken Henry quite a while to get from his town house, located at 7th and Locust (only a few blocks from where my office is today), out to his country house. But today it is a short drive from downtown. It takes me about ten minutes to get there, which leaves time for a nice walk.
Even on a winter's day there are things going on at the Garden.
On this particular day it was sunny but a little chilly so I decided to go into the Climatron, the big greenhouse shaped like a geodesic dome.
On a sunny day it is quite cheerful inside, walking through all that humidity that I would be complaining about if it were summer.
Since it is a tropical greenhouse most of the vegetation is just ... green. But there were little glimpses of color here and there that were nice to see on a winter's day.
And there are still some Chihuly's left over from the big exhibition they had there a few years ago.
It was a nice winter break. Thank you Henry Shaw. Leaving your home to all of us was a lovely thing to do.
