Monday, February 9, 2009

Atlanta Botanical Garden Part 1


Saturday February 7th was my 42nd birthday and my morning started off perfectly. I walked into the kitchen to fix my coffee and right there in front of the coffee pot were these beautiful roses, a bottle of my favorite wine and a wonderfully mushy card from my sweetheart.

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Have you ever seen such beautifully colored roses before? They were so perfect I had to touch them to see if they were real.

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My dear friend Carol came up the night before and we were planning to leave for the Atlanta Botanical Garden. I had just re-injured my back a week ago and I was nervous about such a long ride, but I really wanted to make the trip. I collect art glass and Jamie has developed a new love for orchids and this weekend there was an orchid and art glass show at the conservatory. What a perfect combination! Everything we love in one place. I took a ton of picture so I’m going to break this up into more than one post.

The glass was done by several different artists and I loved every single piece of it. The glass in combination with the orchids was just fabulous. I’m not going to comment a lot on the photos, except to say that my photography does not do the art pieces justice. These pieces are huge and I don’t even want to guess how much they would cost. I would positively love to fill our garden with them.

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This one was sparkling in the sun like crazy. It must weigh a ton; I don’t know how they hung it.

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Isn’t this beautiful? This is the type I collect, but on a much smaller scale of course. It looks like a splash that was frozen in time.

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This is also another one of my favorite pieces, it was humongous. It sits inside a fountain. Something like this looks too fragile to be exposed to the elements. It would never last at our house I can see it now, some stray chunk of debris is picked up by the lawn mower or weed whacker and it would be all over with but the crying.

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16 comments:

Unknown said...

What a wonderful show, Randy! And Happy Birthday!!
I wanna go to Atlanta!

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday Randy!!! Those are some beautiful glass sculptures in the Botanical Garden. I don't blame you, I would love to have some of them too. :)

Roses and Lilacs said...

Happy Birthday, looks like you had a great day.

Colored glass works so beautifully with foliage and flowers. Your photos are spectacular. I would dearly love to have seen that exhibit.

BTW, the roses are wonderful. The colors are a perfect choice for a February birthday.
Marnie

Lisa at Greenbow said...

Happy birthday you young whipper snapper. I am glad your back held up for the ride because the show was worth the ride. Simply gorgeous glass. I'm with you in that it wouldn't last a minute in our garden. But by golly I would love to have a hunk of that glass in my garden. I really like the horsey (?) piece. I can't wait to see more.

Anonymous said...

Happy birthday, Randy! You're 8 months older than I am. ;-)

A day spent looking at beautiful glass sculpture in the garden sounds wonderful indeed.

Monica the Garden Faerie said...

Happy belated birthday! I love, love, love the glass, esp. the Chihuly. And my first thought about the oh-so-perfect roses was also that they were not real--they almost look like a glass sculpture. I turned 43 in November, btw. :)

F Cameron said...

Happy Birthday!

I do hope your back feels better soon. Watch that kind of thing -- even young ones like you have to be careful.

Those are lovely works of art! I'm sure the glass is really gorgeous when the sun is at the perfect angle.

Cameron

Phillip Oliver said...

Randy, I think your photos turned out great! :)

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday, Randy! What a wonderful way to celebrate. Those roses really were gorgeous. The colored glass sculptures were so beautiful. I have seen similar ones in magazines, but, I bet in person, it was really something to see. Your photos were great, don't sell yourself short. Hope your back is okay.

Jan
Always Growing

Wayne said...

Happy Birthday Randy!
And the show looked great!

Annie in Austin said...

Happy Birthday, Randy - what a great way for a gardener to celebrate. Maybe I'll copy Lisa at Greenbow and call you a young whippersnapper, just 'cause the word sounds fun!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Randy said...

Jan,
You just let me know when the two of you want to go. You can use us as a half way point. :-)

Racquel,
It would be very hard for me to pick a favorite. Thank you very much for the birthday wishes.

Marnie,
Jamie is trying to root one of the roses. I hope it's successful, I’ve only been able to do it twice and I’ve tried it lots of times.

Lisa,
Sometimes I fell like a young whipper snapper and sometimes I don’t! LOL I have four bad disks in my back and this one has been giving me bad trouble since last July. The irony of it is, this one hardly even a noticeable bulge on the MRI. I’m glad I was able to make the trip too. I think if I do my exercises every day (like I’m suppose to and don’t) it will heal. The other two post I’m doing will be mostly plants.

Pam,
I thought you looked mighty young to me! I was the perfect day!
Monica!

You know your glass! I’m embarrassed to say I saw the artist’s picture but didn’t remember his name. You are very good! I am really impressed! :-)

Cameron,
Thank you for the well wishes! The glass was positively alive with sunlight. Unfortunately, I’m a novice with a camera and I don’t understand all the light settings and stuff. I think the blue and clear one in the fountain came out pretty good, but I wish I could have gotten better ones in the greenhouse.

Phillip,
Thank you very much! They did turn out a little better than I had expected. You know me and my picture OCD.:-)

Thank you, thank you, thank you Jan, you know what they say; we are our own worst critics. The truth is an artificial eye rarely catches the beauty we see with our real ones. Thank you for the birthday wishes!

Hey Wayne!
The show was a blast!

Annie,
You are right, I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday! As beautiful as the garden was in February, I couldn’t imagine what it must look like in the spring. I can’t wait to go back again, that was actually my first trip to Atlanta.

Jan said...

Randy, happy birthday (hope it was great:))
Mine is March 5...let's just say that if you add a 1 and 0 (together)that's how far ahead of you I am :-0

The glass is lovely...I would want this inside my house. It would get messed up outside with all the leaves that fall from my huge trees.

I empathize w/you & your back;( This past year has been my worst ever. I had 3 epidurals, 5 injections, and 1 anesthetic procedure in hospital. Cervical, shoulder and lumbar. I'm dealing w/it, as we all must:-/ It is all from my gardening, I know! Too much digging and heavy lifting. All through my 40's I didn't have a lot of pain...now, makes me wish I'd hired a muscle man to do those jobs. My husband did a lot...but I did more:) Seriously.

Gail said...

Dear Randy...Happy Belated Birthday! You are so loved by your sweetheart! They are beautiful roses and the mushy card with wine was just the right romantic touch. Thank you for the wonderful tour...I would love to have a glass garden sculpture...way out of my budget! Enjoy your forties...they are the best years! gail

Anonymous said...

Happy belated birthday! The glass show was incredible. It must take a good deal of patience to form and create with glass. Hope you are feeling better.

Chandramouli S said...

Happy Birthday, Randy! I loved the Roses and the glass sculptures! Thank you so much for the trip!