Philadelphia Flower Show

 

The largest indoor Flower Show in the world, run by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, takes place annually in Philadelphia, where it has been held for almost 200 years.

 

This year the theme is 'Holland' and so the exhibits and gardens featured many thousands of bulbs, especially tulips - of all colours.

 

 

At the main entrance the showpiece exhibit was a canal bridge decorated with flowers and surrounded by bulbs.

 

Underneath the bridge panels of blue and white Delft tiles were interspersed with planted succulents, moss and flower heads.

 

Today was the first day of the show and so it was very busy, the three large halls of the Convention centre were crowded, with more than 250,000 people expected to visit over the nine days of the Show.

 

So many different flowering bulbs..

 

 

 

 

In one garden were a number of different colours of Iris Reticulata.  The exhibitor was a bulb company from Middlesex - the only UK exhibitor that we saw.

 

 

 

Some of the exhibits were competition classes..

 

 

 

 

These outrageously blue tulips had, of course, been dyed..

 

There was much more to see of course and I will share some more in the next few days!

Nothing to Report

 

Sometimes when writing a daily blog there are just days when no photos have been taken, no new places visited, nothing particularly quirky spotted and recorded.

So it was today, I have been at the Loft, squeezing more pieces of a very large and generous donation into the jewellery cabinet and updating the Bargain Loft Facebook pages with a collection of Bunnykins pieces.  

Would you like to see those?  Here they are.  Not everyone's cup of tea but an imaginative set of figures..

 

Anyway, back to today.  I am always thrilled to get pictures of Theo from Lauren and James and so this lovely shot of him on the (big boy) slide at the local park was great to receive.  When I was there with him and his Dad a few weeks back it was overcast, wet and muddy - no lovely reflection in the slide then and no blue sky.  In just a few weeks he looks much more confident. 

We miss him and all the family but it's great to see the photos!  Just one more...here he is in his Postman Pat outfit...reminding me of photos of his (great) uncle Andrew in his engine drivers hat at about the same age..

 

Coming Out of Storage

 

Through the year, the Bargain Loft puts into storage all items  that are donated for Valentine's Day, St Patrick's Day, Easter, Mothers Day etc as well as of course for Christmas.

 

This week all the Easter boxes - fifteen or so - were brought back from storage and volunteer pricers have been finding space for it all in the store.

 

Important Easter items here are baskets, 'grass' and plastic eggs to hide with Easter treats inside.  We seem to have had some very large donations from a supermarket of 'grass'.  A clue maybe in the fact that it is jellybean scented!!  Obviously not a big seller!  We probably have enough for a jellybean scented stable or two!

 

We also have a large number of egg decorating kits - another large donation and enough to keep a school going..

 

Otherwise most items are of the decorative variety - these for outside your home..

 

These definitely for inside!!

Leaving Ottawa

 

David has been working in Canada for a couple of days and flew home this morning.

This is the view as he took off from a still snowy Ottawa - back to 18C here!

DC Squirrel

This lively squirrel was in the sculpture park alongside the National Mall when we were in Washington at the weekend.

 

 He seemed to be full of the joys of Spring and making good use of the heavily pollarded trees as an overground travel network.

National Gallery of Art

 

The East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington has now re-opened after refurbishment.  It has a number of galleries around a vast concrete and marble atrium with some huge pieces of modern art.

 

Downstairs a metal and lead aeroplane sculpture caught David's eye.

 

We visited a photography exhibition in the upstairs gallery - but did not take any photos.

Outside the gallery was this rather unusual installation entitled 'Lick and Lather'.

 

As we got close to this end of the line of sculptures, it became clear what they are made of - there was a strong smell of dark chocolate.  

 

The 'lather' end of the line of sculptures was, of course, carved from soap.

At the Hirshhorn Museum

 

The Hirshhorn Museum on the National Mall houses a collection of modern art and its current main exhibition is very popular - Infinity Mirrors by Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist.  This work 'Pumpkin' represents a favourite subject of this artist.

The exhibition is free but so popular that timed passes are issued at the start of each week.  Large groups of people were queuing for their timed entry under the enormous circular building.

 

Each year at this time the Smithsonian Museums, in conjunction with the US National Botanic Garden. Hold an orchid exhibition.  This year it is at the Hirshhorn Museum and is very simply presented as a collection of some of the 8,000 plants owned by the Botanic Garden on simple white shelves.

 

There were, of course, some spectacular blooms, showing the variety of size, colour and types of orchid.