Things I Read. Things of Mine.
The other day my wife and I had some spare time on a Sunday so we went to visit Cantigny Park. I’ve never been there, my wife had, but the place is beautiful. It’s photo time!
We kind of went for their French Connection Day, but also used that as a good excuse to go. The photos in the Flickr album have nothing to do with the day, but the day wouldn’t be complete without some France.
There are surprise discoveries in one’s life that can bring even more oodles of beauty and joy to one’s perfect, summer day than just, well, a perfect, summer day. Thanks to my cousin, Ron, and his wife, Vicky, I got to experience more oodles of beauty and joy, on a perfect, summer day.
It was also a day of “Who knew?”
Where was this surprise discovery with the blue skies and wonderful summer breezes blowing on a Sunday afternoon? It was a place called The Gardens at Ball, located at the West Chicago, Illinois headquarters of Ball Horticultural Company, which for the sake of my typing I will simply refer to as “Ball” during this little writing episode.
You may have never heard of Ball, but I can almost guarantee you have experienced some aspect of their work as they have, through the years, bred, sold, and distributed the seeds that become many of the beautiful plants you want in your flower garden, or planted around your house. The Gardens are a showcase of the plants they breed and develop so that the folks that grow and sell them in mass can see them, in all of their glory.
The surprise part? The Gardens at Ball are meant mostly for industry professionals. My cousin is in the business, and he visited a few years ago with his wife. They let me know about the place, about how beautiful and interesting it was, and I have been intrigued ever since. As The Gardens are for industry folks they generally aren’t open to the public., however, on a Sunday in July, thanks to Ball Horticultural Company and The Garden Conservancy, the public was allowed to walk around experience the latest Ball has to offer.
As my wife and I had some free time on the Sunday of the event, and the weather was beautiful, I said, “Wife, let’s go see some plants!” She found herself skeptical, but on that recommendation of my cousins we were off.
Nestled in an industrial park this is not really the place one would expect a garden, however, as you drive past the building and start to see the variety of plants, you know you are at the right location, pulling in and heading towards the gardens.
For this event there were tour guides, many from the University of Illinois Extension program for Master Gardeners, as well as Ball employees to answer questions, and upon being offered a guide we were paired with Logan who asked our interest in the gardens. We mentioned we had a clean slate of landscaping around our house to populate, were looking for inspiration, and also how not to kill Lantana, my specialty.
Beginning our walk around the over 10 acres of plants, Logan did a wonderful job of explaining the various parts of The Gardens at Ball which are separated into different classes of plants. There are shady areas spotlighting plants that do a little better with less sunlight where begonias and coleus abound, areas dedicated to just PanAmerican Seed with Easy Wave petunia, millet, ornamental peppers and more. There are rose gardens, a giant, perennial area, hostas for everyone, and a long row of nearly every color geranium you can imagine, all interspersed among the paths that take you in a logical circle, eventually getting you back to the entrance.
Walking through The Gardens it occurred to me that the selection of plants I would see at my local big-box hardware store kind of sucked. The shear variety of color and variation of the standard “here are some petunias” you find at those stores pales in comparison to the beauties you will spot walking around the winding paths and trails around the grounds. I will say this, both my wife and I came up with a plethora of ideas for around our house, and I’m hoping that Canna Cannova, at least I believe that’s what it was, can be incorporated to naturally attract some hummingbirds. I just hope we can find them all to buy somewhere, but in a worst case I suppose I could make a call, “Hey, cuz, any chance you can order me some SunPatiens, the Tropical Orange variety? How about some Rex Jurassic Pink Shades Begonia?”
The Rex Jurassic was one of those “Who knew?” moments while walking around The Gardens, as Ball developed a begonia to similarly mirror the skin of a T-Rex. It kind of reminded me of my grandma who would take her different colored violets, say her dark blue and white ones, somehow mix them together, and get cool things like a blue violet with a white border. I believe, however, that the folks at Ball are a little more scientific than my grandma!
With our walking around the gardens finished, and I believe I heard it was the first time they did this, Ball allowed tours of their facility which brought many more “Who knew?” moments apart from the ton of “Who knew?” while just walking around the gardens.
The tour we were given focused on a variety of aspects of their business, from seed coating (Who knew the folks who mass-planted the little suckers into those trays needed coated seeds?), to seed pellets (Have you ever seen those SimplyHerb gardens, with six or so herbs in one pot? No, they don’t plant six individual seeds, Ball combines them into one pellet, the planting people shove one in some dirt, and ‘Voila!”, six plants in one pot! Who knew?), to how they pre-germinate seeds. When you sell seeds you also prefer to count them so you know how many you are selling. Count them by hand? Nah, invent a seed counter so you can go crazy with up to 2000 pellets of seed in a second. Lastly came some quality control. Turns out that in the seed business you also need to tell your customers what kind of yield to expect, and to improve your own process to get better yield. Do you want some human to make this judgement call? Nope, we want lasers! So did Ball, and they developed a laser and photo system to analyze trays of just-germinated seeds.
Really, who knew there was so much to seeds? I just remember taking a dried up marigold, trying to plant the seeds, and hoping a few of them would grow. I guess when you are selling millions you need a little bit better process.
I know this blog post has gotten long, and I apologize, but I was fascinated by the entire Gardens at Ball experience. Going there was kind of like being let into that secret room in the back of the bar that only the cool people get to get into, only instead of beautiful drinks and beautiful people you get garden heaven.
Hopefully they will have this event again next year, and I’ll be setting a reminder to check The Garden Conservancy website next Spring. Now that the wife and I have all kinds of ideas for our yard, next year I’m hoping to be able to get even more pictures and share more oodles of beauty and joy of a summer day with you.
Beautiful gardens in the middle of an industrial area? Who knew?
The Morton Arboretum always has an endless supply of stunning views of nature, but their Origami in the Garden exhibit this summer brings beautiful metal. Stopping by during the Destination Asia Festival also led to live Sumi-E painting, and a surprise rustling in the leaves. It’s picture album time!
Let me know if you can spot the surprise in the picture of the leaves as you go through the album, and I’ve also got more pictures from The Morton Arboretum here!
It was getting hot and sweaty, but that kind of makes it perfect for a morning at Lincoln Marsh. All I really wondered from the walk was did they really need a “No Swimming” sign? Enjoy the picture album!
I like walking at Cricket Creek in Addison IL. It’s tucked away between two busy streets, and you wouldn’t even know the busy-ness is there if it weren’t for the occasional truck noise. There were no deer on this walk, but there was still plenty to see!
I am a man who finds farts funny. I will admit that I find it funny when I fart, and I find it funny, most of the time, when others fart. About the only time I don’t find farts funny is when I’m stuck on an airplane and the person next to me has rotten egg gas. Usually, if I can work myself upwind, fart away, and I will laugh!
I have my favorite slang for farting, and it’s usually centered on something about a duck. Sometimes, though, the best, most funny word is just fart.
The other day, however, someone I know commented, as I accidentally let a duck get in the room, “You just shot a beaver!” I looked at them with puzzlement. “What?” They repeated, “You just shot a beaver!”
This was a phrase I’ve never heard in this context before. I quickly demanded an explanation which related to something like “We used to say that all of the time when I was younger and someone farted.”
Again I was perplexed, but things got more complicated.
It appears for this person that the process of fart acknowledgement also included a visual component as, along with “You just shot a beaver,” the person who didn’t fart was supposed to lick their thumb and stick it on their forehead in some kind of “Someone in this group farted, and it wasn’t me!” ritual. Now I recall back in college the importance of claiming your fart with a “No slugs,” and if you didn’t claim the fart it was acceptable to slug the farter in the arm, but there was no thumb licking.
Now I’ve had a long life, spanning half a century, and in my past I can remember various ways to announce one’s passing gas, tendency for crop dusting, cutting the cheese, or the inevitable trouser trumpet, but nowhere in my memory banks did anything with beavers have to do with farting.
You see, for me, shooting a beaver relates to a few things, the obvious being physically shooting a beaver, and the other relating to a woman exposing her private area, a la Sharon Stone giving the “beaver shot” in “Basic Instinct.” Mostly, though, it conjures up the movie “The Naked Gun” where Jane (Priscilla Presley) climbs a ladder and Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) looks up and says “Nice beaver,” to which Jane replies, “Thanks, I just had it stuffed” as she hands Frank a stuffed beaver.
To each their own, I suppose, when it comes to announcing one’s flatulence, firing the butt bazooka, or recognizing another’s sphincter siren, it’s just that the beaver saying took me by surprise. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because, as I was doing research for this post I found that you can also say, “Beaver leaver” or “Shoot bunnies” when it comes to farting. There is one thing that is for certain, though, when it comes to breaking wind, and that is whoever smelt it, dealt it.
So please, whatever it takes, don’t deal it on a plane, and ladies, be careful not to shoot a beaver. Crossing your legs should help.
I took a couple of trips to the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL this Spring. Any time of year is a great time to take in the beauty of nature at the Arboretum, but Spring can be especially colorful and bring a renewed feeling of growth and inspiration.
Andy Note: It appears as of January 2018, the Cookie Butter Bar is back, but under a new moniker, The Cookie Crumble Bar. I’m not sure if it is exactly the same, but it sure tastes like it. Maybe they got rid of the “butter” part so it doesn’t sound so unhealthy? We’ll see if it goes away again come March.
On the coffee front, or should I say the “latte” front, I’ll admit I’m a Starbucks man. My drink of choice is the venti, iced, non-fat latte, even in the winter. I’ll also admit that I am wont to sometimes peruse the food case looking for maybe a brownie or chocolate chip cookie. I understand it’s not the best of food choices, but every now and then a sweet treat is in order, and one of those usually fits the bill.
It was my wife who told me about this bar of wonder. Me, I’m a creature of habit, and even though I pride myself on being observant when things are different, for whatever reason there are times, say if there were a lion sitting in the corner of the Starbucks, I wouldn’t notice it as my focus would be “Do they have any cookies or brownies? Yes!”, followed by order time. My wife, on the other hand, will look for new things. One day she told me she found the most glorious of treats, and that she was lucky enough to get one because the barista told her they sell out quickly.
As my wife and I share similar tastes I knew I had to try one so on my next trip I actually looked around the food case, and there it was, speaking to me as if “You have no idea the glorious tastes that will be crossing your palette in a few minutes!” I ordered my latte, asked for a Cookie Butter Bar in place of the brownie, and the barista looked at me with that look in her eye of “Your life will never be the same.”
I sat down, took a sip of my latte, and let the wonders of cookie butter, icing and “gingerbread-like Speculoos cookie,” whatever that is, cross my lips into a moment of sweet bliss, saying to the bar, “Where have you been all my life?”
No more brownie for me, nope, I have one love, and one love only in the bakery area of the food case at Starbucks, the Cookie Butter Bar.
Yes, the Cookie Butter Bar was incredibly popular, and on my next trip to Starbucks they were nowhere to be found. Okay, absence makes the heart grow fonder I figured. On the weekend morning my wife and I were in luck as we could share the “Wow, these are awesome!” together. A challenge to find, but worth the quest.
Then the work week started. My wife visited her Starbucks and texted me that she heard something disturbing from her barista, “they were being discontinued.” I told her they must have just been messing with her. Why would they get rid of the best thing they have ever sold? I felt secure that, at “my” Starbucks, I would have no difficulty in securing tasty goodness.
“We don’t carry them any longer.”
I inquired more, “Why?”
The girl barista simply explained that like a cranberry bar they used to have, the Cookie Butter Bar was destined to be a seasonal, Spring item, and once gone they were gone. The dude barista went on this explanation of there were only so many people in the world, each eating so many meals a day, and that there just wasn’t room for people to eat the Cookie Butter Bar because it took away from their brownie and normal cookie sales. I believe I was going along with the girl barista, but kudos to him for the most convoluted explanation of my sadness, ever.
Still with my doubts I pulled out my Starbucks app. “One of these stores has to still have them. I’ll stock up!” Everywhere it was they were sold out, or mostly “Not sold at this store.”
How? How could Starbucks only make like five of these scrumptious bakery items per store, I mean, it must be like five because no one has them?
I tried store after store on my travels. Explanations abounded like “They haven’t been shipping them to us.”, “They were a seasonal item.”, “We don’t carry them anymore.”, “I don’t know why we aren’t getting them.” “I thought they would make more.”
My dreams are now haunted with the memory of the Cookie Butter Bar. I mean, really, Starbucks, you have a “Spring” bakery item that doesn’t even last a month? What kind of Spring is that? Who planned this? This is the “Spring of Discontent!” Heck, they still have the other Spring items, which people obviously don’t like as much, but were brownie sales that important that you had to get rid of the Cookie Butter Bar?
It is said that it is better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all, or some crap like that, and maybe I should take some solace knowing I was one of the lucky ones, I was able to have not one, but two of the most delicious bakery items Starbucks has ever sold, but dammit, in this case, never having loved the Cookie Butter Bar at all might be better.
From MacRumors…
I’m still bouncing around with my iPad 3rd Generation. It looks like I’ll be able to get the new one I’ve dreamed about, someday. Maybe even imminently.
From Zen Habits…
This post hit me a lot today as I’ve been juggling a lot of things. I’m starting (One Goal. Thirty Days.), continuing (Songs By Andy, Entertainmet Ave!), and just trying to figure out Swift. Then, of course, there is my day job. Too many times my mind wanders between all of them, and I forget my meditation practice of mindfulness to stay in the moment.
I really need to remember, as Mr. Leo Babauta says, to:
I think I’ll try to “just shower” tomorrow.