Tag: botanic garden

Night of 1,000 Jack-o’-Lanterns at Botanic Garden

TIt was the first time I attended this event at Chicago Botanic Garden. I thought I should take more advantage of my membership, and also I thought that’s something my mom would enjoy (and she did). There are only fifteen nights when the Jack-o’-Lanterns walk is open; each time from 6:30 to 10:30 PM.

Honestly it was hard to believe that each of the pumkins was actually carved; that they were not some plastic models! But the artists were at work, so you could actually see the artworks in making!

I am not sure whether there were indeed 1000 of pumpkins, but there were a lot, so I collapsed some of them into collages. Enjoy!

Orchid Show 2025

A new Orchid Show at Chicago Botanic Garden just opened, and my friend Lena and I do it every year, no matter how busy we are. Since things will become hectic in just a week, we decided to go on the very first day of the show, which was yesterday (not counting the opening night).

As always, we took my mom there, and as always, Lena invited one of her closest friends from Palatine, so we were all together as our usual group. We liked the show, although Lena and I both felt there was a little bit “less of everything” than the previous year. Fewer plants and less variety. Still, there was plenty to admire, and too many photos taken:)

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Helsinki Botanic Garden

On Monday, I met with my friend Natasha to discuss the details of their upcoming visit to Chicago. She suggested visiting the Helsinki Botanic Garden. Since I didn’t get a chance to see enough roses this time, I fully supported that idea.

The Orchid Show

On Saturday, Lena and I, and my mom, and Lena’s friend – all four of us went to see the Orchid show at the Chicago Botanic Garden; a tradition we had kept, strangely, since February 2020 – that was the last event we were able to attend before the lockdown.

This year’s show was exceptional! The staff at the exhibit told us that they have a new artistic director )or however this is called), and yes, it was something!

I recorded several immersion videos, which obviously, won’t play as immersion here, but I also took a lot of pictures, and I am going to show just a fraction of them here. The theme of the show was “The show,” so there were some elements of circus, amusement park, and so on.

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Finding Nature

On Saturday, I did what I had planned to do for a very long time: I took Metra to Chicago Botanic Garden. I love the Botanic Garden, and I often went there when I lived in Palatine, but taking public transport there appeared to be not as easy as I initially thought.
There is a bus from Howard, but it takes a relatively long time and does not run on Sundays. And in any case, I feel extremely dizzy when I ride on a bus for a long time. As for Metra, I knew that I would need to walk fon the station to the Botanic Garden, and I could not decide whether I should take a bike with me or walk, and ended up not going at all.
Finally, I decided to choose a day when I would go, and that day was July 1.
I took a train from Ogilvie after my escorting shift; it was drizzling most of the day, but didn’t pore, so I kept walking.
The most exciting part, however, was that I found the Forest Preserve! While it takes more than twenty minutes to get to the garden entrance, the Forest Preserve is right there, you get off the train, and here you are!

The pleasure of walking the trail in the woods was even more than seeing the familiar sites of the Botanic Garden (although the Garden was great!)

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The Orchid Show 2023

My friend Lena started a tradition of visiting me in sprig to attend the Chicago Botanic Garden Orchid Show. We did the first one right before the pandemic lockdown, then we did the second one last spring, right after the war in Ukraine started. And last Sunday, we went to the 2023 Orchid Show. Same as before, we took my mom along, and Lena’s friend from Palatine came to join us.

I do not think anybody needs words to describe the orchids. They are magical. This year, the show organizers placed magnifying lenses close to some of the orchids, and neither Lena nor I liked this. We both think, it was a good try but the result was not as magical as one could imagine.

Here they are:

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A Rose Garden

Boris took me to another rose garden – and I thought I knew all of them in Helsinki, at least the ones which are close to the city center. But here is another one – and in walking distance from our home.

And yes, not all of the flowers pictured here are roses, I know 🙂

Now we are finally talking roses!
These ones look so much like the lilac roses in San Jose,just the European size 🙂
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Roses

The whole week after we returned from California was insane. On any given workday, I was actively engaged with more than one customer, so it was a constant context switch. Things were so intense that I could not even have a normal lunch break when I didn’t have to look at my watch all the time or check work emails several times during a meal. Boris and I had only two no-rush conversations during his visit.

Just to be clear, I am far from being done with all the things I need to accomplish by tomorrow, but I want at least to post more pictures from California:)

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The Orchid Show 2022

The Orchid SHow of 2020 was pretty much the last event we could attend before the lockdown. Little did we know what would come next!

Two years later, we were there again to celebrate spring, life, and beauty.

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Family Time

My girls went back home today. We spent a wonderful five days together, going to places, doing things together, and talking non-stop. After they left, I told Boris that I either became too old or out of practice because I felt tired of all these non-stop activities. He replied that he thinks that I am just out of practice, and I asked whether he implies that I should do it more often. He laughed and said that probably yes.

Speaking about activities, we went to the Botanic Garden on Tuesday.

The signs say: Welcome back! We missed you!
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