Leu Gardens - PHOTO HEAVY (28)

Don't Blame Me !!

It's not my fault, Cathy let me loose in a garden with a camera and I got a little carried away.

We spent a couple hours in the afternoon walking around the Leu Gardens in Orlando, the temperature only got to 60 so it was a little chilly in the shade and by the lake but it was a beautiful garden and we were surprised by how my blooms were out.

There are over a dozen different gardens on the grounds with over 200 varieties of Camellias, including a very rare Yellow Camellia which we never found.  With the chilly wind and it getting late in the day we only covered half of the property, put off the tour of the house and I still took about 150 Pictures.

Just a sampling of the pictures we took there.

 I had Cathy stick her hand in to show the size of these leafs and this was a medium size one.

Never heard of this one before.  It's a GREEN ROSE,, really, you can see the little bud to the left of the bloom.  You can call it a rose but it still looks like a weed to me.

Fort Christmas

Did a road trip over to Christmas  Florida to tour Fort Christmas.  It's been about 15 years since we were here last and they have added a ton of stuff, the first time we were here the only building was the reconstructed fort.  Today it covers over 25 acres and contains a full size fort about ten other buildings that have been moved here from their original sites and is being developed into a living history museum, along with a large picnic and recreational area.

Each of the buildings is filled with displays and artifacts and today three of them had a docent present to answer any questions.  There is a school house here that started as a one room school then went to two and eventually three rooms and was in use into the 60's, the cool thing is that three of the ladies we talked to attended this school.

This is a very well planned and laid out park, donations are accepted, we spent about an hour and a half seeing the park.


 More information on Fort Christmas.

Here are some pictures of the park:  Click to enlarge.

 This Bronze was made by a man that was raised in one of the buildings in the park, at first we thought that it might be a Remington, but no.

"Scent of Man"

Around the park we found about seven sets of trees like this, A live Oak with a Palm either right next to it or growing out of the root system.

A simple wreath, it is Christmas after all.

and of course, Christmas is CLOSED Christmas.

Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Garden

Drove over to Winter Park a spent a few hours at the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Garden. I had never heard of him before, but for some reason I love Sculpture Gardens and it's part of our garden society membership, so why not.

We started in the museum section of the house where they had a traveling exhibit dealing with Cold War Russian propaganda posters. It was interesting to see how the poster showed Russia as the kind, gentle, loving, giving government and the USA was the mean, brutal, godless country out to destroy everything we could.

From there it was across the courtyard to the other section of the house and a 20 minute film to learn about our host. Then the guide showed us parts of the house and some of his work while answering our questions, after showing us the family chapel we were on our own to tour the Garden.

There are over 200 pieces of his work on the grounds, he did sculpture in stone, plaster, bronze, concrete and wood, plus paintings.

Here are just a few pictures of what we enjoyed.

This is the place

Coming up the driveway to the house

View out the window to the back yard.

One of his first works, carved wood, he did this when he was 15.

I can't remember the entire story behind this one but the original is on display in Nebraska and if you look you will see that she is holding an ear of corn, so she is known as the original Corn Husker.

If you were a close friend of the family and had a baby he wold make a bronze like this as a baby gift for you.  This one was lost for about 70 years before the family realized what it was and donated it to the museum last year.

This was one scary looking guy, I didn't want to take his picture but he made me.

This is a copy of the much larger one in the garden.

The Wanderer

There were so many that I can't remember all the names.

 I tell ya this guy was really scary, and I didn't take this picture.

 The 14 Stations of the Cross in bronze, painting are in the chapel.

The weather is starting to takes it toll on some of his works.

That's it , a great place to spend the afternoon.