The Road Taken - More From Our Winter Garden Walk

I left you on the last post with our choice - Which way?

There are many choices here, as this sign indicates. For this choice, we took the high road. That took us to the Visitor Center, the Rock Garden, the Ground Cover Garden, and the Yao Garden, 

 Nature plants the lichen and moss. 

 Another Edgeworthia, and a place to stop and smell the...flowers. 

 The water feature in the Ground Cover Garden.

 More fragrance from the Daphne Odora. 

 Into the Rock Garden.

Moss spore cases on stone.

 A white needled fir, I think.

 An early rhododendron.

 The Visitor Center terrace, one of several places I sat to enjoy a sunbeam. 

Once a wine cellar on the original owners estate, now it looks more like an elf house. 

The Yao Garden is wonderful even when nothing is blooming. 

 And then we took the low road to complete the almost two mile loop.

We discovered a new art installation. That would be the stone arch, not me, but it did seem like a perfect frame. 

 As we returned to the Visitor Center on still another path, we found this lovely Camellia. It seemed to be saying "Happy Valentine's Day!"

A Walk In A Winter Garden

From previous posts you know that I live in an area with many wonderful public gardens and great places to go for walks. On Sunday morning, with the sun finally shining, I chose the Bellevue Botanical Garden, knowing we could stroll slowly, get in a couple of miles on firm surfaces, and find the witch hazel and hellebore in bloom.

We found what we were looking for right in the parking lot. 

 This area was redesigned about five years ago and the young witch hazels are loving it here in the open parking lot. 

 As we moved inside the walls into the gardens, the hellebore were blooming in profusion. 

 The northwest Perennial Alliance Border is a main feature of the botanical garden. 

 Hellebore as ground cover.

Fragrant Edgeworthia.

 The first early crocus. 

 Most of the older varieties of hellebore are shy and hide their faces. They need a little coaxing to show off. 

 Fragrant Daphne odora are opening. 

 Daffodils will soon be blooming

Even in winter shrubs add color and form to the garden. 

 Ah. Lovely little Tete-a-Tete daffs, the earliest to bloom. 

 Sprouts everywhere. 

 Fuzzy mullen. 

 Witch hazel after the fringe has finished. 

 Which way? I'll tell you in the next post. 

Movie Wrap Up

I watched. There were a lot of pretty gowns, not too many weird ones. Most of the men were handsome and the women beautiful. There was less of the messy hair look.  They looked like they made an effort to deserve their stardom.

The multiple hosts were often funny, occasionally awkward, and mostly apolitical. The acceptance speeches were pretty tame except for maybe Rene Zellweger and a rambling Joaquin Phoenix, both of whom attempted social awareness messages.

The awards were not surprising, but for me, disappointing. Given the hype I was hearing and reading about Parasite, we decided to watch it Saturday night. It is available to rent now on Netflix and On Demand.  We got past the sub titles OK, since we often use Closed Caption anyway on regular programming.  As for the movie, we didn't like it.  Oh, it held our attention and built an ever increasing sense of dread, in a sort of Alfred Hitchcockian way. Billed as a blend of humor and horror, it failed to be funny for me, and the horror part was just a sad commentary on the human condition. But it won the Oscar, so what do I know?

I won't say any more, since you might want to see it for yourself, and if you do, you should go in unaware and make your own judgement.

All in all, most of this hoopla is entertaining, but forgettable. Now it's back to politics, I guess. Talk about a sad commentary on the human condition. 

Be  well, be happy. I'm working on it. The sun will shine again today.

Movie Finale

We don't go to many movies throughout the year, and we are very selective about which movies we do see.  When the Academy Awards nominees are announced, we like to see as many of the Best Movie selections as possible.  It's kind of a winter project for us, when the weather is raw and the hours of darkness need some brightening up.  This year we saw six of the nine nominated movies. 

We had no interest in seeing The Joker - too dark, or Parasite, with Korean subtitles. We would have had to travel a ways to see JoJo Rabbit, so we didn't, although I will want to see it eventually. 

We saw some of the nominated movies in the theater and found others to watch on our big TV through Netflix and On Demand.

The Irishman is a Netflix movie. At three and a half hours long, you might want to divide it into two sittings. We watched it all in one evening because it was compelling enough to keep us entertained. This is a gangster movie and the stars are gangster movie stars. Joe Pesci plays a mob boss. Al Pacino is Jimmy Hoffa. The main character, played by Robert DeNero, is a guy named Frank, a WWII vet and Teamster who "paints houses", mob speak for assassin. Frank is an outwardly ordinary man who calmly offs other mobsters, and there are plenty of offings, and yet this movie doesn't seem violent. That's odd, when I think of it. 

This is a good movie, but not a great movie, because it doesn't really leave you with anything to ponder. As I think back on it, I remember the comic relief provided by the gangster wives, chain smoking and shallow. Maybe they had to be. 

Two other good movies that we saw were not nominated for Best Picture, but their lead actresses are nominated for Best Actress.

Cynthia Ervio is very good as Harriet Tubman in the film Harriet. Most of us are familiar with Harriet Tubman's story, of how she was ill treated as a slave girl, how she escaped to the north with help from the Underground Railroad, and how she became a fearless conductor on that Railroad, bringing many others, including what remained of her family, to freedom. She was a remarkable human being, and it's always a good thing to be reminded of her story. Cynthia Ervio does a masterful job of acting in portraying Harriet. 

The other biopic we saw was Judy.  While Harriet's and Judy Garland's stories are very different, there are parallels. Judy was a little girl with big talents who was exploited by her parents and then by the movie industry contract system, and especially by Louis B. Mayer.  From early on her life was completely controlled, as is shown in flashbacks throughout the movie. She was fed pills to keep her weight down, to pump up her energy, and then to allow her to sleep. This movie covers a period of time near the end of Judy's life, when she is struggling with drugs, alcohol, and heartbreak.  Her demise is hard to watch, but actress Renee Zellweger is outstanding in her roll as a tormented Judy Garland. She will most likely win the Best Actress award. 

I'll be watching the awards show on Sunday. It's fun to see the fashions and all the glitz and glamour, and see who "the Oscar goes to".

And it will be a much needed respite from politics. (I hope)