Day 156, Year 8: Springtime . . . on Cape Cod and in South Carolina
Date: Monday, April 8, 2013
Weather: Winds SSW 7-10; Sunny; High Temp in the Low 70’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina in Coquina Harbor, Little River, SC
Before I go into the details of our trip to Brookgreen Gardens today, I just want to once again rave about Skype video calls with grandkids. When we got home to Windbird late this afternoon, Heather called via her tablet from her backyard to share the springtime activities happening there. We got to see Jonah playing lacrosse with Cassidy (an older kid who lives across the street and that Jonah adores), Sam being the Cool Dude in his shorts and sunglasses, and Ollie swinging with neighbor kids that know very well, Molly and Joey. It was great to see them all. The backyard connection was not perfect so the video often looked like an impressionistic painting, but we saw grandkids happily at play which warmed our hearts. At the end, Heather took Ollie up to the deck and for the first time we got to see him taking a few steps on his own. Actually he took off with Heather’s tablet. He then sat down with the tablet and ‘talked’ to us while Heather got a photo. This is what one year-olds can do these days. He looks perfectly at ease with the modern technology and loves to look at the screen. Hopefully seeing Oma and Granddad will help him accept us more readily when we get home in a few weeks. Thanks, Heather, for taking time out of a busy afternoon with a yard full of kids to Skype us to share what’s happening with our grandkids on the Cape.
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| 130408 Day 156a Cape Cod, USA–Ollie the Techno Kid |
It was a beautiful day here with sunny skies and temps in the 70’s. Mark wore a short-sleeved shirt and shorts today and I wore capris. We are both in sandals now as spring has finally arrived. This kind of spring weather is much like our summer weather on the Cape and it is very much welcomed after the past two and half months of cooler than usual late winter and early spring weather here. Our friends Lee and Lynda Kaufman invited us to go to Brookgreen Gardens with them today to celebrate the coming of spring and to see the flowers in bloom. Lynda was a bit disappointed that the azaleas are not quite at ‘peak’ bloom, but they were still beautiful. Lee and Lynda invited us to Brookgreen during the Christmas holiday season to see the display of ‘a thousand candles’ throughout the gardens. That was stunning and it was so interesting today to see the same gardens in the daytime and with all the flowers in bloom. Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington opened the gardens to the public in 1932. They purchased 9,100 acres that were four former rice plantations. The name comes from the Brookgreen Plantation as the current gardens are situated on the land that was once this rice plantation. The Huntington’s purchased the land to develop gardens to showcase Anna Hyatt Huntington’s sculptures. The gardens now host some 1,444 sculptures by Huntington and other American artists. Brookgreen has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the Register of National History Places. But more importantly it is a spectacular property with beautifully kept gardens and hundreds of sculptures from American artists. This is where a ‘thousand’ pictures are better than hundreds of words, so I’ll let today’s photos speak for themselves. But before exiting to the photos, we must say a great big thank you to Lee and Lynda for inviting to go along as their guests. It was a beautiful day.
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| 130408 Day 156b South Carolina, USA–Springtime at Brookgreen Gardens |
