If Young Steve down in London can plonk flower pictures at the top of his blogposts then so can I. The blooms shown above are American prairie flowers. I believe that this one belongs to the silphium family. The picture was taken this very morning as I was strolling through Sheffield Botanical Gardens.
It's a lovely nineteen acre city park, containing plants and trees from all over the world. It enjoys the practical support of a squadron of local volunteers and is a popular green oasis for dozens of skittish American grey squirrels.
Opened in the 1830s, our Botanical Gardens once housed a menagerie. The park also had a bearpit but living bears are no longer displayed there. Instead, there's just a rusty mild steel bear called Robert, created by David Mayne and installed in 2005 in memory of the poor creatures that were once chained there. In spite of facial similarities there is absolutely no connection between our Robert The Bear and Robert Slatten or Robert Brague - two notorious US bloggers from South Carolina and Georgia respectively. Though they both like to hibernate in winter, neither of them are actual bears.
Below, The Botanical Gardens feature these fine Victorian glasshouses designed by Benjamin Broomhead Taylor...
The pesky squirrels are hard to photograph as they spring about but I tried to capture a few images of them today, including this one...
On the way home to start preparing tonight's beef stew, I decided to take a short detour via Wiseton Road. There, the former St Augustine's Church Hall was renamed Wiseton Court about fifty years ago after it had been remodelled to create several one bedroom apartments. Before our marriage, Shirley and I rented Flat One for eighteen months. It was our first home together and they were very happy days - loving and being loved. In the course of a lifetime, that kind of magic does not happen for everyone.
I love botanical gardens. I looked up bear pits, pretty sure I knew what they were, but wanted to comfirm and what should I see on the Wikipedia page but a photo of a bear statue, in a pit, in Sheffield.
ReplyDeleteLong ago, I did see one in the Swiss city of Berne.
DeleteI visit botanical gardens every chance I get.
ReplyDeleteBest seen in sunshine.
Delete"Before our marriage, Shirley and I rented Flat One for eighteen months."
ReplyDeleteAnd it was a one-bedroom flat. I'm shocked. Shocked!
Calm down Marcie! There was a sofa in the lounge.
DeleteOf course. Even though, scrolling up from the bottom of the comments, I momentarily thought that your response to my first comment was:
Delete"I did it for the exercise with side benefits."
I love the Victorian Glass Houses.
ReplyDeleteThey contain many plants from warmer climes.
DeleteI like the statue in the bear pit and it will lead to explaining to children about the cruelty of keeping animals in such tight captivity.
ReplyDeleteThe glass houses are very impressive.
I wish they would put America's current president in that bearpit with a couple of hungry grizzlies.
DeleteSounds/looks like a pleasant stroll!
ReplyDeleteI did it for the exercise with side benefits.
DeleteThat is a beautiful chapel conversion and I can imagine living there would be lovely rather than in one of these high-rise blocks of flats.
ReplyDeleteI love botanical gardens. The one up in DC, about two hours from me, is amazing. If I am in the city in winter, I go to the gardens to enjoy the warmth!
ReplyDeleteA truly curious question, is what some of our blogging friends look like?
ReplyDeleteNice place to visit. Have you taken Phoebe or do you think she might not yet be interested?
ReplyDeleteI will say that, like your bear, I have also been called rusty at times but rarely mild.
ReplyDeleteWell, Bob Slatten COULD be a bear, I suppose. (The word "bear" in the gay community has a whole different meaning. But I've never seen a picture of Bob!)
ReplyDeleteThank goodness we've evolved away from keeping bears (of the forest kind) in pits.
It looks a lovely day for a stroll in pleasant surroundings.
ReplyDeletePoor bear! We need to remember the cruelty we inflicted on animals, and still do, in many cases.
Our early married days - they don't seem real any more.
At first I thought that years ago, my sister and I visited the botanical garden im Sheffield, but checking on my blog, I found it was a different park.
ReplyDeleteI can‘t bear the thought of the poor bears kept in that horrible bear pit.