During a recent trip to Columbus, Ohio, I visited the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. I enjoy going to these places because they are full of beautiful and unusual plants. I am interested in plants because of the sheer variety of them.  They had 8ish bonsai trees and a wide variety of plants, but my favorite one is the corpse flower or Titan Arum. I saw it and knew exactly what it was.  Do you know why the corpse flower is called that? Because their bloom smells like rotting flesh! Lucky for me, it was not blooming. It is close to blooming and it is about the same size as me.

The second reason that I enjoyed going to Franklin Park is that they had acquired some of Dale Chihuly’s gigantic blown glass work and placed them among the plant exhibits. I have seen quite a few of his works exhibited. Because I am a glass artist as well, and I understand the challenges of working with glass, I admire his work. My favorite one of the glass pieces  was installed in the celling with the light shining though. The colors and textures really popped. I could have spent hours just looking and photographing everything.