Photos of the exterior, grounds, and gardens of the historic Woodfield Inn [defunct] in Flat Rock, North Carolina. These photos are from October of last year and this past Saturday, when we threw a party for my parents’s 50th Anniversary.
I could use some help from my gardening buddies in identifying the foliage, berries and plants. I’m not so good on woody plant identification.
[Transcribed from hand-written diary/notebook.]
2006-01-20 Woodfield Inn, Flat Rock, NC 1:51 pm
In the bar at the Woodfield, waiting for the rest of my family to arrive for my parents’ 50th anniversary celebration. John’s sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace with his laptop. I’m sitting at a table by a window. Perfect north light on a cold sunny winter day.
I just got off the phone with my mom. She’s anxious, in her own words. Unusual emotional literacy, though I know she’s more than anxious. So am I. “Anxious” is how I feel waiting for the curtains to go up on the school play. This has much of that, and also more.
It’s bittersweet. We’re celebrating two people sharing their lives together. Lots of friends. Few family. How many years left? People love them. They’ve made friends here.\ – the only place they’ve ever chosen to live – as they have everywhere. How many years left?
So we celebrate the lives they’ve shared, and the life they live now. We enjoy the time we have now, and try to share as much of it as we can, separated by hundreds of miles, connected by technology, that tenuous thread.
Collecting and presenting family photos. They are reminders of still more bitterness, in our family’s past history. The wounds are largely healed, but family gatherings, like cold days, return the pains to remind us of what we survived, the times we lived through, the evil we faced and bore.
Bonsai, “Yoshimura Island,” American Hornbeam, Carpinus caroliniana
I’ve been to the Asheville area a couple of times over the past several years. I try to visit the North Carolina Arboretum each time I’m in the area, but I don’t always get the chance. On this visit, I was struck by the new Bonsai Exhibition House, which is across the courtyard from the Visitor Education Center, the main building on the site. If you find yourself anywhere in the Asheville area, and have any interest in plants or gardens, this should be a stop during your visit.
The design and layout of the “House” is impressive. All of the specimens are displayed outdoors, at least at this time of year. In past years, they’ve been available for viewing in one of the greenhouses, which is located about a mile down the road from the Visitor Center.
It’s really an outdoor garden demonstrating different classical Japanese and Chinese garden design principles, with explanatory signage along the way. There’s a winding wheelchair-accessible path which can be accessed from either the upper entrance, near the Visitor Center, or the lower entrance.
There are also walls with lots and lots of shelves and nooks for displaying the bonsai. The poured, formed concrete is a minimalist neutral grey, which serves as a non-distracting backdrop for the bonsai, highlighting their textures, colors, and forms.
Finally, the individual specimens are exemplary and exquisite, covering every form, from snags, to broad, fully-leaved single specimens, to groves, and even complete forests in miniature. One even benefited from a visiting “dragon” while we were there.
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