Dealers from around the country as well as right here in Central Kentucky are converging at Keeneland this weekend for some springtime antique & garden show-and-tell.   Detailed event information can be found at Blue Grass Trust Antiques & Garden Show. Proceeds will benefit The Blue Grass Trust, which has been working to preservie historic buildings in the Blue Grass for over 50 years. Find additional information in last week’s Herald-Leader article What’s Old is News Again. You can also click each photo in the gallery below for a sneak preview of just some of the items which will be offered:
If you’re thinking of doing some home improvement, check out displays like those set-up by businesses like H2O Design’s Jeff Duggins water features, and Longwood Antique Wood’s recycled flooring.
GARDEN GLORIES
Opening this weekend at The Arboretum on Alumni Drive is the Glories of the Garden exhibit.  All sorts of artistry, including fiber works, paintings and photographs with garden-related themes, will be displayed during regular Arboretum hours, from February 5th through 24th.  A reception February 21, 2-4 p.m. will give you the opportunity to meet the artists; the events are free and open to the public.Â
One of the exhibitors, Joe Dietz, has some fantastic orchid photographs displayed. Featured on the cover of the September 2009 Orchid magazine, his dazzling close-ups conjure up a warm, tropical atmosphere that brings some relief to the February freeze, allowing a moment to bask in the Glories for Valentine’s Day. Dietz and fellow orchid expert Tim Brooks, who wrote the text for the accompanying feature article and was elected to the national Board of Trustees of the American Orchid Society last April, have recently added a collection of temperate-climate orchids, commonly well-known as Lady’s Slippers, or to horticulturalists as Cypripedium,  to The Arboretum’s collection.
Beginning in 1970, the U.S. Forest Service has provided a holiday “People’s Tree”, the Christmas tree gracing the grounds of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. This year, Arizona took the honors. An 85-foot Blue Spruce from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona’s  White Mountains was chosen. Since being harvested on November 7th, the tree has been trucked, winding its way through the south-west, on its way to eastward to Washington. As of about mid-day today, it has stopped for ceremonies in Branson, Missouri, and tomorrow it’s to Nashville, Tennessee. Could it be swinging through Kentucky?  By December 8th, it will have been presented to Congress, set up and  illuminated on the lawn of the Capitol Building.    The hoopla along the way can be seen in photos, read about on a Blog, befriended on Facebook, Tweeted on Twitter, and is even being tracked via a GLS satellite system, to create a map along it’s route. Check it out at by clicking HERE: CAPITOL’S CHRISTMAS TREE.Â
It’s also a moment to think about Aldo Leopold, wilderness preservationist with a passion for observing our natural surroundings, and who in the early 1900’s worked in Arizona with the newly established U.S. Forest Service in Arizona and New Mexico. Leopold said  “The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soli, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.: To discover more about Leopold, click HERE ALDO LEOPOLD FOUNDATION.
Flower by Setsuko Fukuda, Kokubunji City, Tokyo Japan
Rug hookers, that is. Here’s a Post Script to this Saturday’s Herald-Leader Inside/Out feature story about Rug Hooking. (Click HERE to read the original feature article.)  The P.S.: If you’re interested in rug hooking , there is also an international exhibit up at the Carnegie Center in New Albany, Indiana. which is just across the river from Louisville. If you go to the Association of Traditional Hooking Artists’ (ATHA) show in Louisville this coming weekend, it’s just a short jump away.  The exhibit up at the Carnegie Center in New Albany is called Stripes, which is a world-class, travelling Japanese-American collaboration of 56 rugs on display now through the month of October. What can you create using stripes? A variety of ideas can be seen in this show. If you time it right, while your there you can also visit the Cat House Rugs shop in nearby Floyd’s Knobs, Indiana, too. Click on the following links to find more information:
Stripes Exhibit Carnegie Center for Art and History 201 E. Spring St., New Albany ; (812) 944-7336. Open now through October 24,10 a.m.-5:30 p.m, Tuesday through Saturday,. Free.
Cat House Rugs  4106 Andrew Dr., Floyds Knobs, Indiana; (812) 923-0200Â
 ATHA Biennial Convention at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville.
I’m often overcome by the urge to slow down, look more closely at little things, and examine the natural world around me. That’s why I’m glad to hear artist Olivia Marie Braida-Chiusano is returning to The Arboretum on Alumni Drive to hold a 4-day watercolor workshop, August 23-7.
In this digital age, where images are created by machines using electronic impulses with mathematical precision, it seems an anachronism to celebrate the low-tech act of a person pulling paint across paper. Yet that is just what Olivia finds fascinating. Discovering the study of botanical art in the French court tradition set her on a course of learning, researching, creating and teaching the act of making realistic images of plants and even insects. She has visited London, and gained access to original drawings by the Viennese Bauer brothers that date from the late 1700s, and the Lindley Library to study William Hooker’s art; in Paris, her attention turned to a collection of illustrations known collectively as the Vélins du Roi, from naturalist Daniel Rabel’s early studies in the 1500s to Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s famous roses in the 1800s. You can see some of her own work at The Academy of Botanical Art. My first watercolor last year was an artichoke. This year, I hear they’re working on pears.
If You Go . . . Botanical Art in the French Court Tradition workshop, The Arboretum, 500 Alumni Dr. ; 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. daily, August 24-27; Required pre-registration (859) 257-9339. Tuition: $475, or $450 for Friends of the Arboretum, plus an $8 materials fee.
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No doubt, the Kentucky Horse Park is alive with events, new arenas and museum space, and a renewed sense of purpose with the 2010 Alltech World Equestrian Games just over a year away. If you haven’t seen visited the park in a while, you will be surprised at the changes, which only begin with the entrance landscaping, still a work-in-progress.
This week, Vaulting events took the center stage at the new indoor arena, sponsored by the American Vaulting Association and WEG2010 Foundation. Remember the old pommel horse in gym class? Here, the horses are real and on the move. In the discipline called vaulting, the horse canters around a circular arena at the end of a longe line, directed by a person called a team member called a longeur who stands in the circle’s center. The vaulters perform dance or gymnastics elements to music while atop the moving horse; riders leap to mount and dismount without using stirrups. As with other arena settings, greenery and flowers create a pastoral atmosphere, lining the circle and accessways.
 From its origins with the ancient Minoan culture, to today’s practice at the Kentucky Hose park, this combination of grace and athleticism is a work of art.
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At the same time, other classic equestrian activities can be spotted, from Draft Horse demos, to Rocky Mountain Horses with western appeal and quick-stops to U.S. Pony Club flag games, and more. As Executive Director John Nicholson says of the upcoming World Equestrian Games, “We plan to celebrate the horse in the same way as we do every day, just on a larger scale.”  If hoof beats get your heart beating, catch a sneak preview of what’s happening right now in 2009 at the Kentucky Horse Park.
Today there are only 460 days until the 2010 Alltech World Equestrian Games begin in the Bluegrass. This Whatzit is on the way there. As Bob Perry commented, the rocks ascending this wall are 
actually stair steps, which allow people to climb over the fence easily; they lead to a small, enclosed cemetery dating from the mid-1800s created by the Gorham family, which once owned the land here on Newtown Pike. The stone walls along this section of the road were recently rebuilt, but this section was left untouched. So much for history. Let’s look to the present and future. Despite the spacious, bucolic beauty of wide rolling green fields, there’s a lot happening over that rock wall. On the way to the Kentucky Horse Park, this area is part of a UK College of Agriculture research farm, close to a water quality riparian buffer zone project on Cane Run creek, as well as the new Legacy Trail, a multi-use pathway that will connect the Kentucky Horse Park and downtown Lexington. With the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games around the corner, this section of the highway represents the beauty of the Bluegrass well, and is a sign of some positive positive progress. Click on the underlined links to find out more about each organization. *************************The Whatzit #2 question: This one’s more of a Wherezit, because if you know that, you probably know the Whatzit of it, too. How closely do you pay attention to detal as you cruise around the Bluegrass, enjoying the classic look of dry stone walls? This sections, however, is mortared. For Whatzit used?
