Tuesday, July 29, 2008


Another green vacation day

I haven't been to the Morton Arboretum in the Chicago area for many years. A museum for trees is a wonderful concept, and offers markedly different walks and views than your average museum, which frequently houses the dead and/or inanimate. Only God can make a tree, poetically opined Joyce Kilmer, and the arboretum collects them in bunches, organized by taxonomy (maples, oaks), geography (plants of Europe, Japan, etc), landscape (acid, dwarf woody, etc). The place seems bigger than 15 years ago, and environmentally friendly parking lots are among newer features that promote friendship with Mother Earth. We caught the tail end of a theater-hike playing Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm at various locations on the grounds. The mosquitoes did not cooperate, but the weather smiled. And summer prairie flowers were in high season.