Thursday, October 28, 2010

another batch of Biltmore conservatory photos





I started out trying to record the names of each plant but then decided I simply didn't care - I just wanted to walk around and find the ones I liked and get photos.

I also thought that it would be so easy to hide in the conservatory and get locked in there. It would be fun until it got dark and then it would probably be a bit scary, with all the fans and misters and various windows shifting and sliding. It was like the entire conservatory was its own living organism.

4 comments:

Grey Horse Matters said...

They're all so unusual. Great photos.

billie said...

Thanks - there are some very unusual ones still to come. I'm just going through them as I took them!

forever in blue jeans, Beth said...

Beautiful pixs !! Getting locked in the conservatory - humm, could we be in a Halloween frame of mind? Makes me think of Aubrey, in "Little Shop of Horror." Remember?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGRN39oifsE

billie said...

Beth, I wasn't thinking so much about Halloween last week, and I guess my use of the word scary wasn't exactly right now that I think about it more.

There was an eerie feeling there - not unpleasant, but simply the sense of something non-human seeming to run itself. Sort of like 2001: A Space Odyssey, maybe.

I think being in there at night, completely alone, would be even more eerie, but mostly because of all the exotic life. I kept thinking about where each plant came from, and how long it had been there, and what the plants make (in their plant-like ways) of being in this "home" together with other plants they would never know except for being transplanted and nurtured in this protected environment.

It was a powerfully evocative setting for me. I do love plants and gardening, but can't say I have devoted much energy to mastering the art - but being here I could see how people devote their lives to it.