Friday, June 30, 2017

Celebrate the Small Things


Are you ready to celebrate? It's Friday! Big shout out to our hostess with the mostess, Lexa Cain, and her wonderful cohosts: L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker!

This was our first week of summer vacation, so you might imagine the biggest problem: MO-OM, I'm bored! Already!? I thought we could avoid hearing that until mid-July, at least. So one of the things we did this week was visit a place in Rochester called Warner Castle and Sunken Gardens.




Warner Castle was designed by Horatio Gates Warner and built as his private residence in 1854. In 1912, Frank and Merry Ackerman Dennis, owners of the Dennis Candy Factory and candy stores purchased it. They commissioned DeForest to design gardens for the site beginning around 1920. His plan for the grounds included the Sunken Garden completed in 1930, a courtyard, rose and woodland gardens. (Source

The house is currently owned by the Rochester Civic Garden Center. They have a library of gardening books upstairs and hold flower arranging and other classes in the basement. The main floors have larger meeting rooms for wedding receptions. 


Fireplace on main floor. The girls wanted a picture because we also own this very same bird clock. 

The best parts of the house besides the fireplaces were the oak staircase up to the second floor, the mural wallpaper, and the cat, Dudley! We found him snoozing on a desk chair in a back office of the main floor. After a snack in the kitchen, he followed us up into the library for more attention. Regretfully, we were having so much fun loving on him we didn't get a good picture, but here is his tail:


Dudley is a beautiful cat, believe me.

Out in the back are some gorgeous gardens, including a sunken garden that is still in the process of being restored. All the work here is done by volunteers. Enjoy!

Back of house

Garden leading to the sunken part

Overview of sunken garden


Stairwells

That's Sedona at the top, to give you an idea of the scale







This shot is the interior of the gated room from two images up. I wonder what these areas were used for: storage? prison? 

Have you gone to visit someplace new recently? Have a favorite garden?










16 comments:

  1. What a cool place to visit! I would love to explore it.

    I, sadly, haven't been anywhere new in a very long time. Hope to remedy that this summer.

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  2. I love visiting old houses, so I know I'd enjoy the castle. My favorite garden(s) is The Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia. I have been there twice, but both trips were many years ago.

    Love,
    Janie

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  3. I can't imagine being bored with beautiful places like that to visit. I hope they find some good books to read too. It's what I remember loving about summer, besides all the camping and water fun.

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  4. Oooh, looks like a great place to visit. Sounds like you had a good time.

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  5. Kind of neat to have your own sunken garden - and prison! Too bad you couldn't lock up your bored kids there.

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  6. Dudley would have been the highlight of the visit for me. But I do love old buildings. I also love small old homes. I see derelict ones and wonder who lived there and their lives.

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  7. Wow, that place is super awesome!!!

    To bad kids don't go outside and play kickball, capture the flag, remember kick the can? How about the library, reading? The zoo, park for a picnic? I remember those days quite well.... good luck.

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  8. What a fun place to visit! I love Dudley. How cute. I can tell by his tail that he's gorgeous. :)

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  9. I'm waiting for mine to start whining of boredom, but it hasn't come yet. This looks like a lovely place to visit. Thanks for sharing all of the pictures!

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  10. What a beautiful spot! Of course without Dudley it wouldn't be as charming. I can tell he's a beauty by that tail.

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  11. Beautiful! We have a castle near us, but it's an events venue. They don't do tours. There's a botanical garden in Nashville (Cheekwood). It's amazing--you don't do that sort of thing if you don't have kids around.

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  12. Awesome pictures. I love visiting places like that.

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  13. Your Twitter pitches are really great! Happy holiday week and all your pictures made me smile.

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  14. Wow, that's really beautiful. What an amazing place. I haven't gone anywhere since April, when I visited the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA, so I'll have to live vicariously through you.

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I will do everything in my power to visit commenter's blogs unless I've been abducted by aliens or my children get sick. (If my children get abducted by aliens, I will be very busy, of course, catching up on my sleep.)