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Autumn Colors in the Snow
Oct. 15th, 2018 09:27 am Yesterday started off "interestingly" as we like to say here in Minnesota, when I took out the garbage and discovered that it was... snowing. The temperature stayed in the 30s for long enough to accumulate on branches and on the grass.
My angry bird lawn ornaments were very angry, indeed.
Of course, this kind of snow--where it falls and piles up a bit, but melts before the day is out--is not THAT uncommon here, though this felt to most of us as TOO EARLY. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the leaves are in peak color, but haven't really started to even fall yet. No one has had a chance to do ANY yard work because in the entire month of October so far, we've had (including today) THREE DAYS where it hasn't rained almost all day long.
I was a little disconcerted by the snow, myself, because I had bought tickets for the "fall colors tour" at Lakewood Cemetery.
This is all part of my continuing plan to be a tourist in my own hometown. Tickets were super-cheap, $5.00 a piece. What it bought me was a seat on a HEATED trolley, hot cider, and a 45 minute driving tour of Lakewood.
I used to live in Uptown, about three blocks from the cemetery, so I've spent a lot of time exploring the grounds. For those of you unfamiliar with Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis it's very much modeled itself on a Victorian (Edwardian?) model of cemetery as picnic/destination spot. It was founded in 1871 and is expansive... big enough, in fact, to have a lake in the center of it.
Here's a shot I took, inside the cemetery, of its lake:
At any rate, I met up with my friend Nick at the Garden Mausoleum and we grabbed our free hot cider and boarded the trolley. The trolley was cramped. We had bench seats, wooden, and they were built at a time when people's butts weren't nearly as big as is average in 2018. My view was this:
The tour guide was an example of why it's better to hire actors than historians to guide tours. She had a lot of technical problems with her microphone (which I feel like an actor would have at least found a way to make funny), but also, because she was an amateur historian, she had a tendency to ramble on about details that were interesting to HER. She didn't have a very good sense of what sorts of things were likely to be crowd-pleasers. She also had no filters when it came to recognizing when she'd gone down one of these personal rabbit holes and couldn't read the room to save her soul (or our glazed-eyed boredom.)
However, the tour was still fun because Lakewood is just impressive as hell all on its own.
Ironically, it was early enough in the season that the majority of the cemetery, which is largely a grove of native red oaks, had not turned yet, so a lot of the "fall color" was actually green.
But I did manage to get one really nice autumn shot, when we were over by the Civil War memorial:
Would I do it again? No, probably not. Would I recommend it? Possibly. If you're visiting or if you've just never checked out Lakewood, it really is an AMAZING cemetery. I know it sounds weird to recommend a cemetery, but Lakewood was designed to be like a garden. When we were there we saw a loon out on the lake, Canada Geese wandering around like they do, and a flock of turkeys. I used to go over to Lakewood to take walks when I lived in Uptown and I used to feel weird about it, like maybe I was disturbing someone's mourning, but I'll never forget the time I was walking along and a car rolled up next to me filled with old ladies and I thought for sure they were going to yell at me for carrying my drawing pad, but when they rolled down the window, they asked, "Have you spotted the wood ducks??"
So, I mean, it's that kind of place.
Plus? When we were there, our trolley was passed by another tour trolley that had a "JUST MARRIED" sign in the back. Which MIGHT explain all the Loli Goth cosplayers I saw. (They might have been a goth wedding party.)
My angry bird lawn ornaments were very angry, indeed.
Of course, this kind of snow--where it falls and piles up a bit, but melts before the day is out--is not THAT uncommon here, though this felt to most of us as TOO EARLY. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the leaves are in peak color, but haven't really started to even fall yet. No one has had a chance to do ANY yard work because in the entire month of October so far, we've had (including today) THREE DAYS where it hasn't rained almost all day long.
I was a little disconcerted by the snow, myself, because I had bought tickets for the "fall colors tour" at Lakewood Cemetery.
This is all part of my continuing plan to be a tourist in my own hometown. Tickets were super-cheap, $5.00 a piece. What it bought me was a seat on a HEATED trolley, hot cider, and a 45 minute driving tour of Lakewood.
I used to live in Uptown, about three blocks from the cemetery, so I've spent a lot of time exploring the grounds. For those of you unfamiliar with Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis it's very much modeled itself on a Victorian (Edwardian?) model of cemetery as picnic/destination spot. It was founded in 1871 and is expansive... big enough, in fact, to have a lake in the center of it.
Here's a shot I took, inside the cemetery, of its lake:
At any rate, I met up with my friend Nick at the Garden Mausoleum and we grabbed our free hot cider and boarded the trolley. The trolley was cramped. We had bench seats, wooden, and they were built at a time when people's butts weren't nearly as big as is average in 2018. My view was this:
The tour guide was an example of why it's better to hire actors than historians to guide tours. She had a lot of technical problems with her microphone (which I feel like an actor would have at least found a way to make funny), but also, because she was an amateur historian, she had a tendency to ramble on about details that were interesting to HER. She didn't have a very good sense of what sorts of things were likely to be crowd-pleasers. She also had no filters when it came to recognizing when she'd gone down one of these personal rabbit holes and couldn't read the room to save her soul (or our glazed-eyed boredom.)
However, the tour was still fun because Lakewood is just impressive as hell all on its own.
Ironically, it was early enough in the season that the majority of the cemetery, which is largely a grove of native red oaks, had not turned yet, so a lot of the "fall color" was actually green.
But I did manage to get one really nice autumn shot, when we were over by the Civil War memorial:
Would I do it again? No, probably not. Would I recommend it? Possibly. If you're visiting or if you've just never checked out Lakewood, it really is an AMAZING cemetery. I know it sounds weird to recommend a cemetery, but Lakewood was designed to be like a garden. When we were there we saw a loon out on the lake, Canada Geese wandering around like they do, and a flock of turkeys. I used to go over to Lakewood to take walks when I lived in Uptown and I used to feel weird about it, like maybe I was disturbing someone's mourning, but I'll never forget the time I was walking along and a car rolled up next to me filled with old ladies and I thought for sure they were going to yell at me for carrying my drawing pad, but when they rolled down the window, they asked, "Have you spotted the wood ducks??"
So, I mean, it's that kind of place.
Plus? When we were there, our trolley was passed by another tour trolley that had a "JUST MARRIED" sign in the back. Which MIGHT explain all the Loli Goth cosplayers I saw. (They might have been a goth wedding party.)