French vacation?

It look like a vacation picture from Paris, but it's a fountain at Lafayette Village, a French themed shopping area in North Raleigh.  

Spider girls

This spider web has rubber strings for climbing.  It's in the age 6 and up play section at Pullen Park.  That didn't stop a few 4 year olds from turning into spiderwomen.

How many cranes does it take?

There has been a lot of power poles being put up around Raleigh this summer.  Every time they seem to block of at least one lane of a busy street.  I guess it does take a lot of cranes to safely put up a massive power pole.

Sculpture, maybe?

This sculpture is a puzzle.  It sits on a street corner with industrial buildings behind it.  It almost seems like something that was being manufactured but was left out of the warehouse.  

Shady lookout

On a hot day, we found a shady walk through the Art Museum sculpture garden.  This is a lookout over the forest down to the rest of the sculpture park.

Wind sculpture II

This sculpture by Yinka Shonibare looks like it's moving with the wind, but it's totally stiff.  The artist has made it look like it's moving.  Here is a link to a description.

upside down

No, it' didn't grow that way, it's part of an art exibit at the NC Museum of Life and Science.

Yet again a hot dawn

Hard to believe that it could still be in the 80's at sunrise, but so it was yesterday.  The humidity in the air makes the sun a bright red ball in the morning.

Dawn of another HOT day

It has been HOT here in Raleigh, temperatures close to 100 degrees with high humidity.  Yesterday it was 79 degrees at 6:30 in the morning!  Watching the sun rise, I could tell it would be another hot one, and it was.

Musical Stairs

The stairs at Marbles Children's Museum look cool, but the best part is how they sound.  Each stair plays the note that you step on.  It's easy to play a scale, or arpeggio, and simple songs are not too hard.  But playing a song with a big jump from one note to the next is not too easy...

View through the Monkey Rings

There are plenty of nature walks in Durant Nature Park, but the kids always end up on the playground.  

Lots of Dots

This is a view of the first floor of Marbles Children's Museum from the second floor lookout.  The purple dot in the center is a device where kids can race coins around faster and faster until they fall into the center hole.  It's a model for Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, but don't tell the kids, it'll spoil their fun...

Green Heron

I think this guy is a Green Heron.  He was just sitting by the pond at the NC Museum of Life and Science, completely oblivious to the crowds of people walking by above him.  Here is a link to info on this guy.

Flower Power

This flower turns round and round, powered by the solar panels on it's leaves.  It seems like the flower petals could have been a wind generator, and it could have done double duty.  It sits in the demonstration garden at the Marbles Children's Museum.

Bull Durham...Durham Bull

Durham is called the Bull City, after the tobacco company, Bull Durham.  The AAA baseball team is the Durham Bulls, and there are many businesses with Bull City in their name.  And here it is, the Durham Bull, painted with the Durham skyline on his side.

tussock moth caterpiller

My niece found this guy crawling along our deck.  She thought it was the same colors as our dog.  Turns out it's a Tussock Moth Caterpillar.  Turns out that those cute fuzzy hairs on it cause an itchy rash.  Luckily we let it crawl on it's way without playing with it.  

Hobbit House???

This building is a sculpture in the NC Museum of Art sculpture park called Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky by Chris Drury.  It looks like a hobbit house, but it is a camera obscura.  There is a small hole in the roof that acts like a pinhole camera.  Images of the trees and sky are projected into the house.  My sister and I went in, but we didn't want to close the door all the way in case we got stuck in there, so we didn't really see any images.  I think it needs to be very dark.  Next time I'll bring a flashlight.

Mayberry

If you search for Mayberry, you won't find it.  It was an imaginary town set somewhere near and somewhat like Mount Airy, NC.  Andy Griffith was a beloved actor in North Carolina.  This statue was given to Pullen Park by TVLand.  

Dino Walk 2

These guys looked right at home in the forest at the NC Museum of Life and Science.  Hmmmm...

Dino Walk

Not what you'd expect when walking in the woods in North Carolina, but the Museum of Life and Science in Durham has a Dino walk.  As you move down the path you see very lifelike statues of different dinosaurs.  I wonder if a dinosaur walked in North Carolina today if he'd feel at home?  This one looks comfortable.

Girls in the Mist

We took my niece and grand daughter to the NC Museum of Life and Science in Durham and they almost disappeared in the mist field.  Kids love running through the misty air.  Of course they need towels and a full set of clothes by the time they're done.  

Awilda and Irma

These two heads are the latest addition to the NC Museum of Art sculpture park.  They're enormous heads by Jaume Plensa.  Here's a link to the sculpture.r

Monarch habitat

Durant Nature Park has a monarch habitat restoration area. 

 One problem, if you look at the plants in the picture, there are no milkweeds.  Monarchs only lay eggs on milkweed leaves.  

We looked and looked and finally found three milkweeds off in one corner of the area.  Hopefully the butterflies will find them.  But they probably don't read the sign either.

Mimosa

"When anyone asks me what’s the best time to prune a mimosa, my instinctive response is, 'Any time you can find a chainsaw.;”

I found this quote about mimosa trees on this website here.  I've been wondering what these beautiful pink flowers are, and now I know.  Invasive weed trees...but they are beautiful.

Lofty Heights

Raleigh has some great street names.  Who wouldn't want to live on Lofty Heights Place?

tree house tree

It's hard to see from a picture how immense and old this tree is.  It must have been someone's tree house.  It still had a few boards nailed to the trunk for a ladder.  I wonder how old the kids are now that used the tree as a play house.

Wild Raspberries

A lot of the open areas under the power lines are filled with wild raspberries.  They're very small, and you'd have to pick a lot to get much out of them.  They're favorites of the birds though...

Happy Fourth!

Happy Fourth of July!  

twisted tree

There are some magnificent trees along the Raleigh greenways.  You have to stop and look up to see how spectacular they are.  It's more like missing the trees for the forest instead of the other way around.  

Little shop of Horrors?

Thistle buds always look like Audrey II to me.  I expect it to open it's mouth and say "Feed me, Seymour"  

Motion

Is it cliche to take blurry pictures of motion?  Yes, but it's still interesting, and surprisingly hard to do with an automatic camera.  This shot was taken at the Pullen Park carousel, built by Gustav A. Dentzel around 1900.  You can read about it's history here.