On the way home from visiting family in Ohio over Thanksgiving, John and I decided to stop at another art environment: The Temple of Tolerance in Wapakoneta, Ohio. I’d heard about it before but then I forgot. It came up again in Thanksgiving conversation when we were all discussing my post about the Birdhouse Guy in Loogootee, IN.
The Temple of Tolerance is a very interesting place. It’s a very impressive and well done backyard construction. It was built by a guy named Jim Bowsher, and you enter by walking up his driveway. There are a few metal arches and gateways and then you’re in a maze of pathways and stone constructions that look like altars. You wind your way to the back of the property and find yourself in front of a giant rock pile/temple. Along the way you pass several hand lettered signs and a display of bullet casings that represent all the Ohioans killed in wars from 1812 to today.
You can follow a rough staircase to get to the top of the temple area. John found the contemplative spirit of the place particularly strong at the top of the temple. There is a fire pit and a series of stone carvings and a high altar kind of thing at the top.
Unfortunately it was a horribly drab and dull day, so my photos aren’t great. My camera battery was also running low, so I didn’t get as much documentation as I’d have liked. As a result, I don’t feel like my photos truly capture the wonderment of the place. Hopefully they at least give you an idea of what it’s like.
I would like to go back again, hopefully when the plants are all green and growing. You can read more about The Temple of Tolerance and Jim Bowsher here and here. We did not happen to meet Jim ourselves. I also found an interesting video about the place and you’ll find it below, after my photos.
I’m starting to settle into a routine of one blog post per month. Maybe if I get less busy, the number of posts will increase, but it seems like a decent plan to recap each month. So, on to October!
October was strangely warm. There was never a freeze or even a frost, so the plants continued to grow and mature. Many of the perennials were ready for their winter dormancy, growing crisper and browner, but others reached their best form. Among the latter are the toad lilies. They are definitely not what I would think of if someone asked me what a “fall” bloom would look like, but they only start to bloom mid-to late-fall, so they would definitely qualify as fall flowers. I think they look way too exotic to be a typical “fall flower.”
With no freeze to stop them, the zinnias also continued their perky blooms, which brightened many a day for me. Also, the sweet potatoes really took off, filling the raised bed with a sea of leaves. They provided a great setting for my found metal predator and prey. I have yet to see if they actually had time to produce sweet potatoes, since I planted them so late. So far it’s looking like the answer is no.
Oh, and I planted a little garlic. It was late to be ordering it, and I’d kind of decided I didn’t have room this year since you plant it in the fall and it takes up space until you harvest it late June or early July. Then I decided I might have the perfect little spot for a few plants. I took one head of each variety I harvested this summer and planted its cloves. I’m not sure if it will be enough of a supply for an entire year, but it’s something.
While there was no frost or freeze, temperatures continued to get colder. It was enough that both the indoor and outdoor cats found warmer spots to frequent. The Ladies are back to toasting themselves at the furnace register on the stairs. The outdoor cats found new sleeping spots on wood chips and dirt, which are clearly warmer. And I decided to get Perry a new walking jacket that better matches his personality. It has skulls, daggers, and roses on it. I think he looks very good in it.
While there weren’t dramatic temperature changes to help the fall color along, there was plenty of gradual fading from green to yellow and orange. You can see that happening in the photos below.
On a separate note, October began and ended with some great food experiences. The first full week in October is always the Fall Festival. It’s a stunning week of excess in Evansville when four city blocks are lined with well over a hundred food booths. There are also carnival rides, talent shows, and bands. I absolutely love it for its glorious excess, but many people around town hate it for the same reason. John and I went to the Fall Festival three times together and then I went once by myself to soak up more atmosphere. In the slide show below you can see a sampling of what we found to eat on our final trip. It was stupendous.
At the end of October, John and I rented a cabin at Audubon State Park in Henderson, Kentucky for an early birthday weekend for me. The forecast for the weekend included a lot of rain, and I was one of the few people in the area who was really hoping that that forecast would be correct. In the end, it was a rainy weekend that John and I celebrated with a lot of good food and a fire in the fireplace. Saturday evening as the storm clouds rolled out we went into Henderson to try a relatively new restaurant, Hometown Roots, which was also great.
Occasionally I have heard about the guy with all the birdhouses who lives near Loogootee, IN. It kind of sounded interesting, and finally at the end of the summer I decided to make the trip to see it myself.
It absolutely exceeded exceeding my expectations. It was incredible. Below are a few photos. I hope they begin to do it justice. From the minute you drive up, it’s an explosion of color packed on top of color. There is a little geodesic dome house surrounded by row after row of birdhouses accompanied by painted rocks and wildly assorted yard art. Much of the yard art is arranged by theme: people, dwarves, cats, dogs, etc. The entire yard dips down to a creek with small foot bridges crossing it. It is an extraordinary art environment that envelops you. I walked around, taking photo after photo and trying to soak it all in.
I was about halfway through my walk when I heard someone. The owner of the place, Bill, had noticed me. Normally, I’d like to look and not visit, but Bill is a very friendly fellow. He invited me into the ground floor of his house where his studio space is located.
He said he was in the middle of painting a round of birdhouses, but he was ready to take a break. When he looked out his window, he’d seen some movement and realized he had a guest. He had at least 50 little birdhouses that he was working on painting. He also had a selection of larger birdhouses nearby. Part of his hospitality is to offer a birdhouse to every visitor, so I got one, too. I picked out a bigger house because I told Bill that it would fit well into my garden.
Then he took me on a tour of the rest of his house. I’m not normally someone who would go around taking home tours from strangers, but it was really worth it. The interior of BIll’s house is as extraordinary as the exterior. Every bit of the ceiling under the dome is covered in something. There are bird houses and butterflies and Christmas lights that he turns on for guests. It was a magical fairy tale bubble.
I took a million more photos inside Bill’s house while Bill talked to me about his home and garden and life. He asked where I am from because he keeps track of where everyone comes from. He talked about his garden and birdhouses and his knee issues that lately have been keeping him from working on his outdoor art. He actually began his art environment with plants, not rocks and birdhouses, but then there was a drought and he didn’t like how much he had to water everything. The next year he switched to things he didn’t need to water and everything grew (so to speak) from there.
I tried to express how much I genuinely loved his art and how incredible I thought it was. I hope he understood that.
This video captures a lot of what it was like talking to him. I highly recommend visiting the place yourself. Don’t miss out on the house tour if you go.
When I went to see all the birdhouses, I had recently finished painting my revamped blackberry trellis (I had also painted several cats in the process). I brought my birdhouse home from Bill’s and decided it looked good on top of the trellis. Then I, like Bill, decided that I needed more going on on top of the trellis. I bought a bunch of fence post toppers, painted them, and added them along the top of the trellis. I really liked how it looked.
I also built a second trellis for the raspberry plants and painted it to match. After that I re-strung my tree jewelry and hung it back in the magnolia tree. Somewhere in the middle of all that I got a burst of inspiration and ringed one of my apple tree stumps with upended wine bottles.
It wasn’t what I’d really been planning for the wine bottles I’d been collecting for a year, but I’d been looking at the weird circles that the EPA contractors had left around the two stumps and I thought of my friend Jane, who had done it around all of her trees, and I knew it would be a great thing to do. It looked great, so then I spent several weeks searching for enough wine bottles to do the same thing to the other apple tree.
With the help of some friends and a Posey County Solid Waste Management recycling center, I got the second ring done and added more bottles to the front bottle tree. There is still more to do, though. The project will be ongoing for a while.
One day while in England, John’s entire family ventured into the Oxfordshire countryside together. Our final destination was Faringdon, the town where John’s sister and her family will soon be moving. On the way to Faringdon, we stopped to see the Uffington White Horse.
The White Horse is by far the oldest of the horse figures like it that were cut into British hillsides long ago. It dates to somewhere between the Iron Age and the late Bronze Age. It was created through a process of digging trenches and lining them with crushed chalk.
We caught a glimpse of the horse from a distance as we approached its hill, but even then we couldn’t see the entire figure. Apparently there are hills across from the figure where you can see the whole thing. We got to the parking lot and took the path to get a close look, but even then there was not a lot of horse to see.
What I thought was even more remarkable, however, was the view of the countryside. Vast panoramas spread from the entire hilltop, and we took them all in by walking to the horse and then around the accompanying Iron Age fortification called the Uffington Castle. It was a clear day and an infinitely beautiful view.
After visiting the White Horse, we continued on to Faringdon. It’s a quirky town that was made all the more unusual by the wealthy and eccentric Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson 14th Baron Berners (1883-1950).
Lord Berners dyed local pigeons bright colors. He scattered a series of useless signs across the town of Faringdon. He dressed his dogs in pearl necklaces from Woolworths. His Rolls Royce contained a small clavichord that could be tucked under the seat. He drove around his estate wearing a pig head mask to scare the locals. His list of friends included Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dalí, and H. G. Wells.
Lord Berners also built the Faringdon Folly and gave it to his lifelong companion Robert Heber-Percy on Heber-Percy’s birthday in 1935. The Folly is located at the center of a circular woodland on a hill at the edge of Faringdon. When the town planners asked Lord Berners what exactly the point of the tower would be, he told them, “The great point of the Tower is that it will be entirely useless.”
Lord Berners commissioned a friend, Lord Wellesley, to build the folly for him. He knew Wellesley hated Gothic architecture, so Berners demanded the tower be in the Gothic style. Then Berners left the country, so Wellesely took it upon himself to construct the tower in a classical style. With 10 feet of tower to go, Berners returned home…and so the top of the tower doesn’t match the rest of it.
The 4 acre woodland where the tower is located began with Scots Pines that were planted in the late 18th century by Henry James Pye. Pye has the dubious distinction of being called the worst British Poet Laureate ever.
Scattered throughout the woodland are many sculptures. They’re all hidden and take some searching to locate, although a ring of directional mushrooms help guide you somewhat. There is a giraffe’s head sticking out of the tree and blackbirds perched everywhere. There’s a silent piano that you can plink on. There’s a hare and a canon and a mole and a troll. I didn’t come anywhere close to finding them all!
I encourage you to read more about the Folly Tower and Lord Berners. It’s really fascinating. And if you’re keeping track, yes, this is the second tower built by an artsy eccentric that we visited in our European travels.
Yes, I am sure. The Kuchlbauer Brewery is absolutely awesome.
In two words: weird animatronics.
But I get ahead of myself.
I’d previously seen pictures of the Kuchlbauer Brewery and was excited when my sister suggested it as a place we could visit during my visit to Germany. It features a very cool, very fanciful tower that is bright and coated in mosaics. Even the corner of the brewery building as you arrive announces, “Beauty can save the world.”
It looked so incredibly interesting and artful that I was confused when my brother-in-law suggested that I was in for something like the Hershey Experiece in Hershey, PA. I’d seen the videos that he and my sister brought back from their family trip to Hershey. A primary tour component were singing, animatronic cows that tour-goers watched from an automated ride. How could this artistic brewery be anything like that?
Well…
We arrived and assembled as part of a tour group. The tour guide launched into her spiel. It was all in German, but John and I had printed versions in English. It started like a normal brewery tour with views of impressive equipment and a serious worker monitoring the quality of the output.
We followed a beautiful mosaic “beer trail” on the floor and over the walls that took us through all the stages of beer production. We also got the standard German beer tour statement, “Drinking beer is very healthy for you!”
The production component was not terribly unusual on the surface, but I particularly liked the mosaic rendition of the chemistry of fermentation.
(A drop of art is better than a sea of white.)
Sure, there was one animatronic angel who sang a song about how he tried the Kuchlbauer beer and decided not to go back to heaven because there wasn’t any beer like it in heaven. It was goofy, but still no Hershey Experience.
So what was this about this artsy, but pretty standard brewery tour being so much like the Hershey Experience?
Just as I started to doubt, the Beer Dwarves made their first appearance.
After seeing the beer bottling facility, we turned around and saw a wall with a line of Weissbier Dwarves posed among beer barrels on top of it. The tour guide punched a button, and each dwarf took a turn introducing itself to us, complete with animatronics. There was the Water Dwarf, the Wheat Dwarf, the Barley Dwarf, the Hops Dwarf, a Doctor Dwarf, and a Psychologist Dwarf. The Doctor and Psychologist (styled after Freud himself!) were there to assure everyone that beer is good for the body and the mind.
The dwarves finished their introductions, and I was ready for the tour to settle back to normalcy, but from there things just got weirder and weirder. After the dwarves, the tour descended some stairs marked with Leonardo da Vinchi’s signature.
At the bottom of the stairs, we found ourselves in a cellar with a giant reproduction of da Vinchi’s The Last Supper at the far end of the room. The lighting was dim, the room was quiet, and there were fake candles scattered all around. Rows of chairs were set up a respectful distance from the masterpiece.
We all took a seat, and the tour guide explained the painting. From what I gathered, the brewery’s current owner, Leonhard Salleck, is very interested in the painting. Somehow, he had some revelations about some hidden meanings and symbolism in The Last Supper that no one had thought of before.
Then there was a video on a screen suspended from the ceiling so you could watch it and also gaze upon the painting. In the video, Salleck explained his discoveries. My 7-year-old niece was concerned that because the video was in German I wouldn’t know what was going on, so she translated a little for me. It was very sweet, but I’d already gotten the gist of it: an eccentric man found new conspiracies within a famous painting.
After watching the video, everyone had a few more minutes to sit in the presence of the painting before ascending some stairs. The stiars went through a room walled in mirrors and pinpricks of starlight on a black field. Electronica mood music played in the background.
We emerged from the staircase in the Weissbier Dwarf Grotto. It was amazing. I was among the last of the tour group to reach the grotto, so there were a bunch of people in the way of getting photos of it, but in retrospect I really should have taken more!
The grotto was filled with mosaics and artwork. There were more rows of chairs arranged in front of a giant, cave-like piece of art with two openings. The Weissbier Dwarves were arranged within the two openings. Above the openings was a pair of large mosaic eyes. Between the two openings was a wall that included a giant mosaic mouth.
The tour guide spoke about the origins of the artful tower that we would soon be ascending. Somehow Salleck had had a vision of the Weissbier Dwarves. He also dreamed of having an observation tower at his brewery. Somehow an architect/artist named Friedensreich Hundertwasser learned about Salleck’s dreams and they worked together to make the dream a reality.
Then the tour guide hit a button and the Weissbier Dwarves sprang to life to add their own explanation of brewing and the tower. As each one spoke, a spotlight shown on him. The entire presentation ended with the entire group lit and chanting together in unison. Then the lights went out. A red spotlight brought the mouth to life. The giant mosaic eyes glimmered. A deeply creepy voice breathed more wisdom (of were they threats?) to the crowd.
Then, darkness. The amazing performance was over. It was fantastic! And straight from the Hershey Experience.
After the awesomeness in the Dwarf Grotto, we exited the building and emerged into the sunlight at the base of the tower. Nearby was the mosaic-covered cap for the well that has supplied the brewery with perfect beer-brewing water for centuries.
At the tower’s base, the tour guide introduced its symbolism. The symbolism was detailed on a card that we received (see photo below). The architect, Hundertwasser, intentionally made sure there were no straight lines in the tower. He felt that people had taken too much away from nature and that he wanted to give some of human construction back to nature. It’s quirky and whimsical. Officially it’s the home of the Weissbier Dwarves, so there are small, mosaic rooms all the way up that are dedicated to the components of brewing that each of the dwarves represent.
In the basement is the world’s largest collection of wheat beer glasses–over 4,200 of them. At the top of the tower is a gold globe, and inside the globe is beer paradise.
The tower is 115 feet tall. It would have been twice that size, except the officials in charge of city planning said that it couldn’t be taller than the town’s church steeple. So the brewery owner and the artist reduced the size so it would be shorter than the steeple. It still wasn’t short enough, because the government officials decided that the gold ball on the top would draw too much attention away from the smaller tip of the church steeple, so the size was again reduced.
The trek up the tower was beautiful! It was even more awesome once I knew the weird backstory of the dwarves. Without that, it would simply have been cool art!
We got to the top and experienced Beer Paradise, then made our way back to the tower’s base and the beer garden there. A glass of beer was included with every adult ticket. The one I chose was excellent. John tried the beer that the angel Aloysius picked instead of heaven. It’s a dark beer with an alcohol content that’s higher than the other beers. John reported that it was, in fact, very tasty. We’d packed some pretzels and some cured sausages to eat along with our beer.
It was a fantastic German beer garden experience and a fantastic way to end our visit to Kuchlbauer Brewery.
Walking around my neighborhood, it’s fun to get glimpses of interesting gardens that other people have created in their back yards. There will be a sunflower here, a rose there, and a tomato plant over there. Actually, there are some fantastic gardens hidden here and there near downtown Evansville.
One such garden belongs to Dee. She works at Patchwork and has lived in this neighborhood for a very long time. I saw a small part of her garden earlier this summer and wanted to see more of it so I stopped by last week with my camera.
Dee’s back yard is a lot like mine in that the Victorian family that built her house paved the entire thing. As a result, Dee has narrow raised beds along the edges of the property that are densely packed with vignettes of plants and art.
I love Dee’s quirky combinations of figurines and garden art. I envy some of the weirder pieces in her collection. Some spots in her yard are elegant and then there are the places where her fantastic sense of humor shines.
I’m sitting here listening to roofers tear all the shingles off my roof during a heat wave and hoping they don’t do any damage to my garden. So far so good. My garden also needs a drink, but I’ll just get hit in the head with falling debris. Hopefully all the plants can hold out till this evening. It’s the end of a three-month saga of trees and storms and critters.
In the last couple weeks I’ve harvested my beets and carrots. They did much better than I expected and were tasty with a grilled steak dinner. The wild side garden continues to bloom with another fancy coneflower adding itself to the mix. And the caladiums are growing big and colorful and look great against the chartreuse “Sun and Substance” hosta.
It’s green apple season, so I made a batch of apple sauce. I should have gotten twice as many apples. There is only one orchard in town that grows the super tart, early varieties and by the time I decided I wanted more apples I couldn’t catch the grower at any farmer’s market. That makes my two bags of applesauce all the more precious.
Meanwhile, the hydrangeas have faded beautifully, I managed to get one sweet nasturtium bloom, and the blackberries are changing to purple.
We continue to fight the critters. I believe they have been investigating our wounded roof, so we don’t want them around. A few weeks ago we got another raccoon that we released at sunset at the nearby fish and wildlife area. John and I got to enjoy the view as consolation for our ongoing troubles.
Last weekend John and I trekked up to my hometown of Archbold, OH for its grand sesquicentennial celebration. There was a parade and a party in the park and a historical play. It was great fun! John and I drove by the farm where I grew up, and I enjoyed being back in the Northwest Ohio landscape.
While driving through Northwest Ohio, an amazing yard caught my eye.
“Wow, John! Did you see that amazing place?” I said.
“Can you cram any more stuff into one yard?” said my brother-in-law in the car behind us.
Both statements were true.
We were running late for the parade at the time, so we couldn’t stop, but John and I made a detour on the way home so I could get a closer look. A guy was in the driveway grilling out.
“Hmm,” I thought. “How can I casually take a couple pictures. I’m not sure how he’ll feel about strangers gawking at his house.”
John stopped in the street and I hopped out of the car and started casually taking a couple pictures from the sidewalk. Then I heard someone greeting me warmly and telling me I could go inside the garden and walk around.
The woman who lived there had apparently been out front and had seen me. She was very nice, but had to go in to finish making supper, which was just fine with me. I wandered through their great garden in peace.
There were several kinds of bottle trees in styles I hadn’t seen before. And I loved the blue bottles suspended from the real tree on chains. There was also a kind of palm tree made from a 6 ft dead stump with kind of a chandelier on top (unfortunately I didn’t get a good photo of it. Plus there were bowling balls and all kinds of other chotchkies, both handmade and found. It was fantastic!
Click on any photo below for a closer look and a slide show.
Minnie Black’s Revival Gourd Band was the focus of an art exhibit for the past month at the Angel Mounds State Historic Site. It was in that unique intersection of gardening and weird art, so I thought it was wonderful.
Minnie Black was born in 1899 in East Bernstadt, Kentucky. At some point she started growing gourds, and somehow it occurred to her to use these gourds to create sculptures and musical instruments. She pulled together a band of people she knew who lived at the nursing home, and they performed together. She became famous enough to even appear on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson”.
An Evansville musician/artist discovered Minnie’s daughter selling some of Minnie’s art and instruments at a flea market and was intrigued. He bought some and worked to restore and rebuild them, taking them from interesting art objects to very functional musical instruments. He got his own group of musicians together, built a few additional instruments to round things out, and they started to practice. In February and March they gave two concerts. The instruments sounded way better than any garden produce deserves to sound.
Here are some of the strange creatures and people–all made from gourds:
And here are some of the instruments. The ones that don’t clearly have strings are the ones with harmonicas, kazoos, and nose flutes embedded in them:
And here are a couple of the performances. The band’s version of I’ll Fly Away (the last of the three videos below) was particularly wonderful.
Here are a few photos from around my yard and my neighborhood from the past two weeks. They include a couple snowfalls, neighborhood art in the snow, the orchid explosion in my kitchen window, skiing to work, the cat enjoying a nice day at the back door, and the first crocuses of the year.
John and I recently spent the weekend at the beautiful Goff House B&B in Cobden, IL.
It’s situated in a landscape that features hills strewn with huge boulders, sharp canyons, and enormous rock formations carved from limestone. (Click on any photo below for a slideshow of larger images–and try to find John in two of the photos!)
The outdoors comes inside at the Goff House to make for wonderful, earthy architecture. (Again, click any photo for a slideshow of larger images.)
It was great to actually live in the space, if only for two nights. I would love to live there longer in order to watch the seasons change incrementally around the structure and to see the structure be changed by the seasons. The rocky house in the spare winter landscape with the bare trees silhouetted against the sunsets and sunrises was beautiful. With relatively early sunsets and frigid temperatures, John and I also enjoyed plenty of time reading by the fire. Breakfasts were good and hearty. There was also a lovely dog named Postal.
The house was designed by architect Bruce Goff for Hugh Duncan, a sociology and English professor at Southern Illinois University in nearby Carbondale, IL. It was designed in 1965 and built (from what I can tell) over the next few years. According to the Goff House website, it was Duncan’s intention to create a house that would achieve “an inside outside environmental delight to compare with Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘falling over brook’ structure in Pennsylvania”.
Duncan’s concept for the house was that “The House should therefore assume a natural place in the rocky Hillside site; It should provide a comfortable retreat for reading and writing in the midst of his thousand of books; it should make and appropriate setting for the social life the Duncans enjoyed, And it should include some Louis Sullivan artifacts as symbolic reminders of the sociological principles of architecture which Professor Duncan discerned in Sullivan’s works and writings.”
Duncan chose Bruce Goff to design this house. Of his work, Goff said, “We desire to enter into and inhabit any great and original work of art – to possess it and allow it possess us, be it literature, painting, music or architecture. This is why architecture is such a powerful art: we can inhabit it physically as well as spiritually in time and space. Someday perhaps it will, like music, become less earth-bound, more flexible and athletic, more ever-changing and free.” From – Bruce Goff Toward Absolute Architecture , David G. DeLong 1988
Here’s the blueprint as artwork. You can see the layout is in essence three interconnected cylinders. A hallway runs along the center to connect the living areas. On one end is the library, the bedrooms are in the middle, and the living area is at the other end.
You, too, can reserve a night at the Goff House. Visit the website to learn how. It’s an indoor/outdoor architectural adventure, so don’t expect a perfectly heated jacuzzi room, antiseptically clean spaces, or the latest in construction.
While John and I were out and about visiting state parks in the area, we drove by an art-full garden. It turns out that it was the back yard of shop in the town of Mankanda, IL. There was a serious burnt-out hippie vibe in the entire town, but the garden was pretty neat. When we mentioned it later to the owner of the Goff House, he said the artists who created the art garden had visited the Goff House for some of their inspiration. I think it shows.
Squirrels and Tomatoes 