I'm taking a break from a garden that needs some serious TLC. It's incredible how unruly a garden can get after just six days.
In the near future I'll try to give a full report of our trip, but until then, here are some of the highlight photos:
Seneca Lake is amazing. We are currently in Geneva and we would highly recommend the place to anyone looking to get away from the hustle and bustle.
Photos to come shortly.
We're heading out of town for a few days to see an exhibit at The Cleveland Museum of Art showcasing the work of Paul Gauguin. This is the museum's pitch for the show:
This landmark exhibition gathers about 75 paintings, works on paper, woodcarvings, and ceramics by Paul Gauguin and his contemporaries to explore how the artist created his signature style during the year 1889. Co-organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 re-creates on a smaller scale the radical independent exhibition that Gauguin organized with his artistic disciples on the grounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle—a display of about 100 paintings now recognized as the first Symbolist exhibition in Paris.
Last week I heard a clip on NPR about drawbacks some newer museums have been experiencing with the design of their buildings. Apparently the problem they're having is that the celebrity architects brought on to draw up the buildings are using the space to showcase their abilities rather than showcase art. The example they used to explain what they meant by "celebrity architects" were the Guggenheim Museums. To be quite honest I didn't know there was more than one.
The Guggenheim in New York City is just another example of why I think Frank Lloyd Wright is the shit. I've been to Falling Water an number of times, so I know how well he works with space, but damn did he do a fantastic job on this museum. Simply put, it encourages exploration. We constantly found ourselves peeking around corners and leaning over edges. Each space felt private, but aware of the whole. It was like we swam through the seven floors without ever leaving the first.
And then there was the art. Never have I been to a museum with a series of collections like this. I think the only permanent exhibit is the Thannhauser collection, which is an impressive mix of Picasso, Manet, a Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many others.
The show we were really interested to see was the Catherine Opie collection. Her exhibit is political, tender, violent, and by far the most beautiful collection of photography I've ever had the joy to see in person. 
We did do some other things. Mainly we avoided midtown Manhattan; that place was a mad house.
This one may take a few posts.
For Thanksgiving we went to my stepsister Chris and her husband Jude's farm for dinner.
They own about 90+ acres in Western PA and they live off every foot of it.
One of their main exports is lamb and wool.
Jude was nice enough to give us a tour of the place and Meg took some fantastic photos as we made our rounds. Once we have an opportunity to sort through them all we'll be sure to share the adventure.
A gem of downtown Beaver is its local café. Every time Meg and I visit we stop in for a cup of coffee and take a walk along the Ohio River.
For lack of any current pictures or stories, here are a few leftovers from our last excursion in October:
Hawk Mountain's River of Rocks—a nice place to stop in the middle of a hike.
Jeff and Kelly survey the land.
Work begins.
Jeff's little structure.
The tower. It's extra impressive when you figure that the same people who built it were involved with the assembly of this tent.
Every Fall Meg and I Make our way to the mountains to savor the cool air and turning leaves. One of our favorite spots is Hawk Mountain in central PA. We actually went on our hike a couple weeks ago, but we're just now getting to post about it.
We were joined by our friends Jeff and Large and traversed a rarely flat six mile loop. Meg brought her SLR camera and will post her share soon. 
When we go on extended hikes it's tradition that we have tea.
Kelly's mom and stepdad came to visit this weekend, so we took advantage of the very un-August-like weather and went to Chanticleer Gardens in Wayne, PA. I highly recommend checking this place out if you're ever in the Philadelphia area. It's awesome.
High up on a hill, overlooking the whole place, is the old estate house:
There are streams and ponds everywhere: 
Some really fantastic cold frames outside of the giant vegetable garden:
A cute springhouse:
And an enormous potting shed:
Their pool looks a whole lot nicer than ours. Imagine that. 
In keeping with the name of the garden, there were rooster sculptures everywhere:
And also interesting chairs:
And really cool little boxes that held the plant lists for each area of the garden:
And, of course, the plants:
