SARAH P. DUKE GARDENS, Durham, NC: The Tranquility of Nature on a Summer's Day

Terraced gardens. Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Durham, NC

From traditional garden flowers to native trees and plants, the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham, North Carolina, offers a plethora of opportunities to appreciate the beauty of nature. Paths meander down shaded paths, around a small lake, through formal planted garden beds, and across grassy lawns. 

Guide to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

I recently toured the garden when I was visiting family in nearby Chapel Hill, NC. It was a warm summer day—quite hot in the full sun, but pleasant as long as we stayed in the shade.

Shaded walkway at the garden entrance makes one feel immersed in an Impressionist painting.

After parking and purchasing our tickets, we entered at the gate and proceeded to the rose garden, and from there to the terraced gardens that are part of the Historic Gardens where the Duke Gardens began in 1934. From there we followed trails to the Asiatic Arboretum, which features plants from Southeast Asia. Then, finally, we toured the Garden of Native Plants with its wildlife garden, carnivorous plant collection, and bird viewing shelter.

Purple cone flowers (Echinacea).

It was hard to resist taking photos. Here are a few favorites:

Lily pond at Azalea Court.

Close-up of sacred lotus reveals its bizarre cone shaped center.

Shrine with view of lake and Meyer Bridge

Meyer Bridge in the W.L. Culberson Asiatic Arboretum

A shaded bench in the native plant garden invites visitors to rest and enjoy the view.

A carnivorous plant opens its "jaws", waiting for its next victim.

A bee gathers nectar from an appropriately named beebalm (Lamiacea) blossom. Also called bergamot.

Snowballs the size of melons were in their full glory.

Every day is different at the garden, depending on the weather and time of year. On our visit we enjoyed the height of the summer bloom. The garden is open year round.

Sundial: "Nothing is worth more than this day."

For information about visiting the Duke Gardens, click here: https://gardens.duke.edu/visit

 

Walking the Trails in JOHNSTON MILL NATURE PRESERVE, Durham, NC

Johnston Mill Nature Preserve, Durham, North Carolina

Our visits to North Carolina to celebrate Thanksgiving with our daughter and her family always include walks in the beautiful forests near their home in Chapel Hill. This year one of our walks was in the Johnston Mill Nature Preserve near Durham. This 296-acre preserve includes five well marked trails that make their way through a variety of habitats from mature forest to open brush land. Each trail is named and color coded with markers along the way.

A variety of fungi could be seen along the trail.

We began by following the Robin’s Trail which goes along the course of New Hope Creek. We then made a diversion onto the Bluebird Trail which ran along the high line and then joined the Old Field Bluff trail before coming back to the Robin’s Trail and the return to the parking lot.

By late November, the branches are bare.

It was a beautiful fall day with sunshine filtering through the bare branches of the tall trees. There were a few other people hiking and walking their dogs, but the trails were not crowded and it was the perfect place to spend a few hours and enjoy the peace and beauty of nature.

As we walked along the high line path we heard flocks of small birds foraging nearby.

The Johnston Mill Nature Preserve is managed by the Triangle Land Conservancy.
For a map, directions, and more about the Johnston Mill Nature Preserve go to:
https://www.triangleland.org/what-we-do/nature-preserves/johnston-mill-nature-preserve 

A blue coded sign marks the Bluebird's Trail

MIRO and More at the NASHER MUSEUM OF ART at Duke University, Durham, NC

Miro Exhibit, Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina

Brilliantly playful, graphic paintings in bright primary colors are the hallmark of Joan Miro, the great innovative Spanish painter of the twentieth century. Fifty-one of his late works–from 1963 to 1981- are currently on exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art on the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The exhibit, Miro: The Experience of Seeing, are from the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. It includes paintings, both big and small, and sculptures, many made from found materials such as rakes and toasting forks, and others cast from molds made of sand. A recurring theme in both the paintings and the sculptures is a woman with a bird, but there are also landscapes and other figurative compositions, although greatly abstracted and dreamlike in effect. In all of them, the viewer is invited to engage in the art and interpret it individually.

A tall figurative sculpture stands outside the entrance to the Miro Exhibit.

I recently had a chance to see the Miro exhibit with my family while visiting in North Carolina.  The Nasher museum sits on a wooded hill and is organized around a large covered atrium whose geometric glass ceiling allows the open space to fill with warmth and light. Around the courtyard are three galleries, a gift shop, café (where we ate a delicious lunch, choosing from items with a Catalan theme) and an auditorium.

Skylights allow light and shadows to move across the walls of the museum

Miro was a contemporary of Picasso and the Surrealists, and his work spans a broad period from the 1920's to his death in 1983 at the age of 90. Born in Barcelona, he lived for a long time in France before returning to Spain during World War II. In 1956 he moved permanently to the island of Mallorca, which is where the works in this exhibit were created. Click HERE for a timeline of Miro’s life.
The Miro exhibit will be on view through February 22, 2015. Click HERE for examples of some of the art in the exhibition.

Entrance to the Rauschenberg Exhibit

The Miro exhibit fills one gallery of the museum. In the other galleries are exhibits of works from the collection of Robert Rauschenberg and selected works from the permanent collection of the museum. The combination of the Miro art and the Rauschenberg collection makes an interesting pair. In both exhibits the viewer is asked to consider similar questions:  what is art? what is the meaning of art? how do we see? what is my relationship to this piece of art?

Ancient Greek Vase

In the gallery with items from the permanent collection we focused on the area devoted to antiquities, especially some amazing Greek vases decorated with incredibly realistic and beautifully drawn figures. Altogether, our trip to the Nasher Museum of Art made for a very stimulating and thought provoking family outing. Our imagination was definitely fertilized.

“Two and two do not make four. Only accountants think that. But that is not enough: a painting must make this clear; it must fertilize the imagination.” Joan Miro, 1959