Notes on Philadelphia

On Thursday afternoon, after long Amtrak delays due to a stuck bridge in New Jersey, we made it to Philadelphia. Our trip was prompted by an invitation from a fellow garden-obsessed nonheterosexual couple we met a few months ago in Key West who are affiliated with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which puts on the Philadelphia Flower Show. It often happens that you meet people on vacation and make vague plans to stay in touch (and rarely do), but this time we followed through.  

The Philadelphia Flower Show is the largest and longest-running flower show in the country (since 1829!). According to our friends, it attracts around 250,000 visitors over the course of a week or so, including many local, regional, and state politicians, and (of course) Martha Stewart. We were pleased to note an abundance of older gay couples. Why do cities waste so much money subsidizing corporate sporting events when they could be promoting ... well, pretty much anything else, but especially the horticultural arts and urban gardens/green spaces? 

It’s difficult to describe the scale of the show, but if you’ve ever been in a gigantic convention hall -- several blocks wide and several more blocks long -- imagine it filled with flowers, plants, installations, and an exhibitor area.

The first installation in the show was a psychedelic reflecting pool reminiscent of the famous grotto constructed by King Ludwig II in one of his Bavarian castles, which was depicted in the Visconti epic about the doomed, nonheterosexual king.  

We next spent time admiring an installation featuring an urban lot that had been transformed by urban-friendly flowers and trees. This is what cities could look like, I thought, if they removed a lane of private car storage from streets and replaced them with beautiful (and run-off capturing) strips of plants. 

We said hello to our friends -- they were working, but we made plans to have dinner with them the following night -- after which I spent a few minutes entranced by a wall of Pennsylvania bluestone. In the house where I grew up, there was a wall in the backyard that looked like this, and I remembered spending a lot of time playing on and around it. A few times, I had the idea to repair or rebuild sections of the wall that were collapsing, and I probably made it worse, but my father -- never a perfectionist in any aspect of home repair -- was never too bothered by that sort of thing. He would come home from his job and inspect a large pile of rocks and a gaping hole and nod seriously, as if the work was going exactly as he might have planned. 

The competitive portion of the show featured entries from garden clubs and individual plant growers. This flower arrangement won an award in the tiny flower arrangement category. The whole thing was about as big as a small book.

We were quickly sucked in to the judging process, feeling pleasure on behalf of the winning entries and (occasionally) outrage for those who failed to place. 

This bonsai tree, a Japanese white pine that's eighty years old, wasn't in the competition, but it was one of our favorite plants. It was no less hypnotic than watching a fire or the ocean. 

After the flower show, Stephen and I went to a restaurant not far from Rittenhouse Square called My Loup. One of the best things about cities (or at least Philadelphia or San Juan) is that you can find interesting, unpretentious restaurants that aren't exactly cheap but are much cheaper than analogous places in New York and leave you feeling entertained and satisfied in a way that rarely seems to happen in non-urban/touristy places such as e.g., Key West.  

One of the signature dishes was pickled shrimp served with a (DIY assembly) aioli sauce spread on a saltine. 

Crab toast :)

The next day, we went to the Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill. The grounds were bathed in spring light.  

I was (pleasantly) surprised to see some early blooms, such as this viburnum. 

And witch hazel. 

Spring crocus. 

I was worried that it might be too early for the magnolia. 

We found an almost cartoonishly beautiful stand of dawn redwoods bisected by a small stream, surrounded by a lawn of spring flowers. 

Sometimes it's hard to believe that the world is still filled with beautiful places. 

I felt a little sad for our dawn redwood, which has to contend with a small growing space and contentious neighbors. But at least, I reminded myself, our redwood has the company of a birch and some of other trees. Urban life is all about making compromises for the sake of community. 

The other big highlight was the fernery, a small enclosed space filled with -- yes -- ferns (and moss).  

We were the only people in the greenhouse, which was warm and humid and earthy. 

Lush moss grew everywhere.  

Stone steps. 

Time stopped. 

And then resumed. 

But more slowly. 

After the fernery, we made it back downtown in time for dinner with our friends. They were of course familiar with the fernery and other highlights of the arboretum. They nodded knowingly as we described our afternoon. Time stopped again as we talked about the flower show, the state of being gay in a straight society, the advantages and disadvantages of living in Philadelphia versus New York, the latest in gay reality television, and some of our favorite books and music. As one of my fellow blogging friends recently pointed out, 'I think we underestimate how important it is to find the people who are interested in the same things as we are.'

As we walked back to our hotel, we felt grateful for what the city had offered us, and for what we had taken. 

Comments

[Sarah]

What a coincidence - I was at the flower show this week too! As someone with chronically low expectations about most things, I was quite impressed. The wild lot with the yellow/green theme was one of my favorites. I also love any type of colorful garden structure. I returned with tons of inspiration for my own garden. What a treat to be among so many other plant lovers.