While students are already enjoying summer vacation, the hard-working staff at Miller South spends a week planning for next year and immersing ourselves in professional development experiences. Today we went to Cleveland to take a workshop on folk art at the House of Blues. We toured the extensive collection of southern rural art, mostly by African Americans, and then were given materials and instructed to create our own piece of art inspired by what we had seen.
In the afternoon, staff had the choice of visiting the museum of art, the natural science museum or the botanical gardens. Here are some pictures of my visit to the gardens.
In the children's garden, we find some great ideas for creating unique garden plots. Why not use an old umbrella?
Two exotic indoor environments house collections of plants, insects, lizards and birds. Madagascar provides the flora and fauna for the Spiny Garden.
And in the Cloud Garden from Costa Rica, butterflies are released every day at 2 PM.
Here you see the butterfly keeper with his butterfly crate made of netting! The vibrant butterflies are quite friendly!
This marvelous music-themed garden inspired by Harlem's Cotton Club was an unexpected extension of our morning at the House of Blues:
Everywhere we wandered throughout the Botanical Garden's ten acres, we found amazing growing things, giddy colors and tantalizing textures.
