It’s a magnificent early spring, and the magnolias are already in bloom. This tree was in full flower beside Fallowfield Avenue in Beechview.
-
Magnolias
-
Orchid Show at Phipps
A few more pictures from the orchid show at Phipps Conservatory, which really need no explanation.
-
Indian Tropical Forest at Phipps
The Tropical Forest at Phipps has been redesigned to represent India for the next three years. According to the staff, more than three quarters of the plants had to be replaced, as we see in the picture below, taken a few weeks earlier when the transformation was in process.
-
Slipper Orchids at Phipps
It’s slipper-orchid season at Phipps—mostly in the orchid room, although right now the whole conservatory is filled with thousands of orchids for the annual winter orchid show. Father Pitt did not take down the exact names of these specimens, so if you want more information you’ll just have to go see them yourself. Above, an unusual Papihiopedilum.
Another Paphiopedilum.
A very elegant Phragmipedium.
A Phragmipedium with a bit more of a laissez-faire attitude to personal grooming.
We’ll be seeing more of Phipps Conservatory this week, because Father Pitt loves Phipps in the winter, and he has a bit of a backlog of pictures.
-
John Quincy Adams in Pittsburgh
John Quincy Adams, Daguerreotyped in 1843, the year he visited Pittsburgh. Could a new two-volume edition of Modern Chivalry be among the books on the table behind him?
—
An interesting pamphlet has just appeared on Project Gutenberg:
Ex-President John Quincy Adams in Pittsburgh (1843)
It consists of a speech by Wilson McCandless (who gave his name to the Town of McCandless, Allegheny County’s most perfectly square township) welcoming Mr. Adams, Adams’ speech in reply, and some correspondence between the two men.
McCandless sent Adams the new edition of Modern Chivalry by Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and it’s very interesting to read Adams’ opinion of the work. He had read and loved it as a young man, and he expects it to be a permanent part of the world’s literature. Whether it has lived up to that expectation is debatable; it is not always in print like the works of Hawthorne, but on the other hand it is reprinted often enough that it could not quite be called forgotten. At any rate, Pittsburgh has at least the honor of having made one of the first substantial contributions to American fiction, and can claim a literary culture well over two centuries old.
-
Wall of Ice in Banksville
Every year, this cliff behind a shopping center in Banksville grows a curtain of icicles. The unusually warm weather this year has made the curtain thinner and pointier.
-
Downtown from the North Side
Chunks of ice drift by in the Ohio in this view of downtown Pittsburgh from the Carnegie Science Center.
-
Flowers in Winter
An unusually mild and wet winter so far: though January has come, there are still flowers blooming here and there, as these pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis) in Bellevue. That will probably change as cold weather moves in over the next few days.
-
Nutcrackers at Phipps
The Winter Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory has a Nutcracker theme this year. But, as usual, it’s just an excuse to show off mounds of Poinsettias and countless other flowers. After you’ve taken in the Poinsettias, you might want to look out for the various other species of Euphorbia that the gardeners have sprinkled through the displays as a sort of botanical in-joke.
This delightful miniature Victorian conservatory can be found in the Orchid Room.
—
Sometimes the scenes in the garden railroad (in the South Conservatory) repay a closer look.
—
This is the first time old Pa Pitt has seen a clock with a frame made of succulents.
—
In the Broderie.
-
Tenth Street Bridge
The Tenth Street Bridge reflected in the unusually placid Monongahela.