Front paged at My Left Wing
Good morning, and there's no place like home! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging, post Yearly Kos edition.
The biggest thing I noticed about Chicago was the humidity. I'd walk out of McCormick Center in the evening and, to my Denver constitution, it felt like a sauna. Then someone local would chime in "oh, it's not too bad right now" — and I just wanted to slap them silly. How I longed for the aridness of Denver.
When I got home, Denver was in the midst of a monsoonal pattern with rain every day, and full cloud cover. The Mister complained about how humid it had been while I was gone and I replied "oh, it's not too bad; feels great after Chicago".
The photo was taken at a water garden at the University of Chicago campus last Saturday, during our accidental walking tour.
Knowing that I would have to report back to all ya'll, the very first photo I took was of a planter at McCormick Center. They were very lovely — and I was surprised to find agastache in them. I adore agastache — it's a very good perennial in our arid climate, with scented showy blossoms, and scented leaves. But, since I view them as a perennial, I'd never thought of agastache as a container plant.
I managed to meet up with the fabulous faboo-jay that evening (and I forgot to take a picture — something that happened all too frequently, despite the weight of the camera hanging around my neck). Fact is I met many people, before the weight of exhaustion claimed me. I decided to pack it in, and went I stepped out of the conference center on the way to the hotel (damn but it was humid!), there were fireworks going off. I have no idea why, or exactly from where they were coming, but hey — I decided to assume that they were in honor of Yearly Kos.
Thursday was frustrating. I was attempting to find several people — Ed in Montana, sheddhead, RubDMC — but the tightness of the schedule, the size of the facility, and the number of people with orange lanyards milling about (and name tags that kept flipping over) made it difficult.
I did find Common Sense Mainer and BiPM out on the patio. Really, the best social opportunities came from hanging out with the smokers outside the convention center.
Before the opening keynote with Howard Dean, a group of Colorado bloggers — led by johne, founder of Drinking Liberally Denver, and head of the Colorado Chocolate Fountain Caucus — went out to dinner together. I gotta tell you, the strength of the Colorado blogging community is just one of many (weather; convention center location; compact downtown area; public transportation; transportation hub) good reasons for planning one of these conventions in Denver.
We arrived back just in time to get settled for the keynote and, after the speech, I herded cats to get the Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Team together for the Pub Quiz.
Left to right we had Eric (By Foot), Sally, Ed in Montana, Andrew, Kathy and (not pictured) Bee (Bumblebums). Thank gawd for the rest of the team, as I was a mere figurehead — we came in 7th out of 30 teams.
On Friday, I decided to wear a bright blue dress so I could tell sheddhead and RubDMC how to recognize me. In a sea of khaki, jeans, and t-shirts, it did make me very visible, so we finally managed to meet.
I hold Rub solely responsible for my attendance at yKos; he made me promise after last year's convention that I'd go this year, and who can resist the persuasiveness of Rub? (As an aside, Rub, next week I'll post pictures of both kinds of nicotiana — my sylvestri has bloomed early.)
Now, I had already seen a picture of Rub, so I wasn't totally surprised (as I often was) at what he looked like. But he's just as great in person as he is online.
The next morning was, for me, the highlight of the convention: our wandering in the wilderness in search of a wireless connection. Ah, what a happy accident. sheddhead and dmsilev were wonderful tour guides of Chicago, and, on our way to find wireless, we took a walk past Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. I totally loved the way the planters were built into the walls — in fact, I may use that as inspiration for the replacement walls for our front garden beds.
We toured a little more on the University of Chicago campus (and what a beautiful campus it is), including a stop by the Henry Moore statue commemorating the first controlled generation of nuclear power.
On our way back to the McCormick Center, we got on the wrong rail line, so ended up getting off near a public area with what has to be one of the weirdest pieces of public art I have ever seen. I didn't get pictures of it — it consisted of rusted sculptures of arms and legs, titled "Agora" (perhaps one of you Chicago people have a link to it, or a picture of it?)
But, I'm running short on time here (thanks to Zasu's "help", typing gets a little slow), so this will have to do for my report on What I Did At Summer Camp. It was a marvelous, if too-short-and-crammed, trip.