Mary Angelini Photography: Garfield Park Conservatory

Over Christmas vacation we decided to get out of the house since we'd been couped up for a while because of the snowy arctic weather so we went to visit the tropical climes of the Garfield Park Conservatory. In the scheme of things, it isn't a very large facility - not like the Art Museum or the Field Museum, but there was so much going on there that we ended up stay for about 4 hours taking pictures. Here are my last pictures from 2009...

Flowering Silk Tree - remember these from California? I love them!

I have no idea what this one was called but it was a tree with these spherical balls of flowers on it that had an intoxicating smell not unlike a bowl of cherry-vanilla oatmeal!

These little spikey stamens looked kind of alien to me.

Again not sure what these flowers were, but I really liked the look of them in black and white. By the way, one of my resolutions for the new year is to take the time to read the labels and take notes when I shoot so I don't have this problem going forward!

This reminded me of a reproducing coral.

Evidence of Christmas even in the tropical setting - there were tons of Poinsettias in every imagineable color combination!

A fuzzy little suculent sprig.

Another fuzzy suculent - I love the perfect geometry of these!

I really liked the contrast of long sharp pointy thorns amid the tiny delicate yellow flowers.

The ubiquitous fern - again I liked the contrast better in black and white.

However, this one I preferred in its natural color. Again, fabulous geometry!

Ok, WTF? It is a drippy plant!! Kinda skeevy looking!

Not only did this spike of spikes look painful, but the based from which it projected looked equally painful! Cacti - brilliant plant warriors!

This poor Saguaro cactus didn't make it, but its skeleton sure looked interesting!

Aaahhhh Aloe - soothing even to gaze upon!

Another lovely flowering suculent - Katie referred to this one as a "rainbow flower" - she was kind of right!

Pretty flowers on a really spikey plant.

Same thing in white.

These looked like furry fingers!

F'ing OUCH!!

This one looked like a green and white firework! It was all over the place, but there was such perfection and order to how it grew!

In the center of these larger Bromeliads were these little gardens of I guess some kind of moss and these delicate little flowers. It was like a world inside of these plants and it was amazing!

I recently saw a picture posted that was similar to this one and it referred to these little flowers as oragami cranes - they really do have that look don't they?!