suns along the Mohawk

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– above and below: photos of the Schenectady Central Park Rose Garden, taken by D. Giacalone on July 31, 2010; click on a photo for a larger version –

As I had promised myself in yesterday’s posting “Central Park rose garden honored,” I visited the Garden later in the day with my Canon PowerShotS5 camera — and my friends Yu and Anita Chang.   Like he did on our visit a year ago (see “rose garden escape“), Yu brought his artfully utilized Nikon, too.

Although past its peak for the summer of 2010, The Schenectady Central Park Rose Garden lived up to its recent selection as one of the best public rose gardens in the nation.  (see “Rose garden voted among nation’s top 10“, Daily Gazette, p. B1, July 31, 2010; update [Aug. 14, 2010]: the Garden’s final rank is 3rd of 130 entries, per today’s Schenectady Gazette, “Central Park Rose Garden gets high respect: Former ‘weed patch’ voted No. 3 in U.S.”, at A1; online by subscription)

With blue skies, low humidity and temperatures in the high 70s, we had about the most beautiful weather imaginable for the last day of July.  Not heaving learned from last year’s experience, we arrived mid-afternoon on a mostly sunny day and had a bit too much bright light for picture-taking.  Nonetheless, I’m sharing some of my favorite shots from our visit.

– entry sign and walkway to the Rose Garden –

. . roses surround Robert Blood’s sculpture of the Chinese symbol “Yuan,” which means garden . .

For a change of pace and a little fun (to be honest, I like looking at roses for short periods more than I like photographing them), I decided to follow Anita’s yellow hat around the Garden.  To wit:

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– Anita’s hat led the way from our entry to our exit –

Meanwhile, arbors seemed like a good prop to break up the sea of rose beds:

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– thanks to all who donated funds for the Rose Garden’s arbors (bricks & and benches, too) –

Finally, like the gardenias at the left, many of the Rose Garden flowers deserve a closeup look:

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2011 update (June 20, 2011): See our posting “rose garden in June.”

p.s. Thanks to Yu and Anita for accompanying me to Central Park yesterday.  Walking from their nearby home, we passed a patch of woods where we traditionally play bocce (including snow bocce), and wondered how we could have gotten all the way to August without playing yet this year.  Here’s how our little spot of Central Park bocce heaven looked on the last day of July 2010:

We used to enjoy the extra challenge of tree limbs and branches of various sizes strewn around the forest floor.   For better or worse, the ground has been cleaned up, to accommodate the installation of an 18-hole disk golf course (think “basket frisbee”).

Central Park’s Disk Golf Course is brand new, having been officially opened last Thursday, July 29, 2010.  It is free and open to the public. Apparently, “our” bocce woods constitutes Hole #2 of the course.  This being Schenectady, I’m holding out hope that the ground will soon return to its natural, branch-covered state.