Chanticleer

Yesterday, to ease the stress of the semester ending, Cardigan and I took a walk in Chanticleer, a garden outside of Philadelphia. It was lovely and peaceful and overflowing with things I'd never seen, like red and hot pink clover (red and pink on the same clover flower!). It was perfectly relaxing, except for one truly horrid brand new modernist bridge (no picture here).

Cardigan was pretending to feed the enormous goldfish. She fooled them. They were so aggressive that I envisioned them growing legs and walking up on dry land to take any food we had on us (we didn't have any). They were like brightly colored sharks swarming around.

Chanticleer has an accompanying "ruin," specially built. It was the newest, spiffiest ruin I've ever seen. It was funny to see a ruin so carefully kept up--the decay was all on purpose. Honestly: a staff person at Chanticleer explained that some regulation prevented them from ruining the house already on the property, so they had to tear it entirely down and then build a new ruin from scratch.

Even the way out is beautiful: there is a large open field across the road from Chanticleer.