Around Halloween a couple years back I went to something called The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at the Van Cortlandt Manor. I blogged about it. I guess it was a big moneymaker so they decided to have a summer version using a garden theme. They used recyclables and it’s lit predominantly by LEDs so it doesn’t use a great deal of electricity and isn’t too taxing on the environment. It was like a fairyland. I went with Cricket and I loved it. I imagine one might love it even more on LSD or peyote or ketamine, but that’s not how I roll so I enjoyed it unaffected by mind-altering substances.
At the entrance, there’s a blinking swirling rainbow arch.
And then you walk past a giant field of tulips made from old milk jugs. It was immense.
Followed by an explanation of how trash was used to make almost everything there.
There was a corridor of chest-high mushrooms:
A trail of ants, trees full of ladybugs:
And a grove of butterflies.
Butterflies was a big theme. This was a large butterfly made from bubble wrap.
There was a maze with projections of butterflies on the ceiling and Christmas lights with butterflies on them lining the route.
Some of the things I felt could be worked on for the future. Like this bug kinda all by himself in a corner looking all weird:
And this rabbit that looks substantially more like a viscacha than a lagomorph. Plus they were playing trippy Indian sitar music near it. What that has to do with this bunny, I do not know.
There was a caterpillar cave to walk through:
There was a turtle made from a jungle gym:
A ten-foot-tall mushroom that if I had tall enough ceilings I would want at my apartment:
And a kaleidoscope pattern being projected on a wall of a side building. I only took one picture, but it kept morphing, you know, how kaleidoscopes do.
But most would agree the piece-de-resistance (aside from the gigantor field of tulips) would be the praying mantis watching over everything. He guarded a variety of plants like lilies and what I think are dandelions.
As you near the end, you walk past the main house that had music playing. There were giant flowers on the house that changed colors and blinked in time with the music and vines that “grew”.
The whole thing was awesome and I highly recommend it. If you live in or around Westchester you should make an effort to go. And as with the Jack O’Lantern Blaze, my college classmate Jay Woods was in charge of lighting and once again he did a stellar job. Here’s the website: http://www.hudsonvalley.org/events/lightscapes