New York Chinese
\nScholar’s Garden<\/a>
\nat the Staten Island Botanical Garden. For everyone less familiar
\nwith New York City, Staten Island makes up a large portion of New York
\nCity, and is one of the five boroughs along with Manhattan, Queens, the
\nBronx, and Brooklyn. Staten Island is mostly surburban as opposed
\nto the other boroughs, featuring malls instead of skyscrapers.<\/p>\nHowever, the Chinese Scholars Garden, the first of its kind in the
\nUnited States, offered an escape from the trappings of city life:<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/garden_statues.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
OK, this first picture wasn’t from the Chinese Scholar Garden per se,
\nbut instead from a smaller garden within the botanical garden.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/garden_courtyard.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
This mosaic was made by a traditional Chinese scholar garden artist who
\nuses materials around him. The white parts were rice bowls he
\nbroke from the kitchen without asking and the green parts are Heineken
\nbottles.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/garden_mosaic.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
We continued to a blatant “secret” garden, which was closed.
\nSince we had paid for admission, we felt it acceptable to hop onto the
\nwall and sit for awhile. As the photographer, I do not appear in
\nthese photos.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/secret_garden_wall.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Afterwards Tucker impressively hopped onto a nearby and somewhat inaccessible tree:<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/garden_in_tree.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
We ended the day by watching King Arthur, which not unlike Lord of the
\nRings did not strike my fancy. I did manage to stay awake for
\nthis one, fighting hard at times. I did enjoy the show for what
\nit was, but I could not suspend disbelief long enough to really care
\nabout what was going on.<\/p>\n
Today at work during my lunch break a bird flew over and perched on my outside table in the rain:<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/bird_on_table.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
He rejected my offer of a small morsel of tomato (the red spot in the
\npicture), but violently grabbed Tucker’s offering of a little piece of
\nbread and cheese and flew away fast enough that he could be sure we
\ncouldn’t reconsider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday the fabled trip to Staten Island finally took place. We hopped on the red line subway and transferred to the Staten Island Ferry, a big free boat. Standing at the extreme front of the ship offered this view: I have now seen both Statues of Liberty. After the French donated the statue, they erected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xanga.nertzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/students.olin.edu\/ghutchins\/xanga\/staten_island_ferry.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Paris.seine.liberty.500pix.jpg\")
<\/p>\n