As temperatures rise and blossoms cycle through their hues, it would appear Tenn. has entered the Spring season. One way to enjoy it is to visit the Cheekwood Estate and Gardens.
Located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive in Nashville, Tenn. Cheekwood draws residents, members and travelers alike. With 55-acres of botanical gardens there is plenty of space for social distancing in accordance with safety protocols listed in their entirety on Cheekwood’s website.
“Cheekwood, in accordance with CDC guidance, recommends individuals stay 6′ apart and travel in groups no larger than 10. All visitors are required to wear cloth face coverings when entering buildings including the Historic Mansion & Museum, Botanic Hall, and the Frist Learning Center. Cloth face coverings are strongly recommended in outdoor areas except when maintaining a physical distance of at least 6’ from other visitors,” says https://cheekwood.org/knowbeforeyougo_covid19/
Cheekwood features year round activities. Arbor Day, on Apr. 30, 2021 can be celebrated with a walk and an arboretum map available online and from Visitor services.
“The Arboretum at Cheekwood includes well over 2,100 trees, curated to serve Cheekwood’s mission as a collecting institution and offer the community enjoyment and education. Cheekwood has documented 1,267 deciduous trees; 576 evergreens; 16 deciduous conifers; and 238 dogwoods,” says https://cheekwood.org/calendar/arbor-day/
“Our arboretum map, available online and from Visitor Services, presents at least 120 distinct species and cultivated varieties of trees to guide an exploration of the campus canopy.”
Their website blog even has tips for caring for Dogwood Trees, available at https://cheekwood.org/dogwood-tips/
Although Bloom Season for Cheekwood is officially Mar. 6 – Apr. 11, 2021 and National Gardening Day Apr. 14, 2021 there is still a great deal to see at Cheekwood in the lushness of warm months. The grounds are an excellent inspiration for the hobby gardener featuring different gardens every month. Summertime also promises seasonal festivities and beautiful scenes.
Tickets have the option to be purchased for just the grounds or to include the art museum located in the mansion of the historic Cheek estate. The building houses historically furnished rooms, paintings and permanent collection pieces.
“Originally built as the home of Leslie and Mabel Cheek in 1929, Cheekwood is one of the finest examples of an American Country Place Era estate,” says the Cheekwood website.
If planning a visit, it is best to reserve a time. Ticket and membership options are available through the museums website at https://cheekwood.org/buy-tickets/
After some googling and soul-searching, I decided to disable commenting on this blog. This decision has to do with a few thoughts I’ve had. One is I would rather focus on my craft of writing and learning small-time website design, than devote my limited time to sorting and approving comments. The next is most of the comments I received tended to be advertisements/bots/possibly shady snippets of software code, and not people wanting to have a real conversation or build some type of community. I was starting to worry a little too much about the shady category. I still am. Perhaps as I get better at this, I will start to add comments back in and talk about how to prevent code-insertion or identity issues in blogs.
However, there have been some impressive commentators who have graced this site with a quick line. Notably, a Donald Trump, who I’m pretty sure wasn’t that one, and a website for something to do with boobsigns, whatever that is (please, for your computers safety, don’t google it, I won’t be liable for whatever horror or virus results). I’m sorry to say I removed the temptation of cluttering up the comments with perplexing snippets of dubious sincerity. Though there were some comments where people didn’t seem to have a suggestion, and were just commenting to comment without saying very much. Some of these also made me wonder if those people had read my article, because the comment often seemed to not correspond to any of my content. I did sort of enjoy deleting those comments, along with what I’ll call ad-comments or mal-comments (based on adware and malware). However, I immensely appreciated all of the positive feedback and questions I received. Some of you seemed inspiringly interested in blogging. To those people, I am sorry to have cut the conversation short. I value criticism and have been especially learning to embrace it this year. I hope that the time I invest into helps to create articles and creative writing that makes up for my decision.
My problem of time limitations is partially to do with changes I’m making to do this better in the future. I’m currently taking a CSS, HTML, and XHTML class. It has been in addition to learning Javascript at home and at work, the latter of which I’ve also been spending more time at. I think I might be crazy, as it’s shapin up to be a pretty tight schedule, but somehow I know I can do it. I’ve definitely been enjoying happiness in a sort of flow state of all I’m working on.
Since you last heard from me, it’s been a pretty weird year. In May 2017, I had some health problems that took till November to resolve, and could have been cancer. Luckily, I do not have cancer, and all is back to normal in terms of body things. Yay! (Fuck cancer). Those months weren’t all bad, although other people close to me have also been sick with illnesses of their own. I went on some epic adventures and absorbed a bunch of art scenes. I’ve been getting back to performing on stage for bellydance and other styles. I’ve been doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu since January 2017. It has been amazing! It’s a lot more mental than I thought, as well as having a great community and being a great work out. It has made me more energetic and helped my dance considerably. In August 2017, I performed at a community festival, and another performance is in the works for February. In October, I left the North American continent for the first time to see Germany, Prague, and Italy. That was also my first real vacation since I started work at my current company. It was amazing! I’ve also been crafting somewhat regularly, but have mostly favored small projects. By August 2018, I hope to get to bigger, more involved projects like a French Court dress complete with panniers. Also, I’ve been pretty into film, catching up on a lot of American Film Institute favored movies, and cult pieces of the 1980s and 90s. I’ve seen a few friends quite a bit, and have enjoyed getting closer to them.
I hope to keep writing, and inspire you. If you would like to be a part of Honey It’s Thursday, feel free to comment your interest! I’ll be leaving the comments on here so you can contact me.