Friday, March 26, 2010
"The Pleasure of Beauty"
9:48pm
 Casper Bendel (master 1585; d. 1599), German (Breslau), last quarter of the 16th century Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 MMA 17.190.600 |
The info card further explains "Breslau, renamed Wroclaw, is now in Poland. The figure of Hercules is the work of Bendel; the shell and its mounts are nineteenth-century replacements."
Sunday, March 28, 2010
"Fragrant Mystery Solved"
8:49pm
But I was especially curious about the source of the fragrance:
This photo is from last year's March park walk...
I thought it was a mesquite tree, and went to the web to confirm my suspicions. I grew rather mad at the web, because I couldn't find photos of this sort of bloom. Finally, one website aided me. "Mesquites, a leguminous (bean-pod-bearing) tree, are relatives of the Acacias..." The link led to a more promising page. I went to Wikipedia, where a photo of exact match led to "Acacia farnesiana is used in the perfume industry due to its strong fragrance."
I checked the web further, and sure enough, every image of "Acacia farnesiana" (aka "Sweet Acacia") matched our park trees!
