Tag Archives: Krohn Conservatory

Solstice Glow at Krohn

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I admitted attending Krohn Conservatory‘s holiday display last year partly because of the word “yule” in the name “Golden Days of Yule”. I’m back again this year largely because of the name. It was almost unavoidable since “Solstice Glow” was near the top of the list of hits in my annual search for solstice-related events. I went on Wednesday when temperatures were in the 20s and an overnight dusting of snow left no doubt that winter was here and made the warmth inside the giant greenhouse much appreciated.

The giant poinsettia tree that has become a regular winter feature at Krohn is once again front and center near the entrance. The tree appeared, as planned, on December 6 more than a month after the November 2 opening of “Solstice Glow” and is scheduled to remain two days beyond the January 5 closing. I intentionally delayed my visit to not miss the tree.

At the heart of Kron’s holiday show are the models of area landmarks made from natural materials. A new model is constructed each year to be added to the display. This year that new model is of the CVG Airport complete with airplanes and a pair of abbreviated runways.

Last year’s addition was the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The year before that, the eight-foot-long Music Hall was added and Findlay Market was new in 2021.

Bridges and railroads have played an important role in Cincinnati’s history and the Krohn holiday display recognizes both with model trains traveling over replicas of automobile bridges. Of course, the 1866 Roebling Bridge predates automobiles but that is its role today. The Daniel Carter Beard Bridge opened in 1976 but is partially closed today due to a November 1 fire over which arson charges have been filed.

All of those model buildings, bridges, and trains are the work of Applied Imagination of Alexandria, KY. Today the company is responsible for similar displays in many cities but started the whole concept here at Krohn in 1991. In 2012, station KET created a video profile of this remarkable company which can be accessed from the company website or directly here.

I have made much of my attendance at this event being prompted by the words “yule” and “solstice” in its name. I came dangerously close to making way too much of that and making a big mistake. I’m guessing we have all seen click-bait, stir-the-pot posts of the form “X is really upset by Y” with little or no evidence that X is even aware of Y, let alone upset by it. When Krohn Conservatory announced the title of this year’s winter event, I thought I saw some posts bemoaning the presence of the word “solstice” and the absence of the word “Christmas”. I even thought addressing that would be a major part of this post. Fortunately, I took another look.

As one commenter observed, there were “…more people complaining about people  complaining than actual people complaining.” In all honesty, I found no one complaining. Just some people defending something that was not attacked. I believe what I initially took as a complaint about the name was intended as a many-year belated complaint about a pricing change. I guess that I, like several news sources, had somehow decided this was the Krohn Conservatory Christmas display. It is possible that once upon a time, that was its official name, but of all the online references using the word Christmas that I found, not one came from the conservatory. 

I believe the official titles of Krohn Conservatory’s holiday displays over the last dozen years were: 
2024 – Solstice Glow
2023 – Golden Days of Yule
2022 – Celestial Holiday
2021 – Trains and Traditions
2020 – A Very Merry Garden Holiday
2019 – A Zinzinnati Holiday
2018 – A Crystal Holiday
2017 – Cincinnati Choo Choo
2016 – Whimsical Wonderland
2015 – The Poinsettia Express
2014 – Magic and Mistletoe
2013 – A Cincinnati Scenic Railway

Yippee-Ki-Yule, Y’all

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On Thursday, I got a double dose of holiday hoopla. The first dose was administered at Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati’s Eden Park. The second came at Thomas More Stadium in Florence, KY.

This year’s holiday show at Krohn is called “Golden Days of Yule”. That name, coupled with my improved understanding of Yule (the subject of next week’s post), was one reason I wanted to visit Krohn this month. Another was that I realized it had been ten years since I’d seen the holiday display at the conservatory. All of my visits since 2013 were to see butterflies.

“Golden Days of Yule”, like previous holiday shows at Krohn, has lots of Cincinnati landmarks such as Music Hall in the opening photograph. All are made of locally sourced plant material and most return year after year. New this year is the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center pictured at left.

Numerous model trains travel among the landmarks and the conservatory’s normal display of plants. Even though no train has ever crossed the real John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, this version has a double set of tracks so that a train with a Cincinnati Reds boxcar can cross it in both directions.

Other returning favorites include Union Terminal, now the Cincinnati Museum Center, and Findlay Market, which is encircled by Thomas the Train. Procter & Gamble’s Twin Towers and the Tyler Davidson Fountain, featuring The Genius of Water, appear together in the third photo although the relationship between the two is nowhere near accurate in either size or location.

It somehow makes sense that the Krohn Conservatory contains a model of the Krohn Conservatory and there might be nothing more natural for a conservatory to hold at Christmas time than a giant poinsettia tree. “Golden Days of Yule” runs through January 7 with live music on weekends.

Thomas More Stadium, on the other side of the Ohio River, is home to the Florence Y’alls Class A baseball team. Winters here are way too cold for baseball so, for the second year in a row, a skating rink and 2.5 million lights have been moved in for Deck the Y’alls.

There are lights everywhere both inside and outside the stadium. They are impressive to look at from just about anywhere but following a path through the displays at field level is the main attraction.

A family of four was near me during the early part of my walk and the youngest child asked her mother to read the lighted signs that marked each section. As soon as she heard “Dinoland”, she announced that she was not going in there. I’ve a hunch that it was what she saw and not what she heard that prompted her reluctance. The family hung back at the arch but after a few minutes, I saw them move ahead slowly. Before long they were back at their normal pace. Up close, dinosaurs made of electric lights just aren’t that scary, it seems.

And “Ornament Land” just wasn’t scary at all.

Apparently, neither was “Under the Sea” although I lost track of the family somewhere around The Blue Whale of Florence.

Here’s a sampling of the “12 Days of Christmas”. In reality, this whole post is just a sampling.  There’s a lot more here than what I’ve shown.

This is the exit. I hung back to take some pictures — and watch and learn from the people in front of me —  then passed through the maze and headed for a cup of hot coffee.

As I sipped that coffee, I captured a short overview video. Deck the Y’alls runs through New Year’s Day with fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
 
  

For anyone wondering about the team name, it comes from a water tower. The short story is that while Florence Mall was in development, a water tower advertising it was erected nearby. Because the mall did not yet actually exist, that led to some legal issues which were resolved by hastily converting the “M” to “Y'”. This was supposed to be temporary but proved so popular that it remains today even though the mall has now been in operation for decades. A fuller version of the story is here. The team was founded as the Florence Freedom in 2004 but changed its name to Y’alls in 2020.

Getting Springy in Cincy

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When spring arrived on Sunday morning, the only item on my calendar for Monday had nothing to do with the season. That quickly changed and I went to bed with a full day planned for the first full (i.e., 24 hour) day of spring. The annual butterfly show at Krohn Conservatory had just opened on Friday and I was happy to see that plenty of tickets remained for Monday. I grabbed one for the time slot with the most remaining which happened to be noon.

The Egyptian-styled columns near the entrance hint at this year’s “Butterflies of the Nile” theme. Last year I was the first of my group to enter the Butterfly Showroom so was able to snap a picture of the room with only plants, butterflies, and a single attendant. I wasn’t that lucky this year. Not only were there more people in the room when I entered but there would also be more throughout my time there. Attendance is limited to 100 per hour this year compared to 40 per hour in 2021.

As in previous years, I made no attempt to identify the butterflies but merely photographed them.

Unlike previous years, I did not see lots of sugar water dispensers. There has always been fresh fruit available to hungry flitterers but it seems to really be emphasized this year. Maybe that will help the butterflies keep their weight down as the show goes on.

Everyone is given a scratch and sniff card for use in attracting butterflies but clearly, not everyone needs it. This year I was one of those and had a hitchhiker for more than half of my time there. Several people mentioned it to keep the fellow from being prematurely flattened but a young girl was the first. I think that might be her hand slipping the card under the fence. It was her mother who took the picture of my passenger and I think I only stuttered slightly as I asked.

My next stop was in Ault Park to check on the cherry trees. Butterflies at Krohn have been a sign of spring only since 1996. Cherry blossoms at Ault go back to the 1930s when 1,000 Japanese weeping cherry trees were given to the city and planted in the park. In 2008, these were augmented by 121 Somei Yoshino trees.

Not all of the trees were in bloom on Monday but enough were to make my visit more than worthwhile. Plus, it’s quite obvious that more blooms are on the way.

The trees full of white and pink blossoms are certainly beautiful in their own right but they can sometimes be used as a backdrop for something even more beautiful.

 

The day’s third stop, and the item that was on the calendar first, was at Playhouse in the Park. The theater is in the middle of a $50 million expansion that includes a new main stage. Monday’s event was one of several aimed at raising the last million of the fifty. I’m not a big donor or even a season ticket holder but do usually attend one or two performances each year and am on some mailing list somewhere. I enjoyed getting the update and look forward to the opening of the new theater which is planned for March 2023.

Butterflies of Bali

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Like pretty much everything else, the annual butterfly show at Cincinnati’s Krohn Conservatory took a break in 2020. The show started in 1996, and for the first couple of years was called simply The Butterfly Show. Recent shows have featured butterflies from a specific country or region. The 2019 show, with a blog entry here, featured Butterflies of Ecuador. Nothing was featured in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The show has returned in 2021 with the Butterflies of Bali.

The pandemic is not, by any means, over. Vaccines have greatly reduced the rate of new cases in the United States and led to events like the butterfly show being allowed but things are hardly back to normal. Attendance is through time-stamped tickets which are limited to forty per hour. The Butterfly Showroom is completely cleared between groups. I happened to be the first of my group which gave me a chance to capture an essentially empty show area.

The showroom was decorated with items that I assume were Bali-inspired including a pair of rather trim-looking Buddhas. In verifying that these slender fellows were indeed Buddhas, I discovered that Bali is more than 85% Hindu and less than 1% Buddhist. I guess there were no Vishnu statues in the prop room.

The brochure I was given at the show contains names and photos of the various species in the exhibit but I did not try to identify them when I took these photos and my willful ignorance continues with this posting.

My ignorance extends to all of the flora pictured with the fauna and I don’t even have a brochure to aid in guessing. 

To support all of the flitting they do, the butterflies are provided with a number of free nectar buffets placed throughout the showroom.

Despite every timeslot being sold out, there were never anywhere near forty people in the showroom while I was there. Thirty to forty-five minutes seemed to be the typical amount of time spent in the showroom, and attendees somehow staggered their arrival and departure so that no more than twenty to twenty-five people were present at one time. 

I headed out after about forty-five minutes. The exit path passes right by the Butterfly Nursery. Butterflies come from neither eggs nor storks but from cocoons spun by caterpillars that are sometimes as colorful as the butterflies they become and sometimes not attractive in the least. The show runs through September 6 so there is plenty of times for these little guys to shed their cocoons and become part of the big show. 

Butterflies at Krohn Conservatory

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I’ve been meaning to stop by Krohn Conservatory to see “Butterflies of Ecuador” ever since it opened in March. I know I’ve missed much better opportunities than a crowded Friday afternoon but those opportunities aren’t going to come again. The exhibit ends June 16 and I’ll be out of town or otherwise engaged between now and then. It really was kind of now or never. Even though it was not the best time to photograph the colorful butterflies, it was a good time to see lots of people, including many of elementary school age, enjoy watching them.

I took the people picture shortly after I arrived. The crowd seemed to slowly but steadily grow from there. Visitors were provided with scratch-and-sniff (vanilla) landing pads as an aid to getting the butterflies to park where they could be studied although it was an assist not needed by everyone and not always successful.

Bright bowls, fabric, and imitation fruit were placed around the area to spice up the background. I overheard one of the attendants telling someone who asked that the colored liquid that was much better at attracting the butterflies than the scented cardboard was Gator-Ade.

I made no attempt to identify the butterflies I saw but just enjoyed watching them flit around, take long pauses on the various plants, and refuel at the Gator-Ade dispensers. Now and then, between flits and sips and the bodies of other watchers, I snapped a photo.

Ten and Twenty Years in Cincinnati

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asm10bd2This coming Tuesday, April 28, marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of the American Sign Museum. Ten events are planned to celebrate the ten years of success and growth. First up was a birthday party, complete with cake and balloons, last Sunday. Others include special hours and gifts in conjunction with this year’s Major League Baseball All Star Game which will take place in Cincinnati and a gathering of an elite group of sign painters known as The Letterheads for their fortieth anniversary.

asm10bd3asm10bd4The Texas Weiners sign is a recent addition to the museum. Most signs like this have rusted away but this one survives because the flashing sign did not meet local codes and its owner was not permitted to install it. There’s a more complete version of the story here. I know I’ve posted several pictures of “Main Street” but there’s always room for one more and this one includes museum founder Tod Swormstedt taking a break in the chair at the far right.

My Oddment page on the museum’s 2005 opening is here and other blog posts on visits to the museum are here.

kcbp2kcbp1Krohn Conservatory has been around since 1933 but 2015 marks its twentieth butterfly show. This year Butterflys of the Philippines are featured. I actually set out to attend the show on its first day, April 3, and drove by the conservatory about half an hour after opening time. All parking spots were filled and there were a couple of school buses in the mix. Drive by was all I did. The building was hardly empty when I did stop on Monday but it was not overly crowded and there were no lines. The winding marked path and large tents indicated that long lines were fairly common and an attendant confirmed that lines were the norm on weekends.

kcbp3kcbp4kcbp5I’m not much of a butterfly expert but, with the aid of labeled photos viewable at the conservatory, I can say with some hope of being correct that these are pictures of a Julia Butterfly, a Zebra Longwing, and an Owl Butterfly.