Feeling a little guilty to miss the big snowstorm in nyc. I got a call last night that Theo,who has gone crazy at last, was walking in the park with a foot of snow, which sounded pretty good to me. Here, of course, it is wet, but not with snow.

We went to a swedish fair, which was full of swedes eating boiled hot dogs. We met some big shot swedes, like the Consul, who was introduced as the Queen of Sweden, which she might as well have been for the local swedes. There were many swedish knicknacks for sale, none of which I wanted. Everyone was drinking glug, which is hot mulled wine with raisins in it and many of the ladies were wearing dnrindles.

Later we went to the conservatory, where my honey has a friend who is a docent. I like plants, but there wasn't much to see. Someone spent about a billion dollars redoing all the glass and redwood in the original, historically accurate style from when the 1890s conservatory was smashed in a storm. So the building looks great. And there were some very realistic fake trees for the orchids to grow on. But the whole place is only about four hot houses, which you can walk through in about half an hour. Having just gotten a docent's tour in the Bronx Botanical Garden a year ago, there were about 15 green houses and much more variation.

But what they had was nice, mostly bromelids. There was a coconut that looked like a monkey's ass. And some vampire orchids that I was told are very rare. But a lot of things weren't working, like the butterfly chamber didn't have butterflies, because they all died for some reason, and the glass walkway across the lilly pond cracked when installed so they had to remove it, and the plants that were supposed to be sprinklers sprayed people so they had to be shut, and the glass sided water pool was a little algaed up, since the coy hadn't yet been put in. But all that said, it is always nice to be in a steamy greenhouse full of plants and today was no exception.