Cheekwood Garden and Art Center

The most important news of the day is that jury duty is over.  Gene had to be back at the courthouse at 8:30 this morning.  We got up and scurried around and were on the road a couple minutes before 7 AM.  I went along today to drop him off downtown and then spend the day with my mother.

Gene was never selected for a jury.  He was picked today, like yesterday, to be interviewed, and sat around in the courtroom for most of the day, but in the end was dismissed.  He had done his duty and we are now free to carry on with our lives.  Sure glad that’s over.

Cheek mansion

I got over to my folks’ about 9 AM after dropping him off.  Mother had a day planned for us.  She wanted to go over to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art to view the tulips.

Dogwood

Eskimo Viburnum

Cheekwood, the estate of the Cheek family, is located on a hillside in West Nashville adjacent to Percy Warner Park.  Christopher Cheek started out in the grocery business when he and his family first moved to the Nashville area in the late 1800s.  Along about that time a cousin developed a blend of coffee which was served at the Maxwell House Hotel in downtown Nashville.  Eventually, what is now General Foods bought the Maxwell House coffee company.  With that money the Cheeks purchased the land and built the mansion that would be called Cheekwood.  Cheeks lived in the mansion from 1932 until the 1950s.  It was then given to the city for development as a Botanical Garden and Art Center.

That red thing is made from recycled materials.  Up close, it looks like
a patchwork quilt of various red fabrics.

The mansion houses a small permanent art collection and secures traveling exhibits from time to time.  The grounds are beautifully manicured and each season is different depending on what’s blooming.  There is a very small Japanese Garden which we walked through today.  There are also other small gardens--herb garden, water garden, rose garden, and others depending on the season.

Mother tires easily, so we concentrated on the tulips today.  Of course, we couldn’t miss the dogwood which are in full bloom right now.  After our walk around, we had us a cup of coffee in the Pineapple Room and fingered the merchandise in the gift shop.  By the time we got all that done it was well past our lunch time and Mother was pretty pooped out.

Gene called for his pick up just as I was finishing my late lunch.  By some miracle, I got back downtown to grab Gene and got back out again before the worst of the afternoon traffic set in.  On the way home we stopped to get gas, stopped to pick up a few groceries, and stopped to pick up some Whitt’s BBQ to feed to my friends, Mike and Peggy.  We had a very long day and now we’re both pooped, as well.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.