Day 10.237: Viles Arboretum

After a rainy evening curtailed our anniversary outing yesterday, we were pleased to have a dry sunny day to end the holiday weekend. We had a lovely visit to Viles Arboretum in Augusta where we saw trees and other plants and sculpture and even a few animals. It looked something like this:

Some of the other plants we saw included an apple tree called "Canadian Strawberry", some lovely berries and a lot of hostas. We also discovered that most American Chestnuts were wiped out in Maine during the first half of the 20th century by a fungal disease. The arboretum has a small plantation trying to recover the situation a bit. We also found out that the seed pods are known as urchins.

We also saw a monarch (and some other butterflies), a painted turtle, a broad-winged hawk and - spotted by the ever eagle-eyed Exile #4 - a praying mantis (probably a Carolina mantis). The owl was a sculpture - but sneaked into my animal collage!