Impressionist Art Colony - Exploring!

When we were in New England this November we went to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut. 

 Outside the museum was this - structure - which beckoned us over before we even entered the museum.  It begged us to explore and play.  This is my son looking at it.  Here's a little video -

It was built by a man named Patrick Dougherty, who travels worldwide building these artistic structures from the materials at hand.  It really was remarkable, and overlooked pretty much the whole of the museum property, and the unbelievably beautiful and fast-moving Lieutenant River.

 When we first came into the museum parking lot, there was a from what I understand rare and very beautiful crab apple tree. We took full advantage of it and Noah and I had a dandy crabapple fight. :)  Here's the tree:

 

It was so beautiful.  And the day was perfect, too - can you imagine Connecticut the week before Thanksgiving in the 50s and sunny?!  Great traveling for us thin-blooded Texans!  The pic below shows me with the last of my ammunition.  (of course, a squished one turned up in my hair later, so I guess Noah won!)

You can see the Lieutenant River in the background.  One of the things that made this place special is the fact that Childe Hassam resided there for some time.  His Impressionist art influenced the other artists, as you can see if you check out their works.

Below is the entrance to the museum, uh, as you can see it says 'Museum Entrance...' and, Yours Truly in paint jeans.  Oh, yeah... how could I forget?  ALL of my jeans are paint jeans! 

Below is a picture of the museum building.  Can you believe I somehow didn't get a shot of the house?  Oh, brother!  I know why - they maintain a garden between museum and house that was beautiful even in its dormancy.  Because I'm a gardener, it distracted me!  To this day, they maintain the gardens in the same way that they were maintained in its artistic heyday, same plants, same layout.  It was pretty easy to figure that out just by looking at the artists' paintings!

As I said before, the foilage was really breathtaking.

 My last shot for you is one of my favorites - my son facing the Lieutenant River in an Adirondack chair. Great way to end our museum tour.