must-see.

I know I haven't done a Thousand Words Thursday in a long time, and I apologize. The reason for this drought is simply that I ran out of good pictures. I have lots of pictures that are kind of similar to the ones I've already posted, and I have lots of pictures of people that I know but you might not care about. So I can't really post those. I've decided to make up for the dearth of photography posts by giving you a really good one today. Well, it's a good one if you like dinosaurs and whales and giant flowers, and everybody's got to like at least one of those things, right?

A dude at work told me that there was a sculpture garden in Lewisville that was a must-see. Despite his glowing review, I did not see the must-see for a long time. It was on the list in the back of my mind, along with replacing the tire on my unicycle, learning to sing, and taking pictures for my blog. But then it turned out that I was leaving Lewisville, so while singing and my unicycle tire remain flat, the sculpture garden visit took a new priority.

The sculpture garden appeals to me for a couple of reasons. For one, it's in the middle of nowhere, with no advertisements or signs showing where it would be. It's the kind of thing you just have to know about or stumble upon. Secondly, it's freakin' awesome.

You drive down this road, then take another road, and BAM! It's on the left. You are greeted by a pair of dinosaur skeletons, a giant grasshopper, man-sized daffodils, a tiki hut next to a pond surrounded by shorebirds and containing a whale. Since a lot of the things seem to have nothing to do with each other, it's kind of like a sculptor's resume, where he just shows everything he can do, be it an egret or an overfed daisy.

The pond. Across the way, you can see a dinosaur and a big grasshopper.

It's hard to get a picture that kind of captures the whole experience, so here are some close-ups of the highlights. There were two dinosaur skeletons, a generic T-Rex type and a generic Brontosaurus type, which was covered in vines. Right in the shadow of the carnivore, a grasshopper that looked like it could have had a B-movie career.

Ones like these used to plague Kansas all the time. Behind, a Brontosaurus who wears plants rather than eats them.

The whale was kind of a masterpiece in itself. There was a pump system inside it, and so water would shoot out of its blowhole. Periodically, the whale would dive down into the water to collect more water to shoot out.

The whale goes up...

and the whale comes down!

But I have to confess that most of my admiration and my camera's memory card went to the mermaid. Careful, she's naked, so this might not be safe for work.

The mermaid and um, a really big flower.

She's just kinda hanging out by the pond, checking out the whale, holding some little flowers, enjoying the shade of a mammoth ten-foot daffodil. I wish her face had a better expression rather than what looks like mermaid constipation (an issue which raises a lot of questions about merperson digestion), but I can hardly complain.

She looks better from the side.

There's a driveway to places unknown separating the pond from the dinosaurs/grasshopper. As I was walking around snapping pictures, a big white pickup pulled into the driveway and continued on up. The man driving waved, as if he was used to a.) having a ridiculous metal menagerie and b.) having strangers stop to look at it. I suppose he is.