Culture Denied – Thanks, Wilbur Ross!

Our friend Sarah recommended we visit the garden at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, promising we’d be astounded by what they did with such a small space. We planned to go there this morning, but ran into a problem – the parking lots were closed due to a member event this afternoon. The guard said we’d be able to visit the garden if we could find parking elsewhere, which we did…and the garden gates were open, so we strolled in and enjoyed the statues (and even a few flowers).

Pair of Putti (Artist Unknown)
Neptune (Ira Bruce Reines, 1991)
Apollo and Daphne (Gigi Supino, 1934)
Naja (Diana Guest, 1979)

The woman in the last photo was on her way to talk to us – she said we had to leave the garden because of “security for today’s speaker”, but she did say we could take the long way out, so we enjoyed a bit more of the art before leaving.

On our way out of the garden, my brother asked one of the workers who the speaker was – it was Wilbur Ross, former Secretary of Commerce (but not culture, obviously).

The sign at the top of this post amused me – I guess it’s directed at the members of the Society.

We had lunch at Toojay’s Deli in The Royal Poinciana Plaza, where they keep their books cold.

After lunch, we drove over to Manatee Lagoon, where manatees gather to take advantage of the warm water coming from the FPL power plant. There were plenty of manatees to see today, as well as a view of a few of the one-percenters’ yachts.

There are quite a few exhibits, both scientific and historical, as well as the manatees and other marine animals – it’s very interesting, and great PR for FPL.

We drove up to Juno Beach to TerMarsch Groves‘s store. I was hoping to taste their honeybell tangelos, but they’re not ready yet; I enjoyed their other citrus instead. We ordered 3 dozen honeybells to be delivered later in the month – there are times I miss living in South Florida!

On the way back to the apartment, we stopped at a pawn shop and an Aldi store (both at my sister-in-law’s suggestion, since I said I’d never been to either one). I left both places empty-handed. :-)

Making up for lost time

We lived in Palm Beach County (Delray Beach and Boca Raton) from 1976-1984 and spent a fair amount of time exploring the area. Some places we liked are gone (Blood’s Hammock Groves, Jerry’s Pizza, Palm Beach Mall, IBM Boca Raton, and many more), but today, we visited a park that was established after we left and a garden we would have liked if only we’d known about it when we lived here!

We started the morning with a 5-mile round trip walk along A1A into MacArthur Beach Park, which was opened to the public in 1987. We didn’t have time to walk into the rest of the park, but the section along the road was very pretty.

Instead of a typical restaurant meal, I went to Publix and picked up sushi for a light lunch in our AirBnB. I’ve had much tastier supermarket sushi, but it sufficed to get us ready for our afternoon trip to Mounts Botanical Garden.

Mounts was opened in 1978, and we frequently visited friends who lived fairly near there, but I’d never heard of it before today. They usually are closed on Monday, but they are hosting Buddhist monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery on their Sacred Arts Tour and today was the opening ceremony. The monks are making a sand mandala which they will finish on Saturday morning…and then they’ll destroy it, because material life is impermanent.

The gardens are wonderful; there are twenty-five named gardens (we didn’t see them all), focusing on different aspects of the plant world, from fruits to vegetables to medicinal plants to landscaping for South Florida and much more. The gardens also have sculpture, both semi-permanent (like the moai below) and temporary (like the frog below, part of Ribbit the Exhibit II).

We left Mounts and headed to North Palm Beach for dinner at The Catch, a Peruvian mostly-seafood restaurant with a beautiful deck on the water. It would have been very photogenic if we hadn’t been busy eating!

After dinner, we returned to Singer Island in time to enjoy sunset from Cliff and Michael Ann’s deck overlooking the Lake Worth Lagoon.