Yesterday my smallest child and I went to the Denver Botanic Gardens.

There is a huge exhibit there of enormous glass sculptures, created by the glass artist Dale Chihuly. He must be quite prolific, or have a small army of assistants, because these pieces are everywhere, in every crevice and corner of the Gardens.

The exhibit has been hugely popular; each day the parking lot is overflowing and the paths of the gardens like a parade. People love his work.

I don’t. I find his pieces to be intrusive and artificial, and, in some way, stand as metaphor to me that human beings somehow always believe they can “improve” on the natural world by inserting their creations into it. I know I won’t win any fans with this opinion, but I would much rather look at winter grasses native to Nebraska than a giant orange curlicue of neon and glass stretching its garish limbs into the blue sky.

But that’s just me. So infant child and I focused on other things. We saw bundles of multi-hued koi in the pond at the Japanese Garden:

And we did indeed look at some of those Nebraska grasses, which the child enjoyed touching and I just enjoyed:

We sat by the water for quite a while. It was serene; even all the people coming and going seemed to make their own waves of sound, sight, sound, sight. And we loved seeing the reflections off glistening water on this late autumn day:

Winter is coming, soon the giant glass baubles will be gone. I am looking forward to seeing winter trees empty of leaf silhouetted against a silent blue sky.