Olbrich Diary

"They're suddenly relaxing their springs. That's how they take exercise. They're leaping out of the grass like heavy drops of frying oil. They pose, like bronze paperweights, on large water lilies." – Jules Renard, "Frogs"








5/14


The many worlds of Olbrich Gardens like walking through a living breathing museum.  The trees, wonderfully, are not there to perform for you and me. If they are performers, they are oblivious, yet captivating, the greatest of authentic measures. We cheer to ourselves as we pass by and find the

rippling of the aspen leaves. An artist here has recently wrapped a series of trees near the frog pond in green and calls it nothing – it doesn't have to have a name – it is a wrapped tree. A shrill croak comes from the frog pond and turns the entire garden into its frogness, its sound. Suddenly it is a frog's  

auditorium and the nasal droning dominates even the car traffic outside of the grounds.  It rolls across the pond and onto the walking trails and finally drifts off at the Thai Pavilion. Maybe it dives into the placid rock pond there where the rocks now live to listen. The next world along the path offers itself without offering. Underneath the goliath ash tree, its wild branches sagging low then curling upward, we are certain they were made for our imagination.  Children giggle as they pass.  They know it is a grandmother telling secret stories to no one in particular.