Re: OT-ART

Dear Friends:

Art, Russia and more.

Usually I prefer my iris in the ground rather on my walls or cluttering up my 
house, however, on a recent trip to Russia, via Finland I found myself 
rerouted due to a screw up at JFK resulting in a two hour layover at Charles 
DeGaulle in Paris. So I shopped, though didn't buy anything there..

In my explorations, however, I found in a duty free shop -- but did not buy 
-- a tin of "Pure Butter Chocolate Chip Short Bread" packed in an 
approximately 4" x 4" x 12 inch tin, with reusable lid, embossed with a 
beautiful blue iris. 

I had only a a small slip of paper in hand and an unstable writing surface, 
but I believe the website is www.churchills; tho clearly a Brit. company, 
there was also a partial USA address: Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33315.  There was 
also a round tin with roses. 

So for people partial to things like this, I think the tins would be worth 
the cost of the overpriced cookies. 

More enthusiastic and irresistible to me, however, was a 6" x  4.5"  metal 
framed reproduction of a stained glass panel originally in the 17th. c. Vihti 
Church, which I found in the gift shop at the National Museum of Finland 
priced at about 20. Euros. The flower here, is not defined, but must be a 
botanically incorrect iris. The flower is beautifully, painted, i. e. the 
color is on not in the glass. At the bottom there is representation of grass, 
from which arise one plant with leaves that look thicker than iris, more like 
aloe, and one stem with a flower which has by my account 11 petals. They also 
had a printed card of this flower, which cost one Euro. I liked it well 
enough to risk carrying a piece of glass to Russia and back and it arrived 
home safely.

I was also pleased to meet with Juri (pron. in Eng. "Yuri") Pirogov who we 
know from our list as a fellow Irisian. We saw his garden 40 miles out from 
Moscow on Saturday, 4/6 and he insisted that the most efficient lunch would 
be at McDonalds -- indistinguishable from the fine American Cuisine we suffer 
from here.  In revenge, I took him, his charming wife Natasha and teen age 
son Sasha to a real Russian restaurant in Moscow for Sunday lunch on 4/7 at 
Uncle Vanya's for a two hour feast and chat along with my traveling 
companions, Dave Matteson and Kathy McCall, neither of whom have the 
slightest interest in iris.

I took Juri 22 packages of seed courtesy SIGNA. He gave me 10 packets which I 
am forwarding to Signa and will provide many of you seed when divided into 
smaller allotments to be listed in this year's SIGNA list.

I wanted to put these names in Cyrillic but my computer would not cooperate 
with AOL.

I cannot commend too highly the price/value combination of our $599. JFK, via 
Helsinki to St. P., overnight sleeper train to Moscow and back via Helsinki, 
including all breakfasts. There were +/- $150. add ons for local tours, which 
I did in St. P. for efficiency in a new country for one linguistically 
impaired. I did study enough to get a functional use of the Cyrillic 
alphabet, which often reveals interesting messages, like "PepsiCola." In 
Moscow I went independent after the tour of the Kremlin and Red Square, and 
had no difficulty with the subway system. The hotels were modest but clean 
and quiet. The guides were well informed. e-mail: 
ravelnow@traveltorussia.com. The price goes up $100. per month till peak 
season and then down to the low price during the winter. I went prepared for 
bad weather, but was disappointed. No falling weather and the streets were 
dry except when being washed, punctuated with a brisk dramatic snow shower in 
Red Square on 4/5, which did not stick, while touring the GUM department 
store -- actually a beautiful art deco building much more beautiful than in 
American propaganda representations. Doubtless it was grim during Soviet days 
with few consumer goods. Now it is full of Western boutiques which have 
nothing I want. The fun shopping in Russia are their indigenous stores and 
the flee markets.

We planned a three day stop in Helsinki to recover from jet lag, which almost 
cost as much as the above package, but well worth it since we arrived in 
Petrograd rested. It is a small, clean efficient city, where almost everyone 
speaks better English than we do, and we enjoyed the National Art Gallery, 
the immensely fun Modern, and the National Historical Museum, plus exploring 
the streets and sampling Finnish food.


My first dwarf  iris greeted me among the tulips, daffodils, azaleas and 
dogwood on my return. Our season is at least a month ahead of Juri's, where 
we saw some primulas, iris leaves peeping above ground, and Natasha's healthy 
looking strawberries and rubarb about 2" tall. I wish I could have seen it in 
full bloom.

So much for Iris Art.

James Harrison
Asheville, NC

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