Every year at this time the wonderful Missouri Botanical Garden illuminates the grounds for an event called Garden Glow. It's been seen in these pages for years and never fails to delight. This is the view down the reflecting pool toward the Climatron, a geodesic dome that houses four different climate zones. All of it changes color as time passes.
Quiet, but there are hardly any people to make a sound. There is, however, a nice coffee shop that opens at eight o'clock and has a real Italian espresso machine.
Like so many little American towns, Maeystown's most thriving business is the bar and casual restaurant, Hank and Lillie's Creekside Inn. In a back corner, there are three slot machines, legal in bars in Illinois. The poster on the wall looks like a collage. The stone bridge is a local landmark. Stag beer is a cheap lager that used to be made in our Illinois suburbs, went out of business and then had the name acquired by another company. The gentleman on the right, well, enjoys his hops and barley.
One of the several nice things my colleagues gave me when I retired a couple of months ago was a gift certificate at a charming B&B in the tiny town of Mayestown, Illinois, 45 minutes southeast of our home. The place is called the Corner George Inn, https://www.cornergeorgeinn.com/. The reason it that the town was almost entirely German and there were so many Georges. or Georg, that each one acquired a nickname to distinguish him. Ours happened to live on the corner of the principal intersection (and they don't have many).
The town has not many more than 100 people. Few business survive, as illustrated above. The B&B, a bar/casual restaurant and a few cutsie gift/antique shops are all that remain.
The images at the van Gogh show change and shift. At times you can imagine that you are walking through a hallucinogenic version of the fields of Provence. But don't walk too far toward the horizon. You'll bump your nose.
