For the next few days, I will feature flowers I photographed at Sunken Gardens in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Posted for Cee’s Flower of the Day, 7/11/18.
Lincoln NE
CFFC: Lincoln’s Sunken Gardens
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge for this week is to take something from a photo she posts and use it as the topic of the participant’s post. Possible subjects for Week 1 Photo – Geometry, bushes, window, brick, curtain, green, tan, wall, building, dark red, tree.
On May 29, we visited Lincoln, Nebraska. One of the attractions in Lincoln is the Sunken Gardens. 
I love gardens so I had to see what that was! I used the following subjects from Cee’s Challenge: trees, dark red, tan, green, bricks, geometry, bush
In the winter of 1930-31, during the Great Depression, the city of Lincoln provided jobs for 200 family men. Some of them were put to work creating a terraced display garden at this spot. 
The Park Superintendent, Ernest M. Bair, declared in November 1930 that “the spot lends itself perfectly to the making of a sunken garden.”
Water lilies were to be displayed in the eastern rectangular pond,
while a cascading waterfall would spill into a circular pool.
Many changes have been made over time, but the garden remains in essentially the same configuration
and is tended with love and care.
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
Over the next few days, I will be posting flowers from the Sunken Gardens of Lincoln, Nebraska.
CWWPC: Not All Wanderers Are Lost
Cee’s weekly Which Way Photo Challenge is all about capturing the roads, walks, trails, rails, steps, signs, etc. we move from one place to another on. You can walk on them, climb them, drive them, ride on them, as long as the specific way is visible. Any angle of a bridge is acceptable as are any signs.
A preserved section of old Route 66 in southern Illinois, before it was paved over in cement and asphalt. This stretch is about 2 miles long through typical Midwestern countryside, flanked by farms and cornfields.
Entering Sedona, Arizona with its famous Bell Rock
In the middle of the street in Winslow, Arizona
Hiking trail winding its way down into Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Bridge across a river near St. Robert, Missouri
Stairway at Sunken Gardens, Lincoln, Nebraska
Back of a “Highway Hippy’s” truck seen in Springfield, Missouri. I took this picture for the bumper sticker that says “Not All Who Wander Are Lost.” That could be my mantra!
Capitol Series #1: Lincoln, Nebraska
May 29, 2018
On our recent road trip, going out to California, we chose our destinations. I had never been to Nebraska (the only state completely west of the Mississippi that I had never set foot in), so on our way west, we stopped in Lincoln and North Platte, Nebraska. (Yesterday I posted about Bailey Rail Yard in North Platte).
Lincoln, the capital, was the city in Nebraska I really wanted to visit. Having driven all day yesterday from Chicago, we stayed overnight in Omaha, then the next morning drove the 50 or so miles to Lincoln. Our first stop was the capitol building. 
I am including this post as my contribution this week to Norm’s Thursday Doors weekly challenge, because there are at least three doors among these photos!
There was some construction going on at the capitol building, so we could not enter via the front door. Instead, we were directed by signs to enter on the east side of the building admittedly not the prettiest doors!
Nebraska’s capitol reminded me somewhat of the capitol building in Bismarck, North Dakota, in that it was built in an art deco style. However, Nebraska’s capitol does have a dome at the top, which the North Dakota capitol did not.
In 1922, when the new capitol building was commissioned, the architect included two artists, sculptor Lee Lawrie and mosaicist Hildreth Meiere, on his design team in order to integrate art and architecture. Since these artists were from New York, they relied on a Nebraskan Professor of Philosophy Hartley Burr Alexander to develop a thematic program to guide their work. Alexander’s guidance can be seen throughout the building interior and exterior.
This interior door, my favorite, is decorated with a brightly colored Native American theme.
Meiere’s floor and ceiling mosaics representing the natural, social and political development of Nebraska were influenced by Alexander’s ideas.
Some of the mosaic murals were abstract… 
while others depicted pioneer life.
The rotunda floor had interlocking circles with Romanesque themes, surrounded by borders depicting various animals.
It was the day after Memorial Day, a popular time for school field trips.
This is the dome you see if you stand in the middle of the rotunda and look up. Can this possibly be the dome on top of the building? I don’t think so.
A chandelier shaped like Saturn
Ceiling above this chandelier
There are elevators available to go up to the Congressional offices and possibly,
get a look at the dome at the top. (The statue on top of the dome is called “The Sower,” a person casting the seeds of life to the winds. It was created by New York sculptor Lee Lawrie.)
Follow this hallway to enter the House of Representatives.
House of Representatives (We were not able to visit the Senate).
The ceilings in the hallway were beautiful works of art in themselves….
…and so were the floors.
A blocked door at the end of the hallway above
The Nebraska Hall of Fame took up two hallways, with busts of notable Nebraskans…
including Willa Cather (author), Mari Sandoz (novelist and historian), William Jennings Bryan (statesman), Standing Bear (Ponca chief), Hartley Burr Alexander (philosopher, professor), John Gneisenau Neihardt (Poet laureate), Gilbert M. Hitchcock (journalist), Alvin Saunders Johnson (humanitarian, educator), among others.
Oh, and not to forget the most famous of all, Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota warrior) and William Frederick Cody “Buffalo Bill” (soldier, showman of the West).
SONY DSC
Outside the capitol was the Lincoln monument. It is the only structure on the grounds that predates the construction of the capitol. At the 1912 dedication of this monument, William Jennings Bryan spoke to a crowd of thousands. The statue was sculpted by Daniel Chester French, commissioned in 1909. The bronze statue’s posture is one of reverence over a grave, representing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which is carved on a stele flanked with eagles.
I thought the state capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska was the most beautiful I have ever seen. However, on this trip, I was to see four more!
Wanderlust & Wonderment 