So, I didn’t run away, I flew away and spent some time at a place I knew nothing about, a place ensconced in the neighborhood where my mother now lives, Flushing, Queens: The Voelker Orth Museum, is also a bird sanctuary and Victorian Garden.

From the website:

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From Immigrant Home to Neighborhood Museum

10th Anniversary Exhibition
August 24 – November 24, 2013
Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, 1-4pm

From Immigrant Home to Neighborhood Museum takes a look at the transformation of the property from the late 19th century through the restoration of the house and opening of the Voelker Orth Museum. It offers the story of the how and the why it is a museum today.

Once part of the Parsons’ family estate lands, the house was built in 1881 as the new Murray Hill suburb developed with the arrival of the Long Island Rail Road. Through photographs, documents and materials we look back at a piece of Flushing, NY history and a family’s story, offering fresh air and a comfortable life-style to New York’s expanded middle-class.

The exhibition provides a behind-the-scenes look at the restoration of the property in the late 1990s when the Museum was in formation.

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(internet photo)

This delightful home and gardens replete with bee-keeping and honey production was saved from the shambles of neglect and vandalism and is now a landmark.

My visit included a lecture on the honey production and bee-keeping; it was the most delicious honey I have ever tasted, and a house and garden tour.

Bees …

Bees on the hive

Urte Scheadle, bee keeper

Urte Scheadle holds the form onto which the bees create the hive

Scraping off the wax

scraping off the wax coating

types of bees

the scraped hive is readied for the extractor

putting the comb into the extractor

pouring the extracted honey

pouring the extracted honey

pouring the extracted honey

pouring the extracted honey, straining the wax

enough honey to fill the bear

honey on crackers

 

Garden …

 

 

Beautiful faces

garden

grapes

pointing to the sky

babbling pond

koi

 

House … just a few photographs of the interior. The lovely photos of one of the bedrooms display the  hand-stenciled furniture. (The two photos are from the internet)

The young lady who lived here is a girl after my own heart: she loved cats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

original wallpapers were replicated in England

reconstucted oak furniture

just like the original phone

the dining room

This was a wonderful way to lose oneself in another time and place. Voelker Orth Museum offers classes in bee-keeping. The premises can be rented for events (great place for a wedding), and Shakespearean plays are performed in the summer. I am looking forward to the Oktoberfest. Nothing like a beer, brats, and bees.