Sonnenberg Gardens

I lived in upstate New York for over a decade and never went to Sonnenberg Gardens until I visited this past summer. As you might expect from the name, Sonnenberg had some of this,

and a whole lotta this,

and it was all very lovely, but my favorite part was the Japanese garden, which offered up this little cliche.

I’m pretty sure the until that day I had never seen a lily pad in person, let alone a frog on a lily pad, and–as you’ve likely come to expect from these blogs–I became a little obsessed.

I even found another frog, only this one refused to be a stereotype.

Did I say the Japanese garden was my favorite part? Well, that was A Lie.

Because there were statues.

And not just any old statues–really creepy statues, some of which were falling apart. You couldn’t get more gothic, with the possible exception of gargoyles. Anyway, I removed the backgrounds and amplified the creepy in Photoshop. And here they are, in no particular order (though I personally think the last one is the scariest).