You can't guess the message from Longwood Gardens (near Philadelphia) this week. Here it is:
Gardens Closed
As the search for the escaped prisoner from Chester County Prison continues, our Gardens are closed until further notice. We apologize for the inconvenience but know the health and safety of our Guests and Staff are our top priority.
This has been ongoing for a week. Longwood is North America's largest tourist destination garden. How big is Longwood? It is 1083 acres. That's a lot of room to hide in. They have been searching for him for 9 days. He is Danwela Souza Cavalcante, a 34-year-old from Brazil who was convicted of murder. The break-out wasn't detected for an hour and he seems to be elusive even though there are 8 sightings so far.
"Sources tell Action News the flurry of activity was in response to the discovery of an image of Cavalcante captured on a trail camera on Longwood Gardens property. That image was captured Wednesday evening but was not viewed until Thursday afternoon by law enforcement sifting through hundreds of captured images from trail cameras throughout the perimeter."
This has national coverage in the U.S. and the latest update is just 2 hours ago. It seems to me that we have an eerie fascination with prison escapes. The Wikipedia entry starts in the 13th century with a Tower of London escape. Perhaps that escape was famous because the escapee was too heavy for the rope. It broke and he fell to his death.
Our escape is the second last entry. Noted is that he crab walked up to the roof of the building.
There's a more recent entry - September 2023 when a prisoner escaped from Wandsworth Prison in London, "apparently by strapping himself to the underside of a vehicle."
And our fascination? How creative the escape methods are.
This is an historic train station in Virginia, found on the trip to the Lily Show with Brian. The doors are marked "colored" and "white." They were separated waiting rooms. I find out that William du Post purchased the Montpelier Estate in 1901 and had the train depot built to bring supplies and transport him to Wilmington, Delaware, weekly.
The pictures from last week's Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL) garden tour have made it to the computer. The disk reader had stopped working and now there's a new one that seems like magic it is so small.
Last week's highlight was 210 John Street. This was part of the Randwood Estate owned by Trisha Romance. The history of Randwood is HERE. I don't know the history of severing this house from the Rand property, but it now is separately owned by Barbara McArthur. She was on hand with information and stories about the house and gardens.
This is a large historical property with lots to experience - the house, gardens, even the stables were preserved. There were tree experts who take care of the trees on the property - and they pointed out the interesting native specimens.
I found a large historic account of the Town of Niagara HERE. It is written by Joseph E. Masters who lived in the late 1800's and died in 1955. So far, I haven't found an account of this house and its origins.
