Botanical Gardens

Saturday, September 27, 2008 Posted In , , , Edit This 2 Comments »
Field Trip!

With Maggie off to her dad's house today, Gracy and I grabbed the neighbor and took her with us the botanical gardens for a field trip. It was the perfect day for it. The weather was not too hot, and not cool enough to need a sweatshirt. The sun was shinning part of the day, then lit up the cloud cover in the afternoon. And the best part - FREE! Family Day at the botanical gardens!

We went late enough in the afternoon that they had shut down the craft section and the food section, (in other words, Gracy slept until 11 and then we decided it would be less crowded toward the end of the day anyhow) but we still had a good 3 hours to wander the gardens. We had a great time and took a billion photos. It was hard to narrow down which ones to post!

We were amazed at this tree. It had these greenish-brown pods with bright orange berries just popping out of them. We were equally surprised to find out it was a type of magnolia. Bright and shiny, just like our little Magnolia. It's official name: Encore Loebner Magnolia.


I love this! If I get to plant a garden next year, I want to grow something (peas, beans, flowers, whatever) on a tee pee made of branches! I figure the victorian style is too complicated. But this! I can do cute, rustic, and whimsical! :)

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Along that same note, I told Gracy we should try to do this for the boarder of our next garden. How fun!



I love this picture. I had to stand on my tiptoes and reach the camera way up and over to get this flower. I couldn't even see what it looked like. I was happily surprised to see a ladybug resting on the flower!


Gracy and I were geeking out about how cool it would be to have this at home. They actually grew gourds up over our heads! We want to try this out someday.


While walking on the prairie trail we talked about how strange it must have been for the first settlers in our area to come through here in a covered wagon (Laura Ingles Wilder inspired, of course) without any roads.


I couldn't find a tag to tell me what kind of flower this was, but I want to make sure not to ever plant it. There were bees everywhere! Most of the flowers had multiple bees. Good for honey, I suppose...


I told the girls to lean on the door, cross their arms and look tough...Yeah...I don't think they know how to "look tough". I suppose that's a good thing...



This is a worm's view (on the ground looking up).


Oooooo! Pretty!


Oooooo! Prettier!


The girls couldn't resist snuggling up! And yes, they did try to pluck the strings on the violin.


Gracy said she wants "one of these" at home. "You know....viny things growing up all over and making it all dark and then whoosh...maybe we could build one." Maybe she's never seen her mom with a hammer...


This spot freaked me out. Notice the person in the lower right hand corner of the picture? See how tiny? How far away? When the girls first jumped up here I had a mini stroke thinking they'd fall off and die (no drama here, right?!). They, of course, laughed at me. The drop is about 18 inches. And then there's a steep hill.


True confession time here. I took this picture out of pure boredom. The girls stared out this window for 5 minutes (but it felt longer because there was nothing else to look at). I like how it turned out so thought I'd share it.


Gorgeous Gracy!


If Gracy were Rapunzel...


Why is it so hard to resist wooden cut out photo opportunities?! And why did I leave out most of the wooden cut out?!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sarah you took some awesome pictures. I love the ladybug one the most. Of course that is speaking of the flowers and plants. All the pictures of the girls are the BEST!!! Some of your pictures could be enlarged. Samantha is trying to get into artstreet next year for photos... some of yours could sell!
love you....Mom

Sarah said...

You can click on the pictures and they get bigger, if you want to see them all big and stuff...Yeah, Sam is an awesome photographer. She'd be great. I just happen to get lucky once in a while :)