If you've never been, you really owe it to yourself to go and check it out. I'm not the world's biggest "plant guy" and I can (frankly) "take it or leave it" when it comes to nature (too many bugs). But Leah is very outdoors-y and as such...so am I now. That said, the Missouri Botanical Gardens is cool enough that even if she didn't want to go--I would. It's that impressive. There is a lot of walking (the place is huge) but if you pace yourself, and it's not too hot (and you bring water), it makes for a great day.
The first place we went was the giant geodesic dome conservatory (called the "Climatron"). It was actually cooler inside than outside today, which is funny because it's basically a "hot house." I love the look of the building:
Inside there are several waterfalls and some really pretty, exotic plants and trees.
My favorite plant inside the greenhouse is this strange tree called the Jaboticaba. It's a tree from Southern Brazil. What makes it so interesting is it's fruit, which look like fat grapes. Interestingly, however, the fruit appears stuck against the bark of the tree. Almost like they were glued there (it looks really bizarre):
After that, we trekked through the park to the Asian gardens. The main reason we went was to feed the giant Koi. These Koi are huge, fat monsters. They have feed you can buy in the park, but me and Leah had two bags of fish food I bought last summer at Lake Jacomo. Before we got to the Koi pond, though, we saw the hedge maze (which I think is really cool):
I was able to take those two pictures above from the top of this lighthouse-looking tower. It offered a really good vantage point over the maze. A really evil person could spend hours laughing at people who were lost in the maze:
There were a lot of people there today looking at the Irises, which I guess are in bloom right now. They seemed a little brown to me, but were still beautiful:
Then we hit the Asian garden (and the Koi pond):
As you can see, these fish are giant creatures. I really wouldn't want to fall in there when they get their "feed on":
After using up a whole bag of food, we decided it was about time to go. We headed back to the car. Overall we spent about 2 hours there...and we didn't see half of everything out there. But it was hot, and I had to get back to the dorms (I have a final tonight at 7:45) so I can finish packing up.
On the way out, we passed these statues that look like real sheep. I freaked out because these people had their kids sitting on them. Once we got closer, and I saw they were just concrete...I had Leah take my picture on the one of them. The kid's reaction cracks me up, he couldn't believe a grown man was going to sit down next to him on the sheep. Hey kid, I'm lame enough to do anything for a funny picture:
Clearly a good time was had by all. Like I said, if you've never been...GO! It's fantastic.
EDIT: For Leah--
4 comments:
The fish aren't so beautiful at Longview Lake, but my girls & I used to visit the marina there on Sunday mornings after church. We'd feed them our leftover doughnuts and that would start a frenzy among the carp--some of which must have weighed 50+ pounds!
Me and Leah have been talking...and we feel--that if the world ever ends, all we're going to do for food is head for this pond and live like kings.
It's amazing how greedy fish that FAT can be. I mean come on! You're huge!!! You don't have to eat ALL the kibble.
Doghnuts, huh? Have to try that sometime...
I'm sure you could hide somewhere on the grounds, and come back after dark with a fishing line, and grab a bunch of the koi without anyone noticing.
And evidently, Jaboticaba fruit is edible. http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/jaboticaba.html
Have you ever tried high-dynamic-range photography? You take a bunch of shots of the same thing, with various exposure settings, and then use the computer to smoosh them all together, so that the bright areas use the info from the dark pictures, and the dark areas use the brighter picture's info. It can wind up looking amazing. http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/
Cool. I really wanted to just reach out and pluck one off the tree. Leah says she talked to someone about it...and they said they taste just like grapes (which makes sense because that's what they look like).
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