Fort Worth Botanic Gardens

I spent a lovely day today with my mom (sans children) at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. It was really lovely. I felt inspired to spend some time stopping to smell the proverbial roses after going non-stop and having stress upon stress upon stress heaped upon me in the past two months. I just finished a story for an industry publication for retail garden center owners and operators and I spoke with a woman at the Chicago Arboretum and that inspired me to check out one of our Metroplex treasures. It was cheap, too. The actual Botanic Gardens are free and the Conservatory is only $1 per person, but we got an "early bird" special for 50 cents a piece. Where else can you spend a few hours admiring beautiful plants, flowers, water features and nature for so cheap?

We started at the conservatory and then migrated to some gardens behind it.


This is my mom in the conservatory behind a Red Hot Cattail. I love the name of the plant. It was really pretty, too.

Below is a really groovy statuary behind the conservatory. One thing I liked was how they incorporated blooming flowers within the statuary throughout the gardens. In the foreground are some caladiums. They were beautiful.


Butterflies, bees and spiders were everywhere around the blooming flowers. I love it. Just makes it feel like a real garden to me. This butterfly, below, seemed to be posing for me. The black one in the next picture, too, didn't seem to be troubled by my presence either.



I liked this cool spider, too. Check out the web.

And, lastly, Army of Mom with the giver of her life. Hard to snap a great pic with the timer switch, but did my best. Many thanks to Army of Dad for one of the best Christmas gifts I have ever received - my digital camera. Taking pictures is one of my favorite pastimes.