Botanical Garden

Pre-Christmas we went to DSM for the afternoon to go shopping (disaster, we drove around the mall for 20 minutes without finding a parking spot and left) and then to the botanical garden.  Lucy was thrilled.  It was kid-friendly and reasonably priced.  I'll have to go back in the summer to see if there is more, but the winter activity was in their massive greenhouse dome.  The rainbow sculpture in the front is pretty neat; I took a bunch of pictures from different angles.  It reminded me of a whale skeleton.  Lucy desperately wanted to jump the chain and climb on it, and I can't say that I blame her, because I wanted to climb on it too.

These are a couple of pictures of the Christmas decorations they had set up.  It was hard to get a picture of any of these around the number of people with a group of kids set up in front of  a camera with a tripod - obviously a popular place for taking the family Christmas photo.  Some of the decorations, namely the snowman and reindeer, were made of plant material.  The candy canes were PVC pipe, and reminded me of vent pipes for leach fields.  The scale of things is partially visible in this picture - the candy cane pipes are about 5 feet tall, with the tallest present about 8 feet.  There was obviously a lot of work put into these and I'm interested to see if the same decorations will re-appear next year, or if they've got a team that will change it around.

 There were also several different trees decorated with lights and ornaments.  They looked beautiful as it started to get dark outside.

Lucy loves the camera.  Me and Jamie from the perspective of someone who's 39 inches tall.  Jamie now spends most of his time sitting up and looking around, rather than sleeping.  Though he did spend the majority of the time in the stroller, he got out and crawled around the floor for a while too.  Jamie's the kid who just takes it all in.  I'm excited for him to start talking more, as I imagine what he has to say to be very different from comes out of the mouth of high-energy, no-indoor-voice Lucy.

 There were a lot of different rock walls to climb up and peek over, with perfect little footholds.  Lucy was excited and proud of being able to see things on her own, with little regard to the fact that some of these rock walls had over a story drop off the other side.  I spent a bunch of time tugging those little legs down off different rock features.

 Ponds with massive goldfish are always an incentive for hanging yourself over a 2-story drop.

 Feel the love.

 Feel the squish.

 The other section the botanical garden had was a Zen garden-type place.  I don't have a great camera (or great photography skills for that matter) but this was a long trellis walkway and all those white things are supposed to be doves.  This section of the garden had a very different feel to it.  It was much warmer, cozier with a low greenhouse ceiling, and quieter.  If I were the kind of person inclined to meditate, this is the place I imagine meditating.  Even Lu was a bit more subdued here. 

I'm not sure if this was intended to be something for kids or just for show, but it was a fake art station, complete with a painted-on pallet and book that didn't turn.  Lucy had a ball doing an art project.

After almost 2 hours, Lucy was not ready to leave at all.  It inspired us to get a membership to Reiman Garden here in Ames, which doesn't have the extra-large dome but does have an amazing butterfly garden.  Plus, is 40 minutes closer.

Ha!  I could have gone around and taken pictures of what looked like experimental varieties of plants they had growing, all named something funny or creative, but this one was my favorite.  Beware, Harry.