The Gardens of Valley Gardens

A few weekends ago we went to Valley Gardens, mostly to play on the playground. Rather than bore you with that again, I am happy to report that April showers have indeed brought May flowers. We discovered quite a bit of natural beauty on our walk to the playground area.

We parked on the far end of the gardens. Jacob wanted to walk through the "echo hall" which is an outdoor semi-covered walkway with occasional larger rooms with echoy roofs.

Flower overhead!

Blooming tree along the path

Gnarly vine that I thought was pretty cool, if not blossoming

We saw many fantastic flower beds along the way as well.

Reds and yellows, a common combination here

Flowers in a circle

That's the ice cream parlor in the distance, which we did not visit--BUMMER!

Inner circle of flowers

A long row of flowers

As you can see from the captions, I have a real grasp of the names of all the different types of flowers. Alas, my education is woefully inadequate when it comes to vegetation. When the zombie apocalypse happens, I will definitely be a scavenger and not a farmer. Maybe I can apprentice on someone's farm when the time comes. But I digress.

One sad discovery was the boating pond, which was in no condition for boats. Good thing we didn't bring Jacob's pirate ship to have fun sailing it.

The driest bed in the gardens

Another unfortunate discovery on our way back through the echoing halls was the sight of some teens just about passed out from drinking. This discovery was pretty shocking since that sort of thing is unspoken of around here. Apparently they missed this sign.

If only they had been more sociable drinkers, they'd have been more responsible drinkers

That didn't ruin our day since the kids walked by in blissful ignorance. It was a fun outing and brought to mind Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring" from The Mikado.