12-22-17  MOBOT toy train exhibit with Karen:

Another thing I never did until we moved---go on photo excursions with volleyball friend Karen.  She took up photography shortly before we moved.  When we lived in St. Louis, we just didn't see our friends nearly as much as we do now.  Took us moving to get us to see people!

Anyway, one of our favorite places to go to is MOBOT (Missouri Botanical Gardens).  She did an apprenticeship there and has pretty much the run of the place so I know she likes to go there.  So when I found I had the afternoon free, I sent her a message to see if she wanted to join me.  She did and we had a great visit.

Another cold dreary day in St. Louis---perfect time to head to MOBOT's indoor Winter train exhibit.

 The train exhibit room.  Every year they have some sort of theme.  This here it was Mexico.

 one of the trains

 looks like this horse got ran over by a raindeer!

 love the horses

 lots of colorful flowers in the exhibit, too.

 lots of different kinds of poinsettias, too.

 love the watermellons

 Doesn't look like a Mexican house to me!

 more colorful leafy plants

 There were even moving farmers

 This reminds me of Mexico.

 Love the poinsettia Christmas tree.

 hibiscus---always reminds me of Hawaii.

 more colorful poinsettias

 admiring visitors

 cute little restaurant

 Neat planter

 Love this plant

 a Mexican pixie?

 This reminds me of my school in Oregon where I went to part of 1st grade and all of 2nd and 3rd grade.  We had a bell tower and a patio and 3 grades in a 2 room school.

 Love the barn quilt on the model barn

 so much so that it gets 2 pictures.

 there were even young admirers here.

 more colorful flowers

 another colorful poinsettia

 The room really isn't too big, so we were done in an hour or so.  So we went up to the little cafe and had a soda and soup and visited for another hour or so.  On our way to the cafe, we passed a wreathe exhibit.  I thought this one was particularly cute.

 and this simple one.

 Had to cut our visit shorter then our usual 5 hours so I could get back home for our dinner date with our neighbors.  We went to Masa's Italian Restaurant---another place we didn't go to regularly when we lived there, but do now whenever we return for a visit.  Wish I could move our friends and restaurants with us---to someplace a lot warmer and with beaches!

9-29-17  Angie and Josh's 10th year anniversary!!!!

10 years ago today we attended their fantastic wedding!  Hard to believe it's been that long ago!!!

Still as beautiful 10 years later---

6-29-17  a trip to MOBOT!

Didn't know if I was going to get a chance to go to MOBOT this trip, but when we decided we weren't leaving until Friday, I messaged Karen and asked her if she wanted to meet me there on the 29th.  She did, and we did, and it was great---although the heat and humidity had reappeared by then.  I don't know why we didn't run around together before we moved.  She has a lot of the same interests as I do---photography, sports, biking.  It's fun going to a place like the botanical gardens with another photographer and comparing photos later.  I always find it interesting how people can have different views of the same subject.  So we met there at noon and spent the first hour visiting in the cafeteria.  They make a really tasty lunch.  Mine was a quiche and salad.  Then we spent about 3 more hours wandering around the gardens taking a ton of pictures.
love all the cone flowers in full bloom.

2-28-17 a stroll through the Missouri Botanical Gardens:

One of the reasons I elected to go back to St. Louis was to go to the Orchid Show at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  They have it every year from something like Jan.- the end of March.  I've gone to it many years.  We happened to be having a really warm winter this year, too, so I was looking forward to wandering around the gardens.  So I messaged my photography friend to see if she wanted to go, too.  She did, and we met today for lunch in the park and a stroll around the gardens as well as checking out the orchid display.
There was quite a few things blooming already!

 looking back towards the entrance building from the gardens.

 the daffodils were pretty much in full bloom.  Love them!

 a low growing ground flower.

 One of the areas of the garden has a yard of crocuses.  They happened to be in bloom now, too.

 the lawn of blooming crocuses and other low flowering plants.

 These looked like azaleas to me, but I'm sure the plaque by them called them some kind of rhodie.

 even some of the dried flowers from last year looked neat.

 and the dried leaves.

 Don't know what these are, but they were blooming nicely already.

 more flowers in the Japanese Garden.

 MOBOT has one of the nicest Japanese Gardens I've ever been in.

 looking towards the bridge where the koi like to hang out under.

 another Japanese statue.

 one of my year around favorite views in the Japanese Gardens.

 Getting ready for St. Patty's day.

 The Climatron where the rain forest is.

 one of the many sculptures throughout the garden.

By now we'd been here about 3 hours---although the first one was while we had lunch in the nice cafe in the gardens.  Now it was time to check out the orchid show.  Every year they have some sort of theme to the show.  This year it was vanilla.  Throughout the show were plaques with info on vanilla and a few vanilla plants.  Unfortunately, none of them were blooming today.

But there were lots of beautiful orchids to check out.

 love all the different colors they come in.

 and shapes.

 even green ones.

 an unusual one.

 even the leaves are interesting.

 so many different shapes and sizes of orchids.

 another green one with a different color lip.

 Don't know what kind this is, but it reminds me of a space ship.

 delicate white ones.

 bold orange ones.

 This was probably my favorite of the orchids this year.  Reminds me of a yellow heart.

 some day I'm going to have to get a macro lens so I can get crisper close ups.

 Never noticed before how some of the orchids look like faces!

 I liked these leopard looking ones, too.

 many have similar colored petals with different colored lips.

 a bit of a normal angle view.

 pretty in pink

 little white ones.

 there were even several kids there---home taught, I presume?  They seemed to enjoy the gardens, too.

 the whole orchid garden is very lush.

 When we were done with the orchids, we wandered around the gift shop.  They have a rather large gift shop with a lot of unusual things in it.  I really thought these were a clever idea.  I have some sea biscuits which I may have do this to.

We easily spent about 5 hours there.  It's things like this that make me miss St. Louis sometimes.  This and meeting up with lots of friends and Ken's family.