Plant-related outing photos
I'm throwing up a few photos from plant-related outings.
I went to the Des Moines Botanic Center to kill a little time between shopping (my usual Des Moines activity, there being no Bed Bath and Beyond, Michaels, or Kohls in Ames) and dinner (followed by horse racing).
Note to self: when the directions on the highway signs conflict with the directions from Google maps, follow the highway signs. They know how to get to the Botanic Center. Google maps tried to send me across the Des Moines river on a non-existent bridge.
The Botanic Center has a very neat large greenhouse dome.
Unfortunately that's about all it has except for some outdoor gardens which didn't have much growing in them at the moment. The outdoor gardens are along a riverwalk which is lovely, but also part of a city park, so presumably I wouldn't have had to pay to get into those. All in all it was nice, but I'm not sure it was worth the $4 entrance fee. I suppose I should consider it a donation to the cultural facilities of the city of Des Moines.
A display of orchards in the greenhouse:
There was also a wedding rehearsal going on while I was there, so I sort of felt I was in the way, although it was still business hours. (Pretty place for a very small wedding, though.)
Some bonsai trees. I like bonsai.
Almost everything I read on the Internet about the center mentioned that the dome had free-flying birds. However, I only saw one bird when I was there, a white-crowned sparrow that could just as easily have wandered in from outside (although I admit I haven't seen any around). To be honest, the place didn't appear to be set up for birds at all: most places that display free-flying birds or butterflies have vestibules to prevent escapes, and the dome didn't have anything like that. So I'm not sure what's up with the birds.
This was a nice place to sit and knit even in the drizzle:
Clearly there are a lot of Red-Winged Blackbirds nesting in the area, because several males (or one male several times) buzzed my head to encourage me to move along!
Like I said, not a bad way to kill an hour (tops, including the knitting)... but $4 to kill an hour seems a little steep.
Earlier this month I went to Tulip Time in Pella with someone I know from work. Pella is a community with a Dutch heritage that (apparently) is rather conservatively religious, has very draconian standards for home upkeep to maintain the appeal to tourists, and makes windows. (It's THAT Pella.)
Tulip Time is apparently very well known locally (I was telling another co-worker about it and the guy who was installing her window blinds, who didn't look like the tulip type, nodded knowingly) and was the most crowded event I've been to in Iowa to date. Granted all the people were crammed into a few square blocks, but I actually got claustrophobic in the crowds: the block behind the grandstands after the parade rivaled anything I'd seen in NYC. (If I go again I think I'll skip the parade. I don't care all that much about various civic organizations in Pella.)
It is a cute little town, though.
There was a quilt show that had some very impressive quilts, to my eye. It was interesting because the woman I was with is a quilter and could comment on how easy/hard the various quilt patterns were.
This was my favorite quilt:
I liked this one, too:
Of course, Tulip Time had tulips. Lots and lots of tulips! I also could have bought a zillion types of tulip bulbs if I had anyplace to put tulips, which I don't.
I went to the Des Moines Botanic Center to kill a little time between shopping (my usual Des Moines activity, there being no Bed Bath and Beyond, Michaels, or Kohls in Ames) and dinner (followed by horse racing).
Note to self: when the directions on the highway signs conflict with the directions from Google maps, follow the highway signs. They know how to get to the Botanic Center. Google maps tried to send me across the Des Moines river on a non-existent bridge.
The Botanic Center has a very neat large greenhouse dome.
Unfortunately that's about all it has except for some outdoor gardens which didn't have much growing in them at the moment. The outdoor gardens are along a riverwalk which is lovely, but also part of a city park, so presumably I wouldn't have had to pay to get into those. All in all it was nice, but I'm not sure it was worth the $4 entrance fee. I suppose I should consider it a donation to the cultural facilities of the city of Des Moines.
A display of orchards in the greenhouse:
There was also a wedding rehearsal going on while I was there, so I sort of felt I was in the way, although it was still business hours. (Pretty place for a very small wedding, though.)
Some bonsai trees. I like bonsai.
Almost everything I read on the Internet about the center mentioned that the dome had free-flying birds. However, I only saw one bird when I was there, a white-crowned sparrow that could just as easily have wandered in from outside (although I admit I haven't seen any around). To be honest, the place didn't appear to be set up for birds at all: most places that display free-flying birds or butterflies have vestibules to prevent escapes, and the dome didn't have anything like that. So I'm not sure what's up with the birds.
This was a nice place to sit and knit even in the drizzle:
Clearly there are a lot of Red-Winged Blackbirds nesting in the area, because several males (or one male several times) buzzed my head to encourage me to move along!
Like I said, not a bad way to kill an hour (tops, including the knitting)... but $4 to kill an hour seems a little steep.
Earlier this month I went to Tulip Time in Pella with someone I know from work. Pella is a community with a Dutch heritage that (apparently) is rather conservatively religious, has very draconian standards for home upkeep to maintain the appeal to tourists, and makes windows. (It's THAT Pella.)
Tulip Time is apparently very well known locally (I was telling another co-worker about it and the guy who was installing her window blinds, who didn't look like the tulip type, nodded knowingly) and was the most crowded event I've been to in Iowa to date. Granted all the people were crammed into a few square blocks, but I actually got claustrophobic in the crowds: the block behind the grandstands after the parade rivaled anything I'd seen in NYC. (If I go again I think I'll skip the parade. I don't care all that much about various civic organizations in Pella.)
It is a cute little town, though.
There was a quilt show that had some very impressive quilts, to my eye. It was interesting because the woman I was with is a quilter and could comment on how easy/hard the various quilt patterns were.
This was my favorite quilt:
I liked this one, too:
Of course, Tulip Time had tulips. Lots and lots of tulips! I also could have bought a zillion types of tulip bulbs if I had anyplace to put tulips, which I don't.