Touring the Gardens

 We decided to have some well-deserved family time today and drove the boys up to the campus to see the gardens Mark has been working in all year. They are so well designed, little surprise garden rooms and beautiful study spaces... The boys wore themselves out checking out waterfalls and we got to hear Daddy tell us all about his special project that his class started. It was really neat to see him so excited about the things he could tell us about. We even got to tour his favorite greenhouses!



One spot was a gorgeous waterfall and pond, with real water lilies and reeds growing. There was a flock of small blue dragonflies flitting about as well, but they didn't want to pose for a close up.

William enjoyed climbing the rocks the students made the most. I have lots of pictures of him on rocks. "Mommy! I'm on a tall rock! Take a picture!" Snap. :-)

This tree had a really neat trunk and Daniel went to investigate. 

My camera kept trying to focus on the flowers, so I let it. Love the result! He's sitting at the water's edge looking down and smiling at the bugs.

Here Oren is at the very top of the waterfall.

Climbing more rocks! Daniel ended up standing higher than my head and it's quite a drop off the backside, so Daddy had to come get him down for me. Daniel was too scared to bend over and grab my hands. Thank heavens for a tall husband!

The gardens the students planted have filled in nicely by this point in the season, and I loved how these colors all worked together. Especially the bright greens of the leaves you can see here with the deep pink florals. This garden was one that their class was asked to design. Mark's wasn't picked, but I'm sure his would have been equally stunning.

All the greenhouses I've ever been in are full of tables of flowers. Not the campus ones! This greenhouse was a tropical paradise! Yep, we're inside a building here, standing just in the doorway. There was a downhill sloped path to a bridge that we're going to walk down.

"Smell the flower!" It smelled beautiful, like jasmine, although Mark says that's not what it was. A very floral-y smell. 

Seriously, this is inside the greenhouse... A tiny stream dripping down from the hole, you can barely see it, with a pond and fish at the bottom and a little table I'm standing in front of to take the picture where you could study or eat lunch. I'd never leave.

The next greenhouse over was hotter and drier than the tropical, with cacti and other succulents. A soft blanket of bouncy ground cover is what the boys are discovering. Oren was laying on the ground using it as a pillow because it's so soft.

I have lots more photos of the boys exploring and the gorgeous plants we saw, but that would have taken all day to post and these are my favorites. I'm really glad we got to see what Mark does all day at school, the beauty that he gets to surround himself with.