Taking Advantage of the Weather

Finally a day with temperatures above 30 - and on a Saturday too?! We took off to the Missouri Botanical Garden, which is free to St Louis County Residents on Saturday mornings. Even more bonus!

Normally what happens when we go places like this is that Anny and Abby run through and I drag my feet, trying to find pictures that I can be happy with. Sometimes those pictures don't have Abby simply because she is too quickly moving on to the next cool thing to see.

Today, though, I ditched my girls and went by myself out to the back part of the property to the Japanese Garden. I didn't really ditch them, I guess, but we agreed that Anny and Abby would go through the Climatron (sounds awesome, right?) and play in the children's area while I went photo hunting.

So glad we did that. Abby was already whining about the cold (understandable, a little) and Anny already did a run this morning.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my quiet walk alone this morning:

 There is a picture in our Sunday School classroom - four of them actually - from the MO Botanical Garden. The next shot is from the same place, but clearly from a different season. The one at church is full of brightness and life. Today, it was bright, but clearly in need of life:

 

 Don't quite know how, but this one almost looks summery with the bits of green and red. The snow in the middle of this shot is clinging to the rock beside it. It will likely be gone by the end of the weekend, so I'm glad I to see it while it was still there!

Finally - I saw a beautiful duck on the water/ice. He was alone, just wandering. I knew the feeling. He let me take pictures of him for five minutes, just swimming and walking back and forth. I tried to reward with some of the fish food they have set up for summer, but the machines are off for the winter. Bummer. I got several good shots, but this is my favorite by far.

I think we will plan to go again soon - maybe even next week. Weather is supposed to perk way up temperature wise this week and I would imagine in a week every bit of white will be green and spring will be coming out soon.

(More pictures, including a panoramic, are up HERE)