Longwood Gardens

"The earth laughs in flowers."

Longwood Gardens, near Philadelphia, is purely beautiful. I don't know whether it inspired me to garden or left me despairing of ever acheiving an effect 1% as lovely. Either way, we had a lovely day rambling around the gardens and conservatory. (Although the blinding mid-day heat nearly derailed our good humor!)

I'll post MANY many pictures of the landscape and flowers later (I'm hoping to figure out how to make them into a slideshow, since I have so darn many gorgeous shots) but for now, here's a few shots of the kids enjoying themselves. One of their favorite things to do was to follow the maps and lead us to the different gardens. Who knew maps were so entertaining?

Nicky seemed to enjoy the gardens' many fountains the most. I think he would have enjoyed playing in them more! Luckily, the children's garden did have one fountain to splash in!

Kai, true girl that she is, was a big fan of the roses, both outside and in the conservatory. No hothouse orchids for her!

For a little hands-on fun, we built this "tree fort" out of materials left in a field for that purpose. Why is picking up sticks more fun here than in the backyard? 'Cause I've got quite a pile that need my attention.... and NO desire to clean them up!

Nicky and Kairi also loved the audio tour of the conservatory. Finding the plaques with numbers, punching them in, and listening to recordings about what we were seeing made it much more interesting.

Our real favorite part of the gardens came later, though - Scott's promised me he'll blog about it, but I'll just mention here that Gaelic Storm ROCKS!!!