Whenever we go somewhere, I try to find wildflowers or botanical gardens we can visit. And of course Southern California has a million of them! We have a membership to Thanksgiving Point right now, so we get reciprocal admission to some other gardens and museums. I just looked up which ones would be free and chose from those! A couple places we went to balked at letting in all seven kids free (hmmph!) but still gave us discounts. Descanso Gardens was one of those. It's near Pasadena, where we also went to Kidspace Children's Museum.
I love these inviting, tree-lined pathways.
The kids' cousin Benjamin caught a turtle near this pond! Everyone loved petting it. It bit Teddy, of course (everything bites Teddy) but he didn't seem too upset about it.
Japanese Gardens are always some of my favorites.
Monkey shirt!
Some of the gardenias were still blooming. They were so perfect they almost didn't look real!
We saw a cute family of geese wandering under these trees.
We were hoping to see lilacs in the Lilac Garden, but they were all gone! Here Abe looks philosophically at the single remaining flower.
Bunny statue in the children's maze.
And more bunnies!
My favorite area was probably the Rose Garden. I couldn't believe there were so many blooming in April! It seemed like June. And the garden was arranged beautifully—just meandering and ungroomed enough to seem a little bit wild. I loved it.
There are so many great colors of roses. I wish I had ALL of them in my yard! This was an interesting peachy-pink.
I do have one like this, called "Double Delight." One of my favorites.
Pale and delicate.
My favorite golden yellow!
Junie and Daisy with their favorite colors. Orange and Pink.
A rare sighting of the boys! The girls are much more anxious/willing to have their pictures taken in gardens than the boys are, for some reason. :)
I love calla lilies, too.
Goldie in a redwood grove.
Snapping snapdragons
Looking for fish
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