Atlanta Botanical Gardens

Sunday in Atlanta, we spent a good part of the day at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, just wandering through the flowers and trees and greenhouses. We were enjoying the views, but also getting ideas for our own garden. At Casa Smallville, we are surrounded by trees, and want to create a shade garden beneath them, to add a little life, and hopefully some color, to our yard; to make it more of an oasis, a private garden.

So we roamed.

They have a bridge that soars through the canopies of trees, twisting and turning, so we walked along that first. At one point, I removed my sunglasses, and placed them on the bill of my ballcap so i could take a picture. Then I decided to look over the edge of the bridge, and gasped a little as i saw my sunglasses tumbling down into the flora some forty feet below.

I have a habit of doing this. Years back, while visiting the Vizcaya Mansion in Miami with Carols, we stood at the doorway of one of the bedrooms. There was a Plexiglas half-wall to keep you from entering the room, but I wanted Carlos to see something. I pointed at it; he said, "Where?" I pointed again, he said "Where?" I pointed a third time and sent my sunglasses sailing into the room. "Right by my sunglasses," I said.

"Where?"

We finished our hike across the canopy bridge and wound down beneath it, and I began to look for the spot where my glasses had fallen. it was much further down a trail that was closed. Had I paid more than a few bucks for those glasses i might have jumped the fence and hiked the trail, but I didn't. I kind of like the idea of a forest creature wandering the woods in my blue shades.

So the tour went on.

We strolled past waterfalls, statuary, lingered in the Japanese Gardens, and found a Chihuly sculpture. If you haven't seen Chihuly glass, you need to see it HERE. He has a show at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami, and there were glass sculptures hanging from the trees, entire trees made of glass, and glass globes floating through the water. Just gorgeous.

We toured the orchid house, because Carlos is an orchid queen and had several in Miami. Now he has but a few but they seem to flourish in our sunroom at Casa Smallville. The colors are brilliant, and the varieties are endless.

All in all, it was a lovely, calm, peaceful way to spend a Sunday Afternoon...In The Park...With Carlos.

The Japanese Garden

Me likee the whimsy

Not at all real

In the Orchid House

An orchid that looks like a Chihuly Chandelier

We have these same p,lants in our garden but these colors are glorious

Entirely real. Quail are used in the greenhouses to keep the bugs down

Even without vibrant color, some of the plants are gorgeous

Mother Nature ia amazing

Not an orchid, but a real Chihuly Chandelier