Since moving here to St. Louis, we've been meaning to get to the Botanical Gardens. Well, today after a four hour post-night shift nap for me, we headed down to see what all the fuss was about. Wow!! This place is incredible. It's an amazing combination of both the raw beauty of nature thousands of plant varieties against a backdrop of sculpted and manicured lawns, lakes, fountains, and sculptures. I think we came on the best possible day as well. It was 65 degrees and sunny with a refreshing breeze that helped keep me awake despite my sleep deprivation. In some of the more artistic gardens, wide varieties of lettuce and kale were used as accents to the flowers. I never really thought of lettuce as beautiful before but some are such deep purple and others are bright green, almost yellow. It gave us all sorts of ideas for our community garden plot next summer. If you come to St. Louis to visit us, this place will be a must-see. We followed this visit up with a stop at a fantastic cafe in Maplewood called Foundation Grounds. Jonathan had basil lemonade and I settled into some earl grey. His lemonade was super refreshing, especially in complement to the piece of raspberry cake the we shared. Then after dinner of tasty leftovers at home, we went for one of our frequent neighborhood walks, and checked in our own little garden plot. It's definitely coming along and I think we start to pick some greens soon. Summer is almost here! I'm so glad we share of love of being outdoors.

Hopebench