Gardens...part 2

Last weekend 2 of my granddaughters spent some time with me while their parents had a weekend getaway. These 2 girls are full of energy and I thought it would be good to use some of that exuberance up outside so we went to the Japanese Gardens. While I posted photos of pretty flowers and beautiful scenery earlier this week, I didn't show you what they were up to.....

Since I had to work Friday and Saturday morning they stayed with their Aunt Rachel. When I arrived to pick them up they were outside playing a wizarding game they'd made up.

We packed their stuff in the trunk and we were off, stopping on the way into the Gardens at the gift shop where my friend works....but we didn't stay long...well long enough to try on all the jewelry, play the percussion instruments, check out the neat little thatched cottage domajigger and generally make me pretty nervous.

So, on to the garden. Study the big map. Stop at a planter to finger the tulips. Swing a minute while Gramma takes some pictures. Run, don't walk through the woodland area. Argue with one another over nothing.

Pose for pictures by making crazy faces at the camera. Ignore the "Stay on the Pathway" notices. Pause in wonder when noticing a bonsai bush.

Really sit and contemplate the raked meditation garden. Listen while I tell them about poems called haikus. We make up one together. Avery decides to write her own and proceeds to do just that. Begs me to let her take some of the rocks home so she can rake her own garden of rocks.

Find some other children. Become instant friends. Run through a hole in the bamboo bushes. Find a "mummy and a sarcophagus" and run back out screaming. (did I mention their great imaginations?)

Discover huge Koi in the lake. Spend 30 minutes lying on the rocks trying to catch minnows and tadpoles. Have the umpteenth fight at the red bridge. Explore a thicket of bamboo. Ring the big bell/gong.....a million times, until I finally had to get onto them. Cry and say they want their parents. I tell them tough..."you just have to mind me!"

We hobble, I hobble-they're fine, back to the car. We stop on the way home for Mexican. We drag all their stuff up the steps and into the house. I collapse into the chair. I'm done for the day!

The breeze is blowing
the glassy rocks glittering
they make me calm