Friday Morning at the Gardens

The girls and I went to the San Diego Botanic Gardens for a few hours Friday.  We packed lunch and had a great time!  My friend Laurie told us about the bamboo there... Apparently the pandas at the San Diego zoo will only eat the bamboo grown here.  They refuse to eat otherwise.  Needless to say, there was a lot of bamboo growing along the paths on the way up from the overflow parking lot.

Checking out this huge bamboo sculpture.



Just outside the walled garden.



The girls loved these huge metal flowers on the way down to the Children's Garden.



In the Children's Garden, we started with the alphabet section.  A for Aloe - and Audrey.



E for Elephant's Food - and Eliza



M for Mint - and Mommy.  Eliza took this photo with my big SLR camera!  A little out of focus, but not bad.



Eliza playing the xylophone in the musical garden.



Audrey banging on the big metal... umm propane tank?




By far Eliza's favorite part of the music garden was "conducting!"



There was a really cool 3-story treehouse!  Eliza climbed right up the rope ladder excited to check it out.  Audrey and I took the stairs up to see the view.




There were tunnels and lots of little nooks and crannies to climb through at the bottom of the tree too!




The girls favorite part of the whole Children's Garden was the little "river."  They took their shoes off and walked up and down splashing and having fun.




There were even little boats to play with, and race down the river.  We ate our lunch while we splashed and watched the water washing over the rocks.



"It was THIS big!" - giant agave plant along one of the paths.
We left the Children's Garden and headed up to check out the rest of the gardens before heading home.




We stumbled upon this great waterfall overlook in some of the rainforest-like gardens.




The girls loved these Drakensberg White Daisies that had a seed head just like a dandelion.



There were lots of little rocks to sit on for pictures, but the girls didn't want to look at the camera.  I loved the big purple irises here!




Beautiful wildflowers!



Eliza took this picture of Audrey and I!



Just Eliza




These big plants seemed like they were going to fall on us as we walked under them, so we couldn't resist these silly pictures!  Eliza took the one of me.

Perfect morning!  Just the beginning of a wonderful Mother's Day weekend.