Orchid Show ~ Mar 23

The Thursday before Spring Break, we decided to head over to the Chicago Botanic Gardens.  It's the last week for the Orchid Show and we are leaving for Spring Break on Friday, so today is our only chance to see the show.  But first, breakfast! (and yes, the boys played hooky from school today :-P)

Somehow my eggs and piece of ham looks like a frog's face??

I didn't realize the Botanic Garden isn't too far at all from us.  A lot easier to get to compared to some other attractions in downtown Chicago.  

We are greeted in the garden by an amazing sculpture:               

A lot water surrounding the gardens:

Oh my gosh, this is like the same blue color we have on our house door!  This is the entrance to the English Gardens.  I knew I was onto something when I painted our door with that blue color :-)

Do you spot Graham?

I bet you can spot Graham now.  Ha ha!

Check out this pillar of rocks.  Too cool!

Somehow it's still so cold today. Brrrr!

Okay, indoors now near the entrance to the Orchid show.  It's already quite impressive:

These magnifying glasses are AMAZING!

Woah, orchids galore!

More magnifying glasses - these orchids are beautiful:

Didn't I say orchids galore?! 

This was quite the installation! Do you see Graham??

More we-fies (minus Daddy today - he had to work):

There are several greenhouses and OMG, these elephant ears are massive!!

Look how beautiful these balls of orchids are!!

Look at this, it's a cocoa plant!

I wish my orchids could grow this easily:

So many amazing variety and colors:

I'm definitely jealous!

It's an orange tree!  These were like mini-oranges though, but it totally made me miss our orange trees in the backyard of our old home in CA:

I think this photos pretty much sums up the atmosphere in the greenhouses.  Just total awe...

There are more orchids inside the building, magnified:

This orchid looked like it had whiskers:

This one looked like a slipper!... if you look at it from a side angle:

One of the greenhouses was dessert themed - definitely very familiar with this one after all those years living in Arizona!

This orchid show was definitely well put together:

Makes me wonder how they keep everything so fresh for so many weeks!

Okay, time to head out.  It's so bare outside - trees still don't have any leaves on them:

Snack time! Charlie is being frustrated with tying his shoe laces. Ha!

We discover an area with model trains, but it's closed!  This will be so amazing once it is open. Can't wait:

There's signs of new life. Yay!

Look! It's Graham's Bulb Garden!!

I thought this was pretty neat - the garden keeps track of the earliest bulb bloom.  Cool! Maybe I need to do this too at home. He he!

These bulbs pretty much look like the ones we have at home.  Looking forward to seeing some beautiful colors this Spring:

We did head back to the Botanic Gardens this past Thursday as there was a post-Orchid show sale.  Based on our membership level, we were only able to show up at noon.  And by then, it was definitely slim pickings!

We picked up 2 white orchids (there were a lot of white ones left!) and Graham managed to find a yellow orchid, so we are keeping that one.  The 2 white ones will go to our neighbors.  And I found this little purple one, I'm hoping it will survive!

And one small little houseplant (above) and one big houseplant (below).  Let's hope they all survive!

In the meantime, my Christmas cactus is blooming!  So I guess that makes it an Easter cactus??!

There are some purple parts on the stem so I think it's struggling a bit with the direct sunlight. I did move it to a different spot so maybe it will do better? I'm just happy it's actually blooming! So let's see how much longer it will survive.

I also have a couple of blueberry plants to put into the ground:

Can you tell - I can't wait for the weather to warm up!! I thought Spring was already here but  nope, we had near freezing weather yesterday and looks like that will happen again later next week.  Sheesh!!