We Tour Garvan Gardens In Winter

One (and perhaps only one) good thing about winter in Iowa: the planes still fly. Liz and I left 8 inches of snow with twenty degree temperatures behind, and flew off to Hot Springs, Arkansas where it was almost 70, with bright sunshine, and daffodils blooming everywhere. We buzzed around everywhere in our rental car; it was a special treat in that the car had Oklahoma plates. When I'm a tourist driving my own car, I feel badly when wobbling all over the road, speeding up and slowing down, so I can read signs and look for turnoffs... people are always yelling "Dumb Iowa farmers... why don't you go back to driving a tractor?" This time, it didn't bother me at all when I accidentally cut someone off, and they yelled "Dumb Okies!".
Anyway, one day we buzzed over to Garvan Gardens, a nice little botanical garden in Hot Springs that is on a peninsula overlooking Lake Hamilton. There wasn't a terrific amount of stuff blooming yet, but it was quite scenic (actually, as a botanical garden it seems somewhat underplanted... whether this is by design or by slow progress, I'm not sure... maybe they just need to come see my jam-packed garden, though they just might go back and dig some stuff up after they tour my place). I knew I wasn't going to find a lot of flowers when I didn't see a single gardener walking around with a potted plant, looking for a place to plant it. Still, the magnolias were nice, a fair number of daffodols were blooming, and it was a glorious, warm day. The highlights of the garden are surely the water features; above a full moon bridge.