Field Trip Friday

Last time I featured St. Charles, MO as a great place to visit and shop, but this time I want to introduce the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Once called Shaw's Garden, it was created by Henry Shaw and they have just celebrated their 159th anniversary last month.

These are some of my favorite pictures from their historical records - they have a much larger lily pond now, but in this one back in the early days they like to demonstrate just how strong those pads can be:

photos from MBG archives

Both ladies are standing unsupported by anything but the lily pads. The second picture looks almost ghostlike as she plays a violin. This is but two of many, many historical pictures available to look at in their archives. The Henry Shaw house is inside the MBG and you can tour the inside of his house. This really is one of the best places to go in our city!

Please do go to their website to see some beautiful pictures of the current gardens (go to Now in Bloom for the lastest pictures taken of new flowers blooming, constantly updated week by week)

There are several different gardens and they are constantly adding to them - my cousin got married in the Japanese garden a few years ago. It's a 14 acre garden and my absolute favorite. As kids we used to love to visit and stand on the large curved bridge over the pond and feed the many brilliant colored koi fish.

My mother used to work there as the Project Coordinator of Ecuador, involved in the work of cataloging and storing the plants from that country. MBG is a very important research facility for plant specimens collected all over the world. It's a truly amazing place and I'm proud to say I worked there too, briefly, in an internship a few years back, I created the intranet for their HRM department. Nothing as cool as my mom's job, but it was so nice to be able to work there. I only wish it had lasted longer.

Every summer they have a Japanese Festival and I used to love to go and listen to the Taiko drummers and now they even have a sumo wrestling demonstration, though it was so crowded last time I went I couldn't even get close enough to watch.

photos from MBG

I was once photographed as a little girl at the Japanese Festival because I had a Japanese parasol and was standing in line for some lemonade. I guess the photographer thought I looked cute, but all I saw (so cynical of an 8 year old that I was) was a creepy guy taking my picture so I frowned. Sure enough - my picture was in the newspaper, frown and all. I was so embarassed! I actually drew a smile on my face to try to 'improve' the picture for my mom. Luckily she managed to get another copy after I ruined ours. LOL

Happy Friday everyone!