Evening at Olbrich

We went to Olbrich Botanic Gardens on Sunday evening; it was the perfect time to go because the weather was beautiful, it wasn't too sunny, and there was hardly anybody there.  The girls LOVE exploring all the paths, and we generally let them pick which direction they want to go.  This trip, they were excited about naming all the different places that we saw.  Here is Black Ripple Pond:

It's one of our favorite places in the garden, a small pond surrounded by a curly weeping willow.  We also visited The Spinny Thing (a garden kaleidoscope), The Tower (self-explanatory) and Dirty Brown Water (a pond in the rock garden with clear water but brown dirt on the bottom).  It's a good thing they aren't in charge of naming attractions!  They enjoyed The Stage this trip, where they put on a dance recital:

Some of the climbing roses had started blooming in the rose garden, and they were just beautiful.

We also saw all different kinds of peonies, baptisia, wisteria, iris and lots of purple and white perennials.

Nathaniel rode in the stroller the entire time, and he didn't fuss at all.  He fell asleep towards the end of our visit.

The girls were sad that we had to leave, and they asked if we could come back the next day.  We didn't have a chance to go back on Monday, but maybe we'll go again this weekend.