Garden-wise, Monday was a huge success. Most of Denver's Botanic Gardens were in full bloom, making a tour through the winding paths on a warm, sunny day a sheer delight*.

It was a bonus to discover that Monday was one of the rare no-admission days**, a clear savings of $8.50! Beautiful and frugal! (Frugality is important to those of us who have thrown away perfectly good jobs just because our bosses were lunatics and we were disinclined to undertake a daily 80-mile round-trip commute for the pleasure of continuing to work with them.)

My baby digital camera has two settings, for either high- or low-resolution pictures. Up until now, I've always used the 'high' setting, thinking that any outing I undertook could probably be sufficiently documented with 20 pictures. For Monday's BG outing, I reset the camera to 'low', thinking that I might just want 80 pictures. I took 40, only three of which came out decently, so I don't really have anything in the way of really gorgeous photos to share.

The BG features Romantic, Herb, Victorian, Water, Monet, Montana, Japanese, and Rock Alpine Gardens, among other "themed" areas.

Making lavish use of micro-ecosystems (I think that's the term), every area, including in the amazing Tropical Conservatory, walking through each area was like entering a new and entirely separate garden.

On to the

Pansies are not only the easiest to photograph, they're the easiest to grow, so we saw bazillions of them all over the place (outside of the "themed" areas.)

Some of them were in unusual colors , including one bed full (and here I really regret not getting better shots) a bed of almost true black blossoms.

I have a weakness for irises and those were also sprinkled throughout the gardens. I've never seen "champagne" colored ones before.

Columbines abounded, in many colors.

I tried photographing one of the many 'water features' of the place, this one in the Monet Garden, but….

And, of course, there were tons of blooms I couldn't identify at all.

It doesn't show in the picture, but this gigantic plant, in the Tropical Conservatory, was probably twenty feet tall. The flower you can see blossoming in the center there was bigger than my hand.

It's too early in Denver for roses and either it's too early or we missed the Lilac Garden, so we're going to plan to go back later this summer.

Anyhow. That's the Public Gardening portion of the program.

More personally, my own little incipient balcony flower garden is--much the same. Flowerless. (Never again with the seeds. Next time I buy full-grown plants, already in flower!)

The sunflowers are growing like--well--weeds. Which, since they're practically a weed back in Kansas where I was born, surprises me not at all.

The marigold shoots are starting to take off although not yet developing that bushy aspect that leads to blossoms. Still. There must be fifteen or so potential plants among the five pots, so I feel fairly confident that at least a couple of them will eventually flower.

I think I have a second forget-me-not seed sprouting! I planted 20 or more seeds, so having a potential second plant developing is very exciting. This morning I ruthlessly destroyed a sunflower that seemed to be growing too closely to the new sprout. Time will tell whether or not these unexpectedly fragile little plants can be coaxed to thrive on my balcony.

There's a weird sort of thing on the leaves of most of my plants, although not on the R.C.'s, which is odd since they live on the same shelves. (We bought rolling shelves to keep them on.) A sort of brown speckling or something the R.C. refers to as "mange". I'm afraid I've been over-watering them. I'm going to try leaving them alone for the next two or three days and see if that cures the problem.

We've had to move them all indoors for a few days too, since temperatures dropped from the 80's down to the 60's in the day and 40 at night.

My bromeliad is surviving just fine since I bought it as an already-healthy plant. I don't see that it's grown much, but a bromeliad never seems to be growing until the day you realize you need a pot a yard wide to hold the fool thing. Anyhow, it and the begonia aren't really part of the garden. Not properly. They both have burgundy-colored leaves and I bought them as decorator plants for the bedroom. (I didn't even realize the begonia was a flowering plant until it flowered one day.)

I've been roaming around with my little camera taking a lot of flower pictures recently.

Glorious yellow iris

Pretty pink petunia

That's about all I had to say today.

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* Not being a fan of bugs, big or otherwise, I paid no attention to the special Big Bugs Gigantic Eco-Sculptures exhibits. I've seen giant ants (in Them!), Praying Mantis's wig me out, spiders are just gross, etc. Ignoring twenty-foot representations of such infestations added, I think, largely to my enjoyment of the day.

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** On the drawback side of the equation, well, it was a free day. Which means Denver's ubiquitous stroller-brigade was out in force.

Anything in Denver that doesn't cost money attracts hordes of women pushing strollers laden either with their yelling offspring or a selection of coats, purses, and hats (while the offspring run riot through the passing foot traffic).

What I think I object to most is the tendency of a significant percentage of these women to use said strollers as battering rams to force their way through crowds.

Also? The size of the strollers. Years back, a stroller was a thing designed to carry a child too small to walk any distance. It was a compact device, combining convenience with portability.

Today's strollers are the SUV versions. Extra buckets front, back, and sometimes side, make them handy for carrying your offspring, a week's worth of groceries, and probably the dog. A woman pushing one of these is a serious force in a crowd of pedestrians.

I'd like to make it clear that I am very fond of babies and even toddlers. (Of the non-yelling variety.) Nevertheless, I don't yield for strollers. Regardless of the amount of debris you've chosen to burden yourself with on today's outing, you're entitled to the same amount of space as anyone else--meaning 1/2, and no more, of the width of the sidewalk. And you're no more entitled to take your half out of the middle than anyone else is. Which means, not at all.