Toledo Excursion

Today I went to the botanical gardens in Toledo. At first I thought that those gardens were a sad attempt to compete with the ones in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids. This was largely because the parking was bad and it was pretty hard to find the visitor center and once I found it it was locked and there was no one inside to spite the sign that said the hours were 9 - 5. I am pretty happy to say that I was totally wrong about my assumption.

These gardens do not offer state of the art conservatories or cafeteria facilities like the other two. They offer an expansive and diversified grouping of gardens. It only took me about 50 minutes to get there and it was really easy to find. (Pretty close to 23!) If you are able to take some time to see these gardens while the weather is still nice.

Here are five of the over 1000 pictures that I took. They are not the best - but they were the ones that I thought about the whole way home. The one with the berries is a really weird plant that I came across. I think that I like it for my "November" picture for the colors.

The New Lens Phase II

So I went back to MBG This morning and I tested my new lens again. I am much happier with these results. These pictures remind me of the very first set of pictures that I took. All I had then was a 4 mega pixel Olympus camera that was quite expensive in its day but is very outdated now! Well, that and an "eye". I have come a long way but I am not an expert yet. I am planning to go to Grand Rapids next week and hopefully the weather will hold up. The other thing I realized today is that I can not go out in the field again without bug spray!