grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Visit Denver Botanic Gardens with me!

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Denver Botanic Gardens

Oh my! Last weekend, John and I spent a few hours at the Denver Botanic Gardens. What a gorgeous garden chockfull of mature hedges, unusual plantings, native Colorado beauties, exotic water lilies, profuse succulent gardens, absolute heaven on earth.

The dahlia above☝was as large as a dinner plate.

I took a million photos (#slightexaggeration) and could have stayed the entire weekend.

Guess what? As members of the Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks… our admission was FREE. Reciprocity is a great perk of membership! (On my bucket list—to visit all the reciprocal gardens…how cool would that be?)

Today, I’m sharing some of my favorite pictures. Enjoy them. Pretend you are at the Denver Botanic Gardens and make plans to visit the next time you’re in Denver. It’s truly a magnificent place. I was a kid on sugar overload zipping along taking pictures and not getting the names of most these beauties.

The pictures don’t do justice to the flowers or the gardens.

Do they ever?

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The energy of Denver Street Art

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Denver Street Art…

Denver Street Art

Mural, 16th Street Mall, by @zehb_1

I spent an entire day last week walking around taking pictures of Denver street art. There’s so, so much! The beautiful day felt as though I’d downloaded it from a weather app, fairytale perfect—I was extremely fortunate in that regard. Denver. January. It could have been way different.

Street art is technically defined as “art developed in public places”. I consider street art as anything that stops me, draws my eye, makes me take a second look. In a good or interesting way, of course.

Something to note: Denver street art has been a real thing for decades. There are entire pockets of the city devoted to it. In the summer, Denver hosts a Chalk Art Festival. Each September, the Crush Street Art Festival showcases and celebrates a series of remarkable murals. The city even has its own society of crocheting street artists commissioned from time to time to crochet bomb large installations.  Continue Reading

Glimpses of Us

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Denver trip - glimpses of us

You know what’s cool? Having an adult son who is more than willing to hang out with his Momma and show her all around his city.

You know what’s strange? Walking through the Denver airport when I first arrived and being flooded with a memory I hadn’t thought about in years. A memory of being delayed at the Denver airport for ten hours with two small children. My children, of course, and while I did my best to entertain them, I was tired and they were energetic with sticky hands and busy minds. In that moment, life felt exhausting. Everything felt exhausting. A quiet, empty area in the corner of a terminal became our refuge, the comfy chairs arranged around a small table, not typical waiting-to-board chairs, thankfully, and we camped out there with our gear and kid backpacks and no telling what all.

At some point, an elderly couple joined us, and we adopted each other because they too were stuck at the airport trying to get to Dallas. At some point, Kelsey and Tate taught the elderly couple to play a certain card game, the name of the game I don’t remember, and for hours we played game after game, chatting and laughing, and the time passed as quickly as possible.

Friday, as I walked through the same airport in Denver, I found myself thinking about that couple. And I found myself looking for that quiet corner with the comfy chairs. Looking for glimpses of us back then, sitting together, me no doubt harried, the kids no doubt bouncing off the walls, and the elderly couple helping me by just being there.Continue Reading

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