Garden Tours

Every other year, the Johnson County Master Gardeners put together a garden tour as a fundraiser for the K-State Extension Office.  This year, six gardens were on the tour...including Grandpa Hodges' garden.

Our plan for the day was to take Cassandra with us and leave her with Grandma for a nap while we finish the tour.  For the most part, things worked out but the morning was a little humid.  In Janicespeak, it "heavily misted on us."

We started with a nearby house.  Cassandra was happy to be outside.  Then, she was happy to be put down so she could run to a "playground."

Cassandra enjoyed see the Koi in the pond.  I think she also wanted to play with the water.  This house backed up to creek and they had some good size insects.

Cassandra is fond of climbing.  Playgrounds, benches, chairs, parents, and of course swings.  I think this ended up being her favorite house on the tour.  The only one on the tour she might have liked more had a pool. 

The second house we visited was in an older part of town.  The old outdoor kitchen had been turned into a flower planter.  For me, the odd thing about this is the current craze now is to have an outdoor kitchen as a party location.  Back then, it was just to get the hot oven / stove out of the house during the summer.

Cassandra like this house for the large open area in the back yard.  Daddy would put her down and she would try to run past Mommy to get at the garden or the tree swing.  She was having a lot of fun.

Next, we headed off to a "Japanese" garden.  Cassandra didn't like that she wasn't loose.  However, with the amount of grace inherited from Mom and Dad, letting her loose with all this hardscaping would have been a really bad idea.

After lunch, we dropped Cassandra off with Grandma.  Grandpa was busy with all the people touring his garden.  We did get this shot though.  Usually, clematis doesn't bloom on command so having this during the garden show was really nice.

After eating lunch and dropping Cassandra off for a nap, we headed off to visit more gardens.  What is interesting to me about this picture is that the creek overflowed a few weeks before the garden tour and took a lot of the mulch and a few plants downstream.  They did a good job of getting things back together again, didn't they? 

This lot had a lot of relief which is what you would expect with a creek in the back.  Don't want your house to flood after all.  They have a rather tall deck that a lot of people wouldn't be very happy with.

They also had instructions on how to make one of those mixed plant pots.  These have become pretty popular in the last few years.

Cassandra was still asleep so we went to the last garden without her.  This is the scenery you would see while relaxing in the pool. 

They also had a raised vegetable garden we forgot to get pictures of.  That had been taken out by a hailstorm a few days ago but they had replanted.  We did get the idea to try "Irish Spring" as a deterrent to bushy tailed rodents stealing our tomatoes.  We'll see how that experiment works this summer.