Brooklyn Botanic Garden

It was hazy and cloudy. A soft day as they say in Ireland. Cool and damp.  So I thought it would be a perfect day to visit the famous Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In my usual "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of planning I just printed out some directions from Mapquest and off we went.

Let me just say in defense of Mapquest that Brooklyn can be tough to navigate. I know that and it’s been years since I was familar with driving around there.  This resulted in us getting hopelessly lost.  Mapquest kind of got us in the general vicinity in the longest way possible and then left us hanging.  In a neighborhood that was mkaing me very nervous. Or maybe it was the police all around us, dressed in riot gear. Not sure. Didn’t hang around to find out.

I am very comfortable driving with the children and not at all upset to get lost. Especially when there is no set destination time.  It’s just an opportunity to find out something new  is what I usually think.  In this instance there was nothing good to find out. So I placed a call to Dave, in his office, with the entreaty, ‘get us out of here’. He used Google Maps to find us a way and we were shortly out of the danger zone and on to the gardens.

It was really beautiful.  There is a Japanese Garden,  Lily Pool Terrace, a Bluebell Wood (we have to go back in May) a Rose Garden, Conifers, and an absolutely enchanting Discovery Garden. The children were able to help water the plants and assemble their own water gardens to take home. Then they spent quite a long time exploring the little nooks and crannies of this charming spot.

There is no picnicing at the garden so we stopped for a hearty ‘New Yorker’s lunch’ of hot dogs in the cafe.

The drive home, thanks to Dave and the glories of text messaging, was less exciting. I’ll put our pictures in an album in the sidebar. I hope you enjoy them.