Previous entries: Part 1, Part 2.
We got back to Edmonton and dropped the car off. Over half the deposit I’d put on it got refunded, since we didn’t keep the car the full week. That was pleasant.
My memory grows hazy of what we did–I know there was much playing with little Miss J, and Kathleen got birthday cupcakes, and we went to the swimming pool again. One thing that I distinctly remember was visiting the Muttart Conservatory, which is always an awesome experience, but it’s somehow double-awesome in the winter.
The Muttart is a set of four connected pyramids, each one featuring a variety of plants from a different ecozone. There’s a temperate pyramid, a desert one, a tropical one, and a rotating “show” pyramid. When we were there, the show was “The Birth of Spring” or something similar, and so the plants in there were things like crocuses and other early-blooming plants.
(Which makes me feel all poetical:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
–T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
But enough of that.)
Photos:
What kind of flower is this? Well, it’s pink.
Orchids. There were all kinds of orchids in the tropical pyramid.
My darling wife, posing with some flowers.
There were some large goldfish (sorry, koi) in one of the pyramids. (Tropical, if I recall correctly.)
More orchids.
A banana tree.
Some of the flowers in the show pyramid.
The Wizard of Winter, losing his grip on the thawing land.
This is called “Crown of Thorns”. I nearly stepped in it. That would’ve hurt more than a little bit.
We also played some cards. Quite a lot of cards, actually.
I can’t remember if I won or lost this particular game, but I suspect I didn’t.
And then we got on the train, and came home.
It’s not the most comfortable sleep ever, but it served.
Yours truly in the dome car, about twenty kilometers from home.
Interested in prints of my photos? Let me know, and we can work something out.