mistressofmuses | Denver Botanic Gardens: Part 1

Today we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens! I love the gardens - my mom was a volunteer for years when I was a kid, so I have a lot of childhood memories of it, and it's just a beautiful place. Today was also nicely not-crowded! It was a bit humid, and still smokey, but it was pleasant in the gardens themselves.

I think I'll split my pictures into two posts/days, just because there are a lot of them.

The Waring House, which holds most of the admin offices. But it's a really pretty building. And the Dave Chihuly sculpture "Colorado," which is a permanent installation.

A very picturesque clematis growing up the wall and lantern.

This lily looks fake, lol. It looks like it's made of satin or something.

An absolutely gorgeous lotus.

Tiger flower. I don't remember seeing these previous years, but there were lots in all sorts of colors.

Usually I call this building the "greenhouse", though it's not really one. Sometimes it's rented out for part of a wedding or a photoshoot for something. But I really liked this picture of it.

This dragonfly sat super still for quite a while, letting us get lots of pictures. This is one of my favorite pics of the day, probably - I love how visible all the wing veining is.

At this point we wandered over to the restaurant and Alex and I split a sandwich. (Delicious!)
Then it started to look like rain, and we got some waves of cooler air, so we decided to head to the Japanese garden, because Alex wanted to be sure we'd get to see the koi, in case the weather really did get bad.

Koi in the Japanese garden. As soon as people walk out on the little platform, they come to beg for food, lol. The light-colored one was HUGE. There were also a lot of solid dark-colored ones, which you couldn't see until they came up to beg.

Also in the Japanese garden, the tea house. This is the one building that's still closed post-covid, but it's still pretty from the outside. It looks nice, tucked away in the greenery.