Geaux Tigers!

In honor of the UCLA vs. LSU game in the regionals this evening, I thought I'd share the new ESPN logo for LSU.  I absolutely love it!

Yummie's

Yes, the name of this restaurant is really Yummie's.  It's a soul food place that Tony recently discovered a few blocks from our house.

As you walk in the front door, the guy is right there next to the entrance grilling up your food.  At least you know that it's fresh!

The menu is very simple.  Each day, there are 5 meats and 8 or 9 sides to choose from.  For $8.99, you get one meat plus 3 sides and your drink.

LSU Alumni Association Crawfish Boil

Trust me, we ate a lot more than this small pile!  The alumni association flew up 970lbs of crawfish for the event this year and it was delicious!

Feeding the Ducks in Lafayette Square Park

Baby ducklings!  My favorite is the mostly yellow one.  She's precious!

The swans were so mean.  They kept chasing off the baby geese and baby ducklings.

Sugar wanted to play with the ducks so badly.  He finally decided to just lounge on the bench and enjoy the view.

Sugar and the Garden

Sugar oversees the planting of the garden. 

We were just happy that he wasn't rolling around in the potting soil!

More photos from the Botanical Garden

I liked the way that this lettuce looked so much that we bought a pack of seeds from the gift shop and planted them in our garden.  They look like little flowers!

Tower Grove House was the country home of the Missouri Botanical Garden founder Henry Shaw.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to tour the inside.  By the time that we made it to this area, we'd be in the gardens for four hours and my normally pleasant husband was tired of looking at flowers.

Henry Shaw is buried here amongst the gardens near his country home.  The stained glass is gorgeous.

Formal and Informal Rose Gardens

The botanical gardens have both a formal and an informal rose garden.  My favorite was the informal garden just because I loved the fountains in it.  Regardless, they were both gorgeous.  I think that my favorite thing about the gardens is how they encouraged you to get off the path and walk amongst the flowers.  You would even see children climbing trees throughout the park.  We definitely took advantage of stopping to smell the flowers while touring the roses! 

Pictures from the informal rose garden:

The formal rose garden is the second most popular spot in the gardens for a wedding.  There was one set to begin about an hour after we left.  It's a smaller venue, but I didn't like how it's the first thing that you see as soon as you enter the gardens through the front entrance.  Definitely not the most private area!

In the back of this picture, you can see the Linnean House.  It's the oldest continually operating greenhouse west of the Mississippi and is home to all of the gardens Camelias.  Unfortunately, they bloom in the winter, but we will be back to view them this November!  It was originally built to house the citrus trees, palms, and other tender plants over winter.