Dear Summer, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways....

I am totally in love with summer right now. Smell of fresh hay mown fields, grilling meat and campfires, basil on your fingertips after brushing the herb garden, sun so hot and bright you can't wait to find a pool, fresh lemonade and homegrown salads, and the absolute best: perfect nights of 72 degrees with dancing lightning bugs. It doesn't get any better than this!

Mike and I took a trip to St. Louis for a friend's wedding last weekend. In addition to getting to see bunch of old friends from college and attend our friend's beautiful wedding, as well as a surprise visit with Mike's family, we were able to see both the St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botanical Garden. Both were awesome! The days were soooo hot, we actually sought out the penguin house at the zoo while waiting for the wedding reception to keep from sweating to death (good idea, Elisa!). Unfortunately, we forgot the camera! But here are the highlights from the giant botanical center grounds:

-- Daylily garden. Seriously. I don't even like daylilies that much, but there were thousands of varieties, some which were really cool looking, each one different!

-- Rose garden: actually not that picturesque in the middle of a sweltering day- there's not shade and it's just a bunch of similar looking plants that don't look very showy in bright light, but it smelled wonderful. I'm interested to see how other rose gardens are done. I think they should be landscaped more, maybe with some filler plants.

-- The Climatron tropical garden dome: it's just cool to wind around inside and look at exotic plants, orchids growing in natural conditions, etc. And yes, it was cooler inside the tropical garden dome than outside!

-- Waterlilies! Have you seen these things before? They're no ordinary pond lilies. They're like 6 feet tall, and so beautiful! How did I not even know these things existed?

-- A jasmine plant, that smells exactly like jasmine tea!

-- Patchouli plant in the herb garden. Smells exactly like patchouli. Sometimes it's interesting to see how the products we're familiar with are pulled directly from nature!

And tons more. I'm looking forward to going back, and finding time to visit other botanical gardens!