Chicago:  Part Three

On Saturday, we dressed for a rainy day and headed to the Chicago Botanic Garden. It was well worth the trip! The park is divided up into smaller gardens, which made it feel very manageable and non-overwhelming.

Flowers from the prairie garden:




Pretty in pink:




I really liked the vegetable and fruit garden. They were showcasing some wacky space-saving methods for growing fruit trees (this one's a pear tree):


This section also boasted cabbages about three times the size of my head. They looked pretty menacing, really:

(photo by the bibliophile, embellishment by Evilducky)

More pretties:




In the water garden, I dropped the crumbs of my snack into the pond to feed the little fish...which caused much bigger fish to show up for their best Jaws impression:

As part of the weekend's Japanese Garden Festival, there was a bonsai display:

In the English garden:

the bibliophile, rabidmonkey, the apathetic one, and Evilducky heading into the Zen Garden


After the Botanic Garden, we went to the Heartland Cafe for lunch. Other than the terrace roof leaking on the first two seats I tried sitting in and the extra-powerful onions in my chicken salad, it was a really good lunch.

Once we got back to the house, we played a game of Set, which I picked up on my San Franciso trip for the express purpose of playing it with this group of friends. I didn't think I'd be very good at it, since it requires spatial / pattern oriented thinking, which I don't excel at in most cases. Howevah, I kicked serious ass. Final scores?

Nick, champion of all games but this one:  13
J-Dog:  15
the apathetic one:  16
the bibliophile:  20
Evilducky:  26
rabidmonkey:  29
velocibadgergirl:  54

That's right, fifty fucking four! Woot!

Set really is a brainbending game, so after we finished the game, we had to take a dessert break:

flourless chocolate torte, tiramisu, and bread pudding with vanilla semifreddo

Upon our return, we played the superfun Blokus, which I'm definitely thinking about buying to add to the home arsenal.



I think game night was by far the best night of the trip. Being touristy is great, but nothing beats a night with friends around a game table.

On Sunday morning, we went to the Original Pancake House, where we ate the best buttermilk pancakes ever and had one of those pinballing, madcap, all-over-the-map conversations that you can only have among really good friends, the kind that makes me wish wholeheartedly that one of us would come up with a working design for a teleporter, just so we could all meet up for breakfast every Sunday morning.

Sláinte, my friends! Thank you for letting me be a part of something this kickass and special. I love you all!



For more Botanic Garden photos, hit Shutterfly.

Playing:  an old mix CD

Reading:  Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (sequel to the fantastic The Lies of Locke Lamora)