Longwood Gardens Trip!

This weekend we took a little trip for our anniversary. My parents bravely volunteered to take the kids overnight, so this was our first ever trip sans kids. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) They survived, by the way, and I don't mean the kids. Mom and Dad, that is. When we went to pick them upDad said that Tyler is very, very active. He even said that he doesn't think he has ever seen a kid so active. Dad had actually put his pills up on a high shelf so Tyler couldn't get to them, and guess what? The little bugger did. Fortunately they caught him in the act and no harm was done. The kid is definitely a fearless climbing fool.

Back to our trip, we went to Kennett Square, PA and visited Longwood Gardens. Even though we only saw about a third of it, we were impressed!! It is spectacular. We went in the afternoon and walked around everything that was open. We went back after dinner and saw the amazing lights. There are lights everywhere and it was quite beautiful. There is one room that was really amazing. We walked in and it was like a tropical forest with huge palm trees and interesting plants. It was dark, and it looked like a million green stars were twinkling everywhere: on the ceiling, on the plants, on the walkway. There were special green light bulbs hidden beneath some of the plants that cast green sparkles everywhere. It kind of looked like a million green fireflies. Each room of the conservatory had a different climate: desert, Mediterranean, rainforest, etc.. Everything was still decorated for the holiday season and each room had a living wreath appropriate to the climate.

My favorite wreath: covered in cactus and hens and chicks.

This is the largest room in the conservatory. You can see on the top left a huge Christmas tree at the end of a series of pools and fountains. The bottom left picture is a living tree made from cyclamen plants.



This is the DuPont summer house. The small picture on the left is their pantry....its quite a pantry. They have so much china its ridiculous. The large black safe in the bottom right picture is their silver safe (in the pantry). The picture on the top right is the built in towel drier. Below that is their HUGE fireplace which has a swinging arm for the kettles to hang on.

This is inside the DuPont's personal conservatory which connects the two wings of their summer house. Nice, huh?


Here is a display of some of Mrs. DuPont's miniature collection. There were even tiny (and I do mean TINY) wine goblets and a centerpiece of holly in the middle of the table.

I'll post more pictures tomorrow, which might be a bit overkill but it was just so darn pretty! I promise to post a picture of 'Old Man Cactus,' which is pretty amusing.