Japanese Gardens

Today our home school group took a field trip to the Japanese Gardens in Fort Worth. This is part of the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens which are beautiful especially this time of year. Every summer they host Concerts in the garden and if you have never been you should check it out this year. They have tables and lawn seating...all the shows are amazing and most end with fireworks! There is always excitement. One year Rick ran over my mother in law's foot at the valet parking stand. He thought she was in the car but she still had one foot on the pavement. She was probably 75 when that happened. It is truly amazing that she survived being his mom.

Anyway, here are some pics from the field trip.


This picture is part of the entrance of the gardens. An interesting fact...in Japan, buildings were built like this with the loose stone at the bottom to keep the building from shifting during an earthquake. The stones would give a little and the rest of the structure would stay put.



This is the ancient Ginkgo tree...where Ginkgo Biloba comes from. I'm not sure of the spelling. This is also a favorite of the T-Rex (in case you were wondering). These plants have been around for a long time.




The Japanese believe that flowers, especially brightly colored ones are too shocking to look at so they focus on plants with different shapes, heights and shades of green. Very peaceful. I think they are on to something.




The building in the background is a pagoda. They are always five levels and were used as a storehouse. Lesser value items on the lower floors and treasures in the top section. If someone was trying to rob you it would be quite obvious.




Here are Sydney and Sarah feeding the enormous fish in the pond.



This is Sydney and Angel. I'm not certain what they are looking at but it looks really cool.





Here is Sydney stepping carefully across the pond.