Red Powder Puff Flower

It’s the MLK holiday weekend. At least for those so fortunate to get the holiday off, like Anne, or those who simply choose to make it one, like me. For years at Spacely Sprockets, the union has always gotten MLK Day off, but as a so-called free enterprise employee, I never have. Since when are unions no longer part of our free enterprise economy? This is the one holiday that we don’t all share. That it is MLK Day, I find especially galling. So, this year, to quote President Obama, I said “Bucket!” As an aside, Anne’s mom, Bubs, was born the same year as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He died at the age of thirty-nine.

Today, we went to the gardens. It was one part photo-safari and one part winter get away. Imagine yourself teleported into the middle of the Amazon rainforest. If you’re like me and you arrive from these colder climes, the first thing that you will see “or not see” is your fogged up eyeglasses. After you wipe those clean, it is time to dump the gloves, hat and parka, because you are now sweating in January. You have landed in a tropical rainforest, not to be confused with an ordinary jungle. You are in the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Climatron, a geodesic domed tropical oasis from winter.

Once the fog cleared, we were able to start snapping photographs of the tropical flowers there, like the powder puff pictured here. Eventually, we got too warm and had to bail back out into the cold. We did the grand tour, out around the Japanese gardens, before heading back. By way of lunch, we did the London Tea Room, on Morganford. We had visited the place last year, as part of the ‘Tweed’ bicycle ride, but today was the first time we actually took tea there. I had their Churchill, which is an Earl Grey blend and Anne had a more fruity concoction. It was very crowded.