Garden Show Extravaganza

If you have never visited the Wichita Garden Show. . you don't know what you are missing!! I have missed the last two years but got to attend this year. It's a great way to welcome spring back to the neighborhood! One should be amazed at the exhibits brought in! Full size trees, mammoth boulders, and giant waterfalls can be found among thousands of blooming flowers and multiple tranquil ideas! I would LOVE, LOVE to live in a location that would be hospitable to lush, dense plantings like we find in these exhibits. Unfortunately, they would likely not fare too well in my hot, windy, dry climate!! Any who, I do get tons of ideas for things that I CAN pull off around here. . .Lucky for Jeremy, my partner in crime (whether he likes it, or NOT!).

The Kansas Farm Bureau Association sponsors a 4-H photography and horticulture judging class at the garden show. I jumped at the chance to take the boys. They started Friday night with classes for the kids about photography. I must say that even though I was a 4-H photography kid who used that knowledge with the school yearbook class, I have forgotten EVERYTHING that I learned concerning aperatures, and shutter speeds. I retained all the technique kind of stuff, but forgot anything technical. I am also relatively new to jump on board with digital cameras. I bought myself a new one last Christmas and got a middle road Canon powershot--which works very well for my needs. Next confession: I put the camera on auto and take pictures. . period. I may adjust it to the poor macro setting it has to get close up flower pictures, but other than that. . AUTO. So the classes that we sat through Friday night were on basic and advanced digital camera use. I was so excited to hear someone tell about all the functions my camera had that I forgot about after I read the manual. The boys have much cheaper cameras that Santa brought last year, and they have a significant number of these cool settings too. So they also learned some things. After the classes Friday night, we had an hour and a half for them to take pictures in the exhibit areas. The show was closed to the general public, which was very nice!

They shot a ton of pictures, many really bad ones, and some really good ones. I think that they both would have potential pictures for the fair. I also decided that we needed to get some time to just go out and take pictures in a relaxed setting, so we can play with those cameras. This opportunity was a little stressful in that, there were so many things to shoot, and so many things we heard about with changing settings and on and on, that it was pretty overwhelming!! I also decided that it much more fun to observe the garden show when you are not worrying about your children taking 5 million pictures of close up flowers or trying to show a grumpy tween how to move around and look for unusual angles. Hmmm, maybe that birthday party the night before wasn't SUCH a good idea after all!

At any rate, the boys loved the show and enjoyed the photo shoot. The picture above is one that Grant took using my camera. D didn't get to see any of the show until Saturday morning when the boys were doing the judging (luckily for us all, our friend Danny took him to do something else Friday night--he would have sent me over the edge by 10:00!). He was so much fun to watch. He couldn't imagine the scenes inside that building and he was just excited about it all! It really was a fun bonding experience for the four of us! So, if you ever get the chance to go check it out, you really can't imagine what it is like until you are standing at the foot of a 30 foot spruce trees looking at unbelievable water magic!