Saturday, June 9, 2012

the ornamental gardens

Ornamental Gardens

On Friday evening, after a pretty big thunderstorm, Lilah and I headed to the Ornamental Gardens, situated here in the city.

Earlier in the day I had googled online for things to do in Ottawa, just to see if there was anything happening this weekend that we could enjoy. While browsing through the list, I saw something about a Peony Rose tour at the Ornamental Gardens. As much as I adore Peony Roses, a Peony Rose tour certainly isn't my cup-of-tea and definitely wouldn't be Lilahs either! However, I decided, since we both love the Ornamental Gardens so much, that maybe we could visit them ourselves... you know, without the guided tour part!

So, we did. And not only were the Peony Roses in bloom, a lot of beautiful flowers were blooming - blooming beautiful as the saying goes. Lilah loves the great outdoors, she had a wonderful time: measuring herself to flowers, matching her clothes colours to flowers, smelling the flowers, swinging on branches, checking out the fish pond, singing along with the birds, searching for bugs and we also played our own version of i-spy around the gardens, I would describle flowers and she would find them. Of course, she also left with an armful of treasures, ...including 5 pine cones (because she's 5 years old, of course!) some pine needles (to give me injections!) and a few other rocks and twigs and leaves she found lying around.

Another thing she gathered up, were petals, that had fallen to the ground from the Dog Roses. When she was picking up the petals it brought back some childhood memories for me... as a child I used to pick the petals, put them into a bowl with a little water and smush them up to make my own brand of perfume. So I was telling Lilah my childhood story and she thought it was a great idea - she couldn't wait to get home to do the same! After she made her own perfume that evening, I asked her what she was going to call it, I made a suggestion that maybe she could call it rose perfume or something along those lines... but my independent girl had her own idea, she said "It's called Petal Perfume". It really did smell good!

I'm going to apologize in advance for the number of pictures I've included in this post! Decision making definitely isn't my strong point.

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous10 June, 2012

    cutest thing! Lilah is a cute purple, my favorite color =) I loved Petal Perfume, would like to feel *-* Lilah is so beautiful in the midst of the flowers seems one of them
    <3

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  2. I used to make rose perfume too when I was a child.....making a mental note to do it with Gracie.

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  3. Looks like a great place to visit. Lots of beautiful flowers and a perfect place for photo shoot ;)
    Have a great weekend!
    isa

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  4. Beautiful photos... I can see why it was so hard to choose what to post.

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  5. Great shots of those georgeous peony's, and your georgeous Lilah. You really can tell that she enjoys the great outdoors.

    Gin =)

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  6. These photos are gorgeous!

    It looks like you both had such a lovely time. What a beautiful place. And I love how Lilah wanted to make her own perfume and was determined to name it (and keep that name.) Sounds like my girl. lol.

    Gorgeous gorgeous photos.

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  7. These photos are so lovely! It sounds like you had a beautiful Friday evening together. I love the little things you and Lilah did to pass the time together. And oh, I love the idea of making petal perfume! Claire is going to love this idea! But we'll have to wait a little longer here; not much is blooming yet. It'll be another couple of weeks before my favourite flowers - peonies - are in full bloom. I can't wait, especially now that I've seen your photos!

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  8. Lorna Quin12 June, 2012

    Dear Jill,

    Been looking at your blog- your little girl is so lovely!!!

    I have a friend who is interested in writing, and would you be able to recommend any women's magazines that you might read in Canada?

    Will catch up during the summer.
    Lots of love,
    Lorna Quin xx

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  9. So beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!

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