This post is part of my 52 Colors Project. You can see all of the posts here.

Photo by me

What crazy person goes to a botanical garden during winter and expects to see flowers blooming in the fields?

That’d be me.

Two Thursdays ago, I woke up with the burning desire to go see flowers in their carefully cultivated habitat. After a couple of tweets from Kerry convincing me clouds were a good thing when in it comes to photography, I grabbed my camera bag and headed off to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.

The weather was warm, the sun was filtered, and it felt good to take a day off and just go. Except I realized I made a big mistake almost immediately upon my arrival. Everything was brown, which was the exact opposite of what I was looking for. Oh, that’s right, it’s February here, and North Texas just had two weeks of record-setting cold temperatures. Duh. Way to think it through, B.

In my own defense, I’m not a flower person, so things like “growing seasons” confound me. Also, the warm weather had me positively giddy. That’s why I couldn’t think straight. I was delirious. (That sounds good, right? Right.)

Since I drove all the way out there, I made the best of it and spent the majority of my time in the Japanese Garden just working on my shots and playing with my camera. There were only a handful of people there, which was awesome, since no one really saw me take 20 shots of a branch. I opted out of the conservatory this time in favor of making it back before rush hour… and then promptly broke down on the way home.

Insert a tired, impatient sigh here. Luckily, I managed to pull into the parking lot of a Tex-Mex restaurant before anything bad happened to my engine. At least I got some tacos while I waited.

Three hours and a rescue from Dad later, I walked in my door with a fixed car. I will say that I’m glad that a) I spent time in a serene garden that morning because it turned out I needed the serenity, and that b) my dad’s got a huge well of patience to offset my car frustrations.

Photo by me

Anyway, it’s a double post today to make up for missing last week’s 52 Colors post.

Week 8 is of the patina on the knobs of a bridge in the Japanese garden. Something about it just captured my eye, so I took 20 pictures of it, too. Week 9 is one of the only spots of color I saw in the gardens. Is it possible it’s a cabbage or a cabbage-related flower? It kind of looks like one to my untrained flower eye.

Now I just need to wait for the flowers to actually bloom, but when they do, look out. Anybody know when that will be, by the way? Just for future reference.

P.S. Don’t miss Day 2 of the Color Palette Blog Walk! Today’s bloggers are:

Karen at Creative Thoughts and Inspirations
Julia at UlvDesign
Jessa at The ReArtingDotNet Blog
Lyn at Lyn Foley Jewelry

Click on over to see lovely palettes they’ve created!