Garfield Park Conservatory

Our field trip to the Garfield Park Conservatory was a lot of fun. I believe I enjoyed it as much as the kids did, if not more. The Conservatory in honor of Valentine's Day, was showing all of the different "sweet" plants that they grow there. We also had taste stations where we got to taste all the delicious things that these plants give us.
For instance we got to taste candied ginger, vanilla jelly beans (I love the vanilla plant!), non processed sugar, agave juice, dried fruits, and so much more. It was quite a treat, but by the end of the tour I felt as though a sugar cube explosion had just happened in my mouth.
We did decide that when we move to California we will do our best to have a vanilla plant, and some agave plants. We are also switching from sugar to agave nectar as our sweetener as it simply tastes better and is supposed to also be more beneficial for your health. It is low calories, non processed as it is naturally sweet, and has a lowest glicemic index than sugar itself. But again, it is simply yummy!
We did have a surprise tasting chocolate beans, before they were sweetened. Those are definitely not very good. We were expecting something bitter, but not quite as bitter as what we got. We ate one, but then they were giving them out again at several other stations and it was just too much for us.

As we were leaving we decided to go look in the gift shop for a plant to bring home. We are horrible gardeners altogether but do enjoy having plants in the house. We did find two fat plants, that we think we might be able to keep alive. One was an aloe plant, which we wanted to have anyways in the house as they can be quite useful, and the other we haven't found yet. It might be a delosperma algoense, but I might be entirely wrong.

The rest of the day wasn't quite as much fun, as we cleaned the house entirely in order to be ready for the board game play date that we have today. I haven't heard from anyone though, so I'm not even sure that anyone will show up. Nevertheless the house needed to be cleaned and we did a pretty good job of it, With everyone in on it, it also did not take as long as I was expecting it to.

All in all a very good day, and the kids started their blogs as well, so that will be interesting to see.