Royal Botanic Gardens and our own backyard

First off, congrats to Scott and Dee on a beautiful baby girl!! We wish we were closer so we could see all these cuties in person. However, we fully expect many pictures and updates in the next year (at least) of these two great girls, Emily and Sarah. What a blessing they will be to the families God has placed them in.
Now on to the pics of our little blessings....
Last week there was a great Science Festival in Edinburgh. We went to the Royal Botanic Garden one day to take in some of the activities of the festival. It was our first time there but we will be going back for sure! Already there were tons of flowers and trees in bloom, it was very beautiful and I can only imagine what it will look like come summer.
So after taking in some of the science activities, we had a nice picnic lunch and then walked through the gardens. It was a great, warm, sunny day and the children had fun running and watching the ducks in the pond. Here are a few pics from our day:

Here are the children enjoying a race in the gardens. Shawn and I were sitting on a bench and watching the race which went around the big tree you see in the center.

And here they are coming around the tree...a little hard to see H and J in the background but they are there!
Here is everyone (except me of course) walking down one of the paths in the gardens...
And then stopping for a pose under this great tree

We really are enjoying this city!!

And here are some pictures from our own backyard which I took last week. We have some great trees and flowers which I look forward to seeing in full bloom very soon.

This one is so neat...it is actually growing out of the trunk of a tree. There are dozens of these clusters all over the tree trunk and it's branches.

And all along the back walkway are these shrubs/bushes which I thought were just going to be greeen. However, they have these great red flowers all over them now.

Here's a close up for all your horticulturalists!