So today it dawned dark and dreary and I was fully expecting rain all day. It was the day for our Rotary Garden Tour so it was a bit disappointing that the sun wasn't shining. We got up and made ourselves a pic-a-nic lunch of liner sausage on buns and some fruit and a thermos of coffee. We saw the most beautiful gardens. I can't tell you how it made us feel about our garden when we saw these gardens with thousands of dollars spent on the them . No junk in these gardens. Not one birdhouse with a roof that is rotten, or even a garden ornament with rust on it or the paint all peeling. Do these people have no imagination? We took some notes of plants that we thought we might like in our garden and rambled on to garden after garden. Almost all of them had water features of some sort. I told Hank I felt very inadequate in the water feature department. I need something bigger and better. It's not gonna happen but I had to voice what I thought would make our garden even more outstanding. By early afternoon the sun had made an appearance, and so we decided to take in Minter Gardens, as it was included with the ticket. I was really disappointed. Even though we just meandered through Minter's, we were out within an hour. It just didn't thrill me like it used to. Hardly any color and the same plants over and over. There was hardly anyone there. Maybe just over a dozen cars in the parking lot. The price at the window said $25.00 per person and , to me, it just isn't worth that. By the time we got home and settled in, a storm had come up. The wind was blowing and the rain was coming down in torrents. Some thunder and lightning and then that dead calm like nothing had happened. We lost power and as we looked out the window in the back, we noticed that the wind had ripped our gazebo to shreds. The frame was all bent and the top is not fixable. We put it back up the best we could and now we will have to shop for another top. While on our tour today we did stop at a garage sale. Bought a little table and chairs for the Magnolia Room. The other one we had in there was always too big. I think we are the only ones that go on a garden tour and stop at garage sales. haha So we saw some awesome gardens today that had trains running right around them. This one was the one that inspired me. The garden itself wasn't great, but the layout for the trains that were running, was over the top. I could have watched it for a lot longer and I really wanted to stay and play.