March 31st, 2026

Howdy do!

Hope you all had a terrific weekend.  Tim and I met up with our friends, the Minocks on Saturday at the Botanic Gardens in Tampa and had an outstanding time!  Well, of course we did, we always have a great time on Minock Day!

Would you like to hear about it?  Great!

The park itself is divided up into different sections which makes perfect sense and I'm pretty sure we visited them all, eventually, after wandering twisting curving paths, through gates and under arches and over bridges, marveling at all we saw.

 There was a wedding taking place in the Wedding Garden, which is kind of perfect.  The bride was beautiful, as all brides are, the groom was smiling so hugely his face was in danger of splitting open, and everyone who attended was dressed up and smiling and looking genuinely happy. (Yes we peeked in before it started of course we did!)

One of my favourite parts was the children's garden, naturally.  And we took time to play with the things that ought to be played with thus satisfying the small child inside us all.  There were things that made music and things to climb and clamber over and things that we honestly had no idea what to do with.  Enjoyed it all.

There was a tropical fruit garden with enormously tall Mango trees (no idea how they harvest fruit that high up!) and towering banana trees among others. There were even fruits that I did not immediately recognize and had to read the signs. Thank goodness for those signs!  

The herb garden was especially lovely. Some plants were in pots, others planted in the ground. It was fragrant, lush with bees and pretty garden decorations:

I was very taken by the lily ponds too; quiet, peaceful and contemplative. Sometimes that's exactly what I need:

The overall theme, naturally, was flowers. But there were a stunning variety of trees and shrubs too.  Along with that, almost as a package deal, is always birds, a few squirrels and lizards and bugs too  numerous to mention.   Here are some of the flowers and one of the birds:

Also was quite taken by the details in every direction: mosaics, benches shaped like butterflies, fountains, trellis's and more. There was just so much to look at we could have spent all day!

But we tore ourselves away from the blooming things and moved on to the other side of the gardens because there was also a Heritage Park to enjoy.  What's that you ask?  Well, it's a village of old buildings, some of them tricked out inside to represent era specific life!  Wow!  That's very cool.  

In addition to homes of various ages/sizes/ social strata there was also a General Store, a Model T era Auto Garage, a church, a doctor's office, a school, a train station and several other sorts of shops.  I was particularly taken by the way the kitchens were often separate from the main house in an effort to keep kitchen heat away from the rest of the building.  In a place with summers such a Florida has, I think that might still be a good idea!

I took no photos of the village, shame on me, as I was having too much fun oogling history. That's what this was, living history! Very Very Cool.

And what, you may ask, was the high ticket price for such a wonderful adventure?  It was free for nothing.  My favourite price.  Gratis. Can you believe it?  I have no idea how they manage to stay open and functioning and gorgeous without charging a dime, but they do. (donations cheerfully accepted naturally)

By the time we finished, we were ravenous and decided to have lunch at an nearby, adorable little restaurant called, Savory, which was quite good!  Both food and service checked all the boxes. We ate and talked and laughed and ate and talked some more.  Ultimately, we stayed, probably longer than we should have, but we were just having too much fun to break up the party.

As per usual, Minock Day was a terrific success!  We will find another adventure for a another Minock Day very soon, without doubt ;)