Earth With Her Ten Thousand Flowers

How can you deny the beauty of this? And really, there are many, many more than 10 thousand flowers at the tulip festival. I think it's more like a quarter of a million tulips. Something like that. It doesn't really matter though, because it was beautiful. The tulips above were probably some of my favorite, however, there were others that were just as lovely. Granted, tulips are not my favorite flowers, there are high up on the list, and how can you deny such glorious scenery as this:

I mean, really. It's too beautiful to describe in words. Thus, my gratitude that I brought my camera with me, that it had batteries, they died at the end of the gardens, and when the batteries did die, I had my phone to take last-minutes photos.

Picture from our wonderful tour guide.

I don't know why I have nothing with her in it, because she was amazing, but I guess that's how that works sometimes. Any who, this was my second date with Nate. I'm kind of surprised he wanted a second. (They usually don't... at least not in my experience.) But it was great. Nice, relaxed and no pressure. The best part is that I don't feel like he expects anything from me, at least not more than I'm capable of. I think this may be a first. Crazy, right? Why would I even consider dating guys who wanted me to be different or do crazy things I just didn't want to? Well, that's a long story I don't really want to get into here and now. Suffice it to say I once had no concept of self-worth and men took advantage of that... and I let them. That'll do. The point is, this is a sweet guy who I think genuinely likes me for me (despite my psychosis) which amazes and confuses me to no end. I'm no expert on dating, nor will I ever profess to be, so I have no idea how all this works anyway. Slow and steady wins the race, right? I don't know which race where, but I've heard this method works... so let's just see how this goes, shall we?

Now to more pictures... and I'll shut up for a bit.

From the carousel

Nesting owl

My favorite part about this, as beautiful as the gardens were, was that it wasn't "perfect". Yes, we got to change another flat tire. I don't know what it is about Nate, but there's always a flat tire to be had. He let me help... and I'm sure that wasn't fun for him, but I love this kind of stuff. I just love a good adventure, and what's an adventure if something unexpected doesn't happen? I thought it was fantastic.

So, even though I didn't get much homework done yesterday... at all, I felt productive and had a wonderful day. Oh, plus I made pumpkin chocolate chip cheesecake! It cracked... sigh, but it happens. That's why you cover the crack with a heavy chocolate drizzle, right?