Flower Power - Mendocino Botanical Garden

For anyone learning how to use their big fancy camera, flowers are the best unwilling subjects around.  They're always pretty and look great with a macro lens.  Plus you can take your time, which is always nice when you're inexperienced.

We specifically hit this botanical garden because you could bring dogs.  Maddie loves a good rhododendron.

There were all kinds of flowers in all kinds of colors.  I grouped them by color so you wouldn't have to look at quite so many flower close-ups.

Lots of dahlias were housed in a special dahlia garden (and apparently those are the only yellow flowers in the place).

These aren't exactly green "flowers," but I needed to complete the rainbow, people.

It's easier to find blue flowers than it is to find green ones (but if you were at my wedding you will know there are plenty of green flowers out there...somewhere).

Purple was by far the most popular color at the garden - not sure if it's the season, the location, or if that's just life.

Some of the white flowers were the coolest, though.  I especially liked the one in the top left, which honestly looked fake and like crinkled tissue paper.

The thing that made the Mendocino Botanical Garden stand out was that in the front there were plenty of manicured gardens like any other botanical garden, but then there is a half mile trail that goes through the woods and leads to the ocean.  Plenty of streams went through the woods and lead the way.

Tell me this isn't the coolest thing you've ever seen at a botanical garden.

Well, we saw a deer too, which was also pretty surprising for a botanical garden.  The deer just stood there staring at us.  John said it's a defensive move, but let's be honest, it's pretty easy to spot this guy.  He's lucky Maddie isn't a fierce one.