Our friend, Martha Birney, recently invited us along with Mart & Bob Larson to join her at the Denver Botanical Garden to view their Orchid Show. We are all members of the Garden, and it is one of our favorite spots in the city in all seasons. My photo library is full of flower pictures going back to the time we first arrived in Denver more than a decade ago.

This show, while not large, did not fail to impress. If you are like us, you can’t pass up the orchids for sale at the supermarket, but given the dryness of our climate and the less than ideal growing conditions in our apartment, we have to treat them almost like cut flowers. You buy them, knowing that the blooms will last a month or, if you are lucky, three; but whatever the time, once the blooms have fallen off, you are faced with the dilemma of throwing them away or placing them in some forgotten corner, never to bloom again & then to be discarded at some later time when plant shelf space becomes scarce. (Actually you can sometimes coax them into rebooking if you happen to have an facing window and a lot of patience!)

But fortunately the Garden has the staff, resources, and conditions to grow a large variety of these lovely blossoming plants. They don’t have a detectable perfume, but boy are they stunning.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit at the Garden, and then Martha treated us all to a sumptuous meal at a new Indian Restaurant, Curry & Grill 2. The food is wonderful with delicate flavors and just the right spiciness for our American palate. The staff were warm and welcoming and the service excellent. There were just a few other diners, which encouraged us to linger and talk, and we never felt any urgency to leave. We’ll definitely go back & soon.

The time spent with Mart & Bob is bittersweet these days for Martha B and us. They told us recently that they have decided to sell their apartment and move to the Quad Cities to be near their son, Isaac, daughter in law, Megan, and two young grandsons, Ezra & Jasper. Knowing how important Bryn, Joel and Charlie have been to us since our move to Denver, we can’t blame them, but we are certainly going to miss them immeasurably. Almost every Sunday, one of us hosts for brunch and then a very competitive card game of Wizard; we won’t know what to do with ourselves once they are gone!