The Titan Arum

For the past week, the world has been on the edge of it's seat awaiting a new arrival. We've been scanning the headlines anxiously for the news.

And, finally, today we saw the announcement. Buried under headlines about royal babies, traveling popes and natural disasters - there it was. The corpse flower at the National Botanical Garden was in bloom.

Of course, we quickly rearranged our schedules to make sure we got to see the rare flower. Corpse flowers take years, and sometimes decades, to produce a bloom. And, they only last 24-48 hours before collapsing.

Afternoon meetings were cancelled, projects were finished and out-of-office notices were posted. Melinda interrupted the kids' naps and loaded them onto a Metro train downtown. Matt was already downtown so he joined us on the way.

Mom: "We're going to see a BIG flower."

Adelaide: "Oh, can I pick it?" 

The "Titan Arum" - over 7 feet tall!

 Adelaide was pretty impressed 

by how tall it was. 

However, the pineapple bush impressed her even more...

We were a little disappointed that the flower wasn't more putrid and, well, stinky. It is a corpse flower, after all, and they are supposed to smell awful. But, we were there past peak bloom and the flower struggled to compete with the sweet smelling flowers all around it... not to mention the not so sweet smelling crowd of onlookers (it was hot and humid today). So, every once in a while we got a whiff of "eau de zombie" but for the most part all we could smell was body odor and orchids.

After we had enjoyed our fill of the impressive and truly incredible flower, we took the kids to the Children's Garden to get their wiggles out. The kids loved playing in the small house, getting "lost" in the bamboo forest and running through the ivy tunnels.

Kids only! 

Peak-a-Boo!

Eleanor had some strong objections on

leaving the children's garden.

So, cross that off the life accomplishment's list. Seeing a corpse flower was always one of Melinda's dreams (you did know she's a nerd, right?).