Sonya's Blog - Day 167 - The Arlie Gardens

Sonya’s Blog - Day 167 - December 6th - The Arlie Gardens

We wanted to check out The Airlie Gardens on our last day. They are supposed to be really pretty and something to see. We checked out the website to see if we could take Kizmet, but she was not allowed in. Poor Kizmet.

We hung out in the morning and enjoyed the warmth of the day. The sun was very hot and there was no wind today, so it made it a very nice day. Kizmet and I enjoyed walking around and then lazing around outside in the sunshine. I read my book and Kizmet rolled around in the sandy gravel and got herself as dirty as possible while playing with her ball. Blake has wanted me to read Pillars of the Earth for a very long time, so I finally started reading it. It’s about 1000 pages long, so it is no small commitment. So far I am not sure about it, the prologue was interesting, however, I absolutely hated the first chapter. We will see if it grows on me as I didn’t mind the second chapter as much.

After lunch we headed out to Airlie Gardens. The history of the gardens dates back to 1886 and today there are 67 acres of historical gardens to check out. The first Azalea Festival was here in 1948 and has grown to an annual event that attracts thousands of visitors to Wilmington. There is also an oak tree that dates back to 1545. They have it all set up with Christmas lights and activities for Enchanted Arlie during the evening. They were all sold out for tonight so we would just have to enjoy it during the day. I loved the lake with the trees overhanging and the Spanish Moss hanging down towards the water. They also had a lovely Pagoda and more in bloom than I thought there would be. We wandered around for a couple of hours checking everything out. My only complaint was that there was not a lot of signage to tell you the names of things, which was unfortunate as we really did not know what was what. Ah well, it was pretty all the same.

When we got back home it was already cooling down and getting dark we played a game and then had supper. I was going to read some more of my book, but I ended up watching some clips from The Graham Norton Show instead. I find him really funny and the interviews are always lighthearted and funny as well. Natasha joined me after a bit because I was laughing so much and we had some good laughs watching the antics.

Sonya