Weekend Things

After shopping on Saturday, we decided to head over to a local park with a conservatory (fancy name for a greenhouse). The hope was to see some more tulips in the park and walking through the conservatory is nice. Do like looking at plants from far away growing in a place they couldn’t really survive. In our world, these are “exotic tropical plants”. I wonder if someone from those regions would wonder why we would be putting those plants on display.

It turned out that there was a orchid show with an orchid sale. This turned out to be the best reason for going since the outdoor gardens are under construction and there were few tulips to be found. My wife is big into orchids. I have to steer her away when we see them in various stores because she’s running out of space and we can’t build a nice greenhouse. But some of these were varieties you can’t find at your local plant store so we came home with three new additions.

I never knew this but there are orchid societies made of people who make a hobby out of raising and showing orchids. I like plants and flowers but I’m terrible with house plants so it wouldn’t be for me. But I can understand the appeal and there isn’t anything wrong with playing with pretty flowers all day.

Yesterday, we went to the zoo. We had kind of a cold weekend. Not winter cold but still a reminder that the cold isn’t fully in the rear view mirror. Enough so that a few of the animals were not on display. And most of the activities (shows and keeper talks) don’t really start until we get closer to Memorial Day. Still, the place was full for a sunny but cold Sunday.

Our zoo also has a very large greenhouse and garden next to it. It used to be separate entrances but now you have to go through the gardens to get to the zoo. Again, there weren’t many tulips to be found. We did tour the greenhouse because they always have butterflies on display and it is hard not to be relaxed watching them flutter around from flower to flower.

I did take a couple of photos and posted them and now I wonder if it would be better to be more unplugged when doing something like this. Don’t have an issue with taking the photos because there are just things that need to be captured. It is the desire to post and see what kind of responses I get that become the problem.

On the one hand, I’m sure some people like to see stuff like that. I know I’ve got friends who take great pictures of birds and I enjoy seeing them. But if it is only about the likes and comments and you are checking to phone every so often to see who’s responded (guilty), then that seems like more of a problem. After all, if you are spending all your time checking the phone, are you really involved in the activity.

I was trying to actively reduce my time spent on Twitter/X. But I was shocked as to how easy it was to just call it up on the phone at breakfast and see what I missed overnight. Had to stop myself on multiple occasions. I mean most of what I read there just ends up making me mad and who wants to go around mad all day?

I used to think I didn’t have a problem with social media and I’m pretty sure my use of it is less than some. But it may be more of a problem than I think and probably best to continue to work on limiting my time spent on those apps. Especially true when I’m out and about – maybe better to focus on enjoying what I’m doing and not about who might like to see a photo or video.