Summer is a time for socializing with Grandma Schultz. At 93 Marge enjoys leaving Heartsong, her assisted care center only in the summer. Winters in Wisconsin bring the kind of cold breezes that make you want to stay where you are warm and familiar.

Sara and I know the feeling. We spend winters in either Florida or the Southwest.

Add to it the fact that Marge and Bill, her Yatzie partner don’t like to miss their daily game, summers are the times for short and fun adventures.

Grandma Schultz also enjoy our new, well somewhat used convertible as it is easy to get in and out and somehow when you are 93 it is a good feeling to feel the warm breezes rumple your hair and see the blue sky, green fields, roadside wildflowers and perched hawks. Marge sees it all and will tell you.

So recently it was off to Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison to see the annual Butterfly Exhibit. Hundreds of colorful butterflies are released in a tropical rain forest. They land on plants, feeders and your arms. Marge had a ball.

Then it was a tour through the gardens. The water lilies in the wet garden were magnificent as were the roses.

Before going home it was off to the University of Wisconsin Botany greenhouse to see the famous sink plant, Amorphophallus titanium. One of the world's largest and most malodorous flowers, the titan arum, bloomed inside the UW-Madison Botany Greenhouse. This was the third ever bloom in Wisconsin and one of less than 15 recorded blooms in the United States.

http://www.botany.wisc.edu/titanarum/

Grandma Schultz was whisked to the front of the line; at 93 you have certain privileges. Hopefully, she will have a chance to see another bloom but if not this one was unique. And yes they really do grow up to an inch a day, smell like rotting flesh and the bloom is all over and two to three days……………


The day was completed with a trip to McDonalds, mom’s favorite restaurant and home…………..may have skipped Yatzie with Bill but oh well……..are a lot of days for that that…….not to many to see Titan Arum………..