I took a break from My garden to hang out at the Zoo garden this week-end.  Our Amazonia Docents met up on Saturday morning and got a personalized guided tour from our illustrious leader, whose name I will not mention without his permission.  He is so damn smart and I learn new things everytime I talk with him.  His smarts are not just with the plants, but also with the animals, so you can see there was  a lot of listening as we walked through the Rain Forest exhibit.

Sunday morning I returned to work the crowd, sharing what he taught us.  I happened to work with a fellow MG who is also a walking talking encyclopedia on all things Amazonia.  What a workout for my brain!  However, my lazy-like-a-fox strategy is to keep these people around for reference…    The animals were more active than I had Ever seen them, especially the howler monkeys who are pretty sluggish in the winter.  But doesn’t Spring perk us all up?

Opie the Porcupine

This Jaguar is named Beliza and she is the female part of our Zoo’s duo of the cats.  They have to be kept apart, as they are solitary creatures in the wild and the males and females only come together at breeding time.  These two have two daughters living, compatibly, in a zoo in New Jersey and there are no plans for them to ever breed again because, well, our world doesn’t actually need more jaguars in captivity.  I love her coat…

I walked across the street to a restaurant called “Toast”, where I had arranged to meet up with the Jrs. and Casey.  Toast is fairly new and I’ve heard great things about it, so was excited to try it out.  My crew had arrived before me and were waiting for a table.

The restaurant is right on the golf course and has a lovely patio and a small indoor dining area.  It was not full and I began to question why we were waiting to be seated.  The young lady was stammering and stuttering about how she could maybe put us at two tables, or maybe set us up on the patio.  I didn’t get it.

There’s 2 tables right there, I said, why can’t we just pull them together?  She said she could, but was clearly uncomfortable about seating us.  I pressed on to find out what the problem was, and it turns out a party of 25! people had marched in without any reservation or notice to them.  (they were still there)  If the venue had known, they would have staffed more and cooked enough, but as it was, the group had cleaned out the buffet!  So the kitchen was way behind, the servers were frantic, and what kind of people travel around in groups of 25???   Lunchtime on Sunday in Southern Indiana, it was probably an after-church group.  I hope that they just got a little out of hand this Sunday and that they don’t take their 25 to a different restaurant every week, upsetting the staff and offending other customers.  Perhaps they never worked in food service, but they messed the day up for a lot of people.  The server was clearly uncomfortable having to turn us away, but I’m glad for her honesty.  She could have just sat us down and we’d have figured it all out after waiting and wasting time.  I hope their day got better and that those 25 left a Huge Tip.  Please, call ahead if you are traveling with a group of more than 10-12–or even call ahead with that if it is a small restaurant like Toast.  I Will Return, though, as the food sounds yummy.

So we walked back to the Zoo and ate there.

The Jrs. went on to walk through the Zoo and we came back to work in the yard…   I’ve got about one more day of planting and moving and I’ll be done.  I’ll show you more garden on Wednesday, but I have to brag that I’ve already got some pretty good-size better boys on the vine!

Hope the sun is beaming rays of Peace and Joy all over you!  Soak it up…