I just went to bed, rolled over once, and then it was time to get up again. My fur didn’t even have a chance to get messy. That’s a good thing. I didn’t have to use that brush thing that The Lady made me bring along. The only good thing about having to be up and dressed before 6am is that The Lady and Mr. Guy had a surprise for me. They ordered one of the cool t-shirts that we brought for the picture taking people for me! It was a special monster-sized one and it was orange! The Lady’s was pink, but Mr. Guy and I, well all of the guys, got orange ones! How perfect is that?! It made me feel like part of the group even though I didn’t have one of those picture taking things around my neck.
Just like the picture of Mr. Guy and me at the falls, we look alike here, too! And its not just because of the orange shirts. It must be our handsomeness!
We went to Meadowlark Gardens at 6:30 in the morning. The picture taking people wanted to take pictures of flowers and other stuff that grows outside. All the bright colors of the flowers woke me up. Mr. Guy did not have enough coffee before we left the hotel so I’m not sure that he was completely awake.
I did not see any blue flowers on our walk through the garden, but I did see these pretty purple ones that looked like a great big ball.
They are called alliums. I told Mr. Guy and The Lady that we need to grow some of these in our garden at home.
Then I saw pretty orange flowers. The remind me of my horns. I’m not sure what these are called.
It think it may be something like echo rojo. Maybe this is why The Lady was using Spanish, sort of, yesterday! Echo rojo means red hot poker, I think.
The gardens also had a jangseung. Jangseung is a Korean word meaning a totem. In Korean villages, these poles were placed at the edges of villages to scare off demons.
If Mr. Guy was wearing his fancy black hat, he would look sort of like the man on the jangseung. Mr. Guy only looks frightening enough to scare off demons before he has had his coffee in the morning!
Saturday was a special day at the garden. They were celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Korean Bell Garden so there were speakers, and microphones, and a podium set up for the people who were going to talk. We did not stay at Meadowlark Gardens long enough to hear the presentation. I did take a minute to see what it would feel like to stand at the podium and pretend like I was talking to a whole crowd of people. Maybe someday, I will become a politician. If I do, I will be an honest one who does good things for all people…and monsters, even the monsters who have different colors of fur than I do.
We were all hungry when we left the gardens. We headed to downtown Leesburg, Virginia, which is where the picture taking people were going to spend a big part of their day. Though before they started taking pictures, we got some doughnuts!
Mr. Guy picked me up so that I could see all of the different kinds. Yummy!
And then it was time to walk around the town. There was so much to look at.
The Lady took lots of pictures in downtown Leesburg, but I was not in very many of them. I do like this one she took of Ms. Sherri as a photobomber! Ms. Sherri is one of the first of The Lady’s picture taking friends that I ever met.
Some of the other picture taking people took photos of me. Maybe they will share them with Mr. Guy and The Lady.
Mr. Guy carried me around all day and pointed out things that he thought might interest me.
We went to a cemetery and looked at headstones. Mr. Guy explained that these are markers that show where people who have died are buried. We looked at the names of the people and their birth and death dates. Some of them lived and died over two hundred years ago! Though I didn’t know any of the people who were buried here, it made me happy to think about them and say a prayer for them and let them know that they are not forgotten.
After we had walked around Leesburg a little more, we were tired and getting hungry again.
Once all of the picture taking people were also tired and hungry, we went to lunch.
After lunch we went to this place where there were lots of tents and lots of people. Some of the people were selling weird stuff like old furniture and car parts and signs. Mr. Guy said it was called a flea market. I’m glad that we were already there before he told me what it was called. I sure wouldn’t want to think that we were going to go someplace where all you can do is buy and sell fleas! I don’t even want to go someplace where they give you fleas for free! Fleas would be a disaster in my fur. And I wouldn’t want to share them with the canines and feline when I got home.
Again, after spending the afternoon wandering around and looking at all of the unusual stuff at the market, we were hungry again. Ms. Kay, one of the picture taking people invited all of us to her house for dinner. We had pizza and salad and wings and a fancy cake with ice cream on top.
And, she took a picture of all of the picture taking people and all of their friends and significant others. They let me be in the picture too! I think I kind of hid Mr. Guy. Oops!
It made me a very happy little blue and orange furry monster that everyone was so nice to me. I thought they might think that I was too silly to come along on their photowalk. Nope! They made me feel like one of them…but with just a shirt and no picture taking machine.
By the time we got back to our hotel. I was very, very sleepy. This was a long, but super fun, day for this little monster.
And in the morning, we planned to meet our friends for breakfast at 8:00, before everyone was ready to head home. After getting up at 4:30 on Friday and 5:30 on Saturday, 7:15 on Sunday felt like sleeping in!