Azalea Festival.

(Note to Self: Insert Gay Joke HERE)

Yeah, so I went to the Azalea Festival Garden Tour recently. I was not forced to go, but wanted to go as I get ideas and inspiration for my home garden when I see what others have done. I went last year, and because of that I was able to go out and sunburn myself so badly I couldn't go to work for two days because I was tilling, moving earth, laying brick (not to self: insert poop joke here) and preparing a new garden for my wife's enjoyment. Well, the garden kinda flopped the first year. We're doing a lot better this year, and I have the added bonus of not being referred to as "Lobster Boy" at work.

So to get fresh Ideas, we went to the Garden Tour. The Azalea Festival Garden Tour is put on by the Wilmington Garden Club, who are kind of like the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Freemasons, The Emipre from Star Wars, and Opus Dei all rolled into one. Seriously, they're like a shadowy secret society that wears sundresses and ridiculous hats. They have a set member count (354), they are all women, they have a waiting list of several years to even be considered to join, and there's like a generational hierarchy to it. It's creepy. Like that men's club from Stepford. But they put on a darn good garden tour.

So we went for the second year straight. Every year we go we get to see a part of Wilmington that we never knew about. Last year we discovered Forest Hills South. This year we got to cruise the gated community of Landfall and gawk at houses we will never be able to afford. But we also got to see a number of lovely gardens. My favorites we're the old gardens. The ones that were made over YEARS of work. Like ours is turning out to be. There were several homes that were around 80 years old, and the gardens were from decades of toil. They took out breath away. Then there's the noobs. Yes, I used the World of Warcraft term Noob (new or inexperienced person, from the words New and bOOB) to describe a garden. Bite Me. The noobs hired someone to make them a garden. And make it fast. The result is a garden that looks " just fine" but has a sterile look to it. Last year almost half the tour was like that. This year only a few gardens were noobs. And now a few photos from our favorite, a garden that was designed by a housewife (she was also a botanist) and made entirely by her and he husband. It was designed to have something blooming every month of the year.

They made that garden themselves. And it was awesome.