When genetics don't lie

 Marie always says that Sophie looks just like me, I think she might be right!!!!!

Trip to MBG

I met Arline at MBG, our trips there are definitely rarer than they used to be, but still fun to do.  Ben was in Little Rock, so it was just the two of us.  We went in the Climatron as it wasn't particularly warm to be outside for too long.  I found these particularly spectacular bananas

I absolutely love ferns and these were doing so well.  If I ever win the Powerball (if I buy a ticket!) I am going to build something like the Climatron-possibly on a smaller scale!!!!  Possibly......

I don't think we have ever seen these before

Spring has definitely arrived at MBG

Japanese Garden has been cleaned up and looks very neat and tidy right now

This is almost like the bluebell woods near Loughborough

Hellebores-of course I needed to take a picture of these

These little guys were everywhere, I think they must be some kind of snowdrop

The stumpery

The trees aren't leafing out yet, yes it's still early

Post Dispatch article on Serge

 A man who split his time between the St. Louis area and Ukraine, helping arrange adoptions of children with medical needs, has died amid the fighting in the war-torn country.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Serge Zevlever was killed when he volunteered to check on a commotion outside a Kyiv bomb shelter on Feb. 26, his daughters said. That was just two days after Russian forces launched an invasion of Ukraine. “He was not in a scuffle, he was not on the front lines,” his eldest daughter Alisa Sander said. “He went outside to see if it was safe for everyone else."

Zevlever fled Ukraine in the years before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and eventually became a U.S. citizen. “It was a wish of his mother that he get out and find a better, free life for his family,” his younger daughter Nicole Zevlever said.

Zevlever spoke to the Post-Dispatch in a 1999 interview about his job navigating a complicated patchwork of requirements from orphanages and local governments.  “My job," he said, “is to take care of the parents while they’re overseas."