To celebrate my taxes… Chris and I rode up to the Botanic Garden this afternoon…
where we like to turn around, refill the water bottles, chat, stretch, relax, etc.
And this time as we rode in, we were “greeted” by these really cool flower spikes.
Apparently, the Canary Islands have all the cool plants?!!!

I love the texture, the pattern, the swirling spiral, the spikes, the whole thing!
And the best part?… they will grow to be well over 8-feet tall! But apparently they take
two years of growing before they get to show off their intended, summer-long beauty.
Where else would you expect these stunners other than the Botanic Garden?

Who knew???… the come in purple too!
Not quite as tall, not quite as stunning, but still quite beautiful.

On the way back, the sun was setting… and the deer were out in abundance.
We like to call it “deer hunting” – basically just keeping an eye out for the deer
as we are pedaling past… hoping that none of them dash out in front of us.
Tonight we saw well over 30 deer along the bike trail… not bad for Chicago, huh?