The Garden Rocks!

What better way to close out my birthday week than a visit to Epcot’s 22nd International Flower & Garden Festival!  The festival was well under way having started at the beginning of March for 75 days of beautiful flowers, plants, over 100 topiaries, special guests giving gardening demonstrations and tips,
   vendor booths, and music.  This year’s theme is “Goofy About Spring”, and there he was at the entrance with Daisy and Pluto.  Joining them at the other end of their garden were Donald, Chip, and Dale.

 

   Each year there are new exhibits and topiaries like these beautifully redesigned butterflies dubbed “Spring Is In The Air”…I love butterflies!  There’s also a butterfly pavilion every year which I love to walk through.  Lots of flowers, foliage, and 10 different varieties
   of butterflies fluttering around!  They also have a display explaining the life cycle of a butterfly as well as some actually in the chrysalis stage and beyond.  Who knows…you might actually get to see one emerge!

 

  Another new feature this year is Disney Pixar’s Inside Out Emotion Garden which is themed after the upcoming “Inside Out” movie due out in June.  Each part of the garden is color coded to match a different emotion and corresponds with a character in the movie.  Very colorful and kind of cool.

 

Of course it seems that the main attraction of the Festival are the topiaries, and we saw quite a few but not all.  Naturally two of the newest are Elsa and Anna from Frozen.

 

In the past part of the Festival that’s a big hit has been the Flower Power Concert Series featuring performers and music from the 60s & 70s.  However this year it has been renamed the Garden Rocks Concert Series now featuring
     performers and music covering a wider range of decades.  We’re guessing it’s because so many of the older folks are passing on as Paul Revere did last year.  The only group we were really interested in seeing during the month of March
  was Starship Starring Mickey Thomas.  The past few years they’ve performed after we’ve left town so what a birthday treat that we’d get to see them before leaving town!  Mickey Thomas definitely has not lost his voice,
       and Stephanie Calvert handling the lead vocals with him is amazing!  They sang such Starship hits as Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, Somebody to Love, and at both shows had the place rockin’ with We Built This City.  We had arrived
   for the second show and stayed for the last one, too (each performer does 3 sets lasting about 35 min. every weekend over the Festival).  During the last show, Mickey broke out the acoustic guitar and sang Winds of Change and then broke into his rendition of
  Rocky Raccoon.  The group of people in front of us were obviously prepared just in case he sang that song.  One guy wore a raccoon hat while the other 8 or 9 folks with him donned little raccoon eye masks…what a hoot!  As usual both were excellent, excellent shows!!
 

Following the last show, we caught up with Joe and Nancy, and found a great spot by the Canada pavilion to watch the Illuminations fireworks before heading home.  As we made our way to the exit, I was able to get pictures of a couple more topiaries that were lit up for the evening.

 

In a few days we’d be leaving Florida and heading to our summer home in Yellowstone, but this year we weren’t going to take the most direct route through St. Louis.  It’s time for some more adventure so stay tuned!