Best Light Show

Missouri Botanical Garden’s Garden Glow changes the garden look. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Best Light Show

If you are looking for something to do through early next year, add Missouri Botanical Garden to your list. Actually it should be on your list all year, it’s one of the world’s renown gardens only an hour or so from mid-Missouri.

The garden, also called Shaw’s Garden after founder Henry Shaw, has a wide range of special events all four seasons through the year, from the Best of Missouri Market coming up next weekend to a model train show around the holidays. That’s not to overlook the gardens themselves from the Japanese Gardens, the Kemper Home Gardens and the seasonal displays of favorites from daffodils to holly.

In fall, Missouri Botanical Garden holds Garden Glow, when the lovely gardens are getting ready for winter and covered in lights. Trees become new shapes; lit paths lead walkers through new imaginary spaces and, the best part of the show, nature adds to the wonder only as nature can do.

As we were walking by one of the light boxes, there she was, a tiny spider weaving her web back and forth in front of the bright spotlights.

At the foot of one of the displays, the best of the garden show. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

As my friends and I bent down to get to her level, we watched quite clearly how she spun her web back and forth across the front of the lights. The lights made her new web very clear as she industriously moved her legs back and forth.

We watched a spider spinning her web in front of the lights! (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

I could have sat there all night watching this spider. Luckily I have my own supply of spiders at home, where I can also watch nature at work.

Charlotte