Since being back in the United States we are starting traditions. One of those has become the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival. We love seeing the evidence of Spring in multicolored magnificent glory.
Lucky Dragon was so excited there were so many colors of his "favorite tulip flowers." We walked through the beautiful gardens with mature trees and deep green grass that is bordered by thousands of flowers. Each species of flowers were unique in their own way. There were small flowers fluffy flowers, big flowers, short flowers, and tall flowers.
As we walked around we all compared which flowers we liked best. One of the aspects of the Thanksgiving Points gardens are the themes. There is a Monet Garden to mirror one of his paintings, a koi pond, a garden designed to look like an Ancient Greek temple, a garden that looks like a Roman Villa with a long set of waterfalls and completed with a faux statue of a marble woman.
My favorite part, however, was the garden to honor the life of Jesus Christ. It is the newest section of the garden and we were pleasantly surprised. As you enter the garden there is an enormous statue depicting the Savior walking on water. The statue looks alive and the water truly does look like it is raging around his feet. As you progress into the garden you see different depictions of the Saviors life--straight out of the Bible's New Testament. There was Martha and Mary, the Raising of Lazarus, Gethsemene, carrying the Cross and many more. Each one was life sized and held so much emotion.
As we were walking Lucky Dragon ran ahead and up to the statue representing the resurrected Savior. He ran up to it and wanted to immediately touch the hands of the Savior to feel the nail prints--something Jesus bid his followers to do year ago to believe who he was. After that he inspected every hand of the Christ statues. I too even started to look because they were so detailed you could even see the veins and imperfections.
It was touching to see that when Lucky Dragon saw the statue of the Savior in the garden of Gethsemane praying, he ran up and sat on Jesus' lap and curled up as if they were comforting each other.
So if you have a chance to make it to Thanksgiving Point, be sure to take a walk in the gardens because I felt the power of the stories seeing the people so life-like and life-sized. What a testimony builder of the Savior and how he is our example.
