A Sunday in Dubuque

John and I started our day attending services at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Dubuque, with niece Anne and nephew Martin joining  us.  Both of them recently moved to the city with their families- Martin will be a professor at Wartburg Seminary and Anne will be a student in her fourth year.  They, as well as spouses and children, are looking forward to this school year when the families will be living close to each other.

After church we all met for a picnic lunch at Eagle Point Park, which is situated along the Mississippi River.  Pictured below is some of our group watching barges passing through the locks.

  After lunch John and I drove to the Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens.  The first bed of flowers we saw, which lie in front of the gift shop, is quite striking with colors of white, pink and silver.

The gardens are relatively new, they were established in 1980.  Their dahlia collection at present is absolutely beautiful with their very large colorful blooms.

Many of the summer lilies have passed their blooming stage for the summer, except for the foxtail and surprise lilies, which are pictured below.  I was compelled to touch a petal of a foxtail lily- it looked like a piece of velvet and also felt like that.  That lily is the one in the foreground of the picture below.

The shade garden is a rather large section of the park, with quite an extensive collection of hostas. 

We finished our Sunday in the park, attending a concert by Mark and the Ridge Rangers.  It was a good concert- if you like country and western music.  As I get older it seems not to be to my liking!