On our way home yesterday from our stay at the Oakwood Resort we made a stop outside the small town of New Paris, IN to Defries Garden. It’s a small river preserve county park in Elkhart County. It’s actually the spot our soon-to-be 23-year old daughter had her senior pictures taken in the spring of 2021. My wife had been there, obviously with our daughter for the senior pics, but wanted to revisit since it was such a sunny, beautiful Saturday afternoon. I was in the car, so I came along for the ride.
So it is a pretty lovely place. There’s a trail into the woods, but we instead explored the garden. It’s a circle built of bricks, with the days of the months on the center bricks, as well as different holidays throughout these months. There’s little buildings built as well, situated kind of at every season of the year. One kind of looked like a greenhouse, or where folks that work for the park do gardening…or smoke weed.
At the center of this garden is a very small pond. The pond is teeming with tadpoles, snails, what my wife and I think were small Koi fish, and just a general universe of wildlife. There was a family there with mom and dad, two pre-teens, and a big American Bulldog/Boxer mix. The dog was pretty content with the smells and sounds, while the kids were fascinated with the pond. Happy to see parents taking their kids to somewhere like Defries Garden, as opposed to an arcade or Dave & Busters..or wherever modern parents drop their lackluster kids at these days.
The downfall to this trip was the swarming mosquitoes. Maybe due to a lot of rain we’ve gotten recently, the mosquitoes are in full swing. Even at the resort we were told not to open our windows as we’d be swarmed by the bloodsuckers(no screens on the windows). My wife didn’t seem to be bothered by the buzzing goons, while they seemed very attracted to my nearly bald head. I think we’d been there for 25 minutes or so(it’s not that big, really), then after my umpteenth swipe at the air and slap to my noggin my wife was like, “Okay let’s go.”
Defries Garden is a place that I definitely want to revisit in hotter months, next time exploring their trail. In fact, I want to hit a lot of trails this summer.
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