Had a great time this past weekend. Went to the Upper Midwest Koi Club's annual Koi Show in Minneapolis. What a nice event. The seminars we went to were nice. Not many attended them, but they are a great extra touch. My only complaint was I didn't even get a chance to get around to all parts of Bachman's nursery! What a great setting for this event. This is one of the finest nurseries I've ever been in. With a huge home interior store, a restaurant, massive greenhouse, and stone yards...it's just a maze of eye candy for the gardener. I had talked Harry into taking the truck this year on the assumption that we wanted to buy a piece of flat stone to use as a coffee table out beside the pond. We did buy something called Tres Rios which is kind of a black and white slab that looks like water is running through it. And that's it! Believe it or not, I didn't buy a fish or even a plant! Not me at all, but I felt rushed the whole weekend. There was always someplace else to get to or someone else to talk to. I never even got a chance to walk amongst the plants or go into the home interior part. :( I could have spent another day just doing that. Sunday they allowed people to tour the nearby AKCA "Pond of the Year". OMG what a beautiful place. It was actually a small yard with over 600 varieties of Hostas. Planted pots everywhere and evergreens of all sorts. The pond was gorgeous as expected. Koi Aces was the contractor. They do the resin blow in type of pond coating. The bridges and built in floating steps were a great attraction. Very few flowers..the owners wanted a green quiet garden. Following the tour our Iowa group went to Koi Acres to view their facilities. Mike Swanson was so nice to us. His wife actually took us out to his place and gave us a personal tour. What a very nice lady. Their son Devon is the only American to actually get a student visa to "learn how to raise koi" in Japan. Koi Acres does not raise fish, but imports them all in from Japan. And some of the fantastic Showa we saw while there would just blow your socks off! They also had an outside pond with perhaps the largest koi I've ever seen. They weren't particularly beautiful fish as they were chagoi, but their impressive size was awesome. Easily 36 inches in length and their heads where 8-10 inches wide! Huge fish and they'd come right up to you and beg to be touched and fed. Very impressive. But it was the showa that made me depressed. They were drop dead beautiful fish .
A lass it was still a fun weekend. Went out and ate some fantastic oysters on the half shell, enjoyed good wine with friends, and laughed a lot. Not quite as perfect as coming home from Nashville with a truck full of fish and trees, but a close second!
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