Dogwoods

Knoxville is known for the dogwoods that bloom in the Spring.  The story goes something like this:  A famous reported visited Knoxville many years ago.  When he went home he wrote a scathing article about how ugly Knoxville was.  He reported it to be the ugliest place he had ever seen in his life.  The people of Knoxville were mortified and angry that he would say such horrible things about their city so they had a great big meeting where they discussed plans to beautify Knoxville.  One way they decided to make Knoxville more beautiful was by planting Dogwood trees.  The town is covered in Dogwood trees now and they are so gorgeous.  I had never seen them before we moved here and I had been told how beautiful they were and now that they are in bloom I'm so happy to experience Knoxville's Dogwood trees.  

I mentioned that our Relief Society memorized The Living Christ by Easter.  We decided to celebrate our accomplishment by having a nice dinner for all the Relief Society sisters.  We decided to use dogwoods as our decorations and spent literally hours (8!) cutting out dogwood paper flowers for our decorations.  We decided that we wanted to have pictures from the cards we used to memorize the document on the tables so Mike and I cut out some picture holders with dogwoods etched into the top.  We also gave each woman a booklet with all of the cards in them and a bookmark with a dogwood pendant.  For our dessert we had cupcakes with dogwoods made out of molding chocolate on the top.  It was a beautiful evening.

Planning this meeting has kept dogwoods on my mind!  It was a pleasant surprise to discover that I have three Dogwood trees in my yard and then the woods behind our fence have wild Dogwoods in them as well.  I love it.

Tonight after dinner we loaded the kids in the car and drove the Dogwood trail.  You just turn down a road and follow the arrows to drive along roads lined with Dogwoods.  It was a beautiful drive.  I took my camera and snapped pictures along the way.  Spring in Knoxville makes me very happy.  

Also, I included some pictures of our drive home.  I drive the road where these pictures were taken weekly.  It is a big main road outside of my subdivision.  We have to drive it to get to church each Sunday, the doctors, the grocery store, etc.  It is such a picturesque drive so I snapped a couple of pictures on our way home.