A day for dreaming at Outdoor Living & Landscape Show
Judy Riffle’s eyes grew wide as she studied the gleaming monster of a barbecue system.
“We wouldn’t have to cook,” she turned and told her friend Connie Thomas. “Our husbands could do it all.”
It was a day for dreaming at the Outdoor Living & Landscape Show at Century II. Folks of all ages converged on Expo Hall to get a good look at flowers, hot tubs, barbecue equipment and decorative rocks, just to name a few of the products on display.
The show continues Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“I just came down to get a touch of spring,” Yvonne Drake of Junction City said as she browsed flowers and landscaping options at the show. “It’s beautiful.”
If the landscaping and flowers on display at Century II didn’t give folks a case of spring fever, Wichita’s weather this weekend will. Sunny skies and highs in the 60s were like magnets to draw people outside.
Roger Bowles gazed longingly at a landscaping layout that featured decorative stone pathways leading past tall trees.
“I want to get some ideas,” said Bowles, who lives in northwest Wichita.
“Let’s go back and walk through” the display “like they have,” his companion, Melodee Schaefer, said of another couple nearby.
Bowles has a pool in his backyard and wants to make some changes to the view.
“I’d like to have those trees all transplanted” to his yard, he said. “After you leave your yard the way it is for three or four years, you’ve got to change it.”
Jim Weber was taking a close look at patios on display at the show.
“I need to build one,” he said. “That’s why I’m out here.”
Riffle moved to Wichita from New Mexico last summer.
“I missed spring altogether,” she said. “I’m excited about it. I already want to work in the yard.”
After years in the New Mexico desert, Riffle is eager to learn all she can for her first flower and vegetable garden.
“I want to get to do all that,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Reach Stan Finger at 316-268-6437 or sfinger@wichitaeagle.com. Follow him on Twitter: @StanFinger.
If you go
Outdoor Living & Landscaping Show
When: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
Where: Century II Expo Hall, 225 W. Douglas
How much: Tickets are $9, $7 for seniors, $4 for ages 5 to 12, free for children 4 and under, at wichitatix.com, 316-219-4849 and at the door.
Information: www.outdoorlivingandlandscapeshow.com
This story was originally published March 7, 2015 at 5:01 PM with the headline "A day for dreaming at Outdoor Living & Landscape Show."