Last weeks visit to Cleveland's Home & Garden show

Here are my views on Cleveland’s Home and Garden show that I visited last weekend. The display gardens were wonderful and I came away with some new twists for my summer landscape. The vendors were hawking the normal stuff so the credit card stayed firmly lodged in my wallet.

The wonderful Germany theme was well very disappointing. The Oktoberfest hall was basically a school cafeteria with blue and white checkered table clothes and some cardboard and plywood cutouts scattered around the room. This venue was a topic of conversation with a group of friends and we best described it as cheesy!

Even more disappointing was the daily smorgasbord of authentic German cuisine. The only traditional items were grilled bratwursts and strudel. Italian sausages and Hungarian chicken paprikash were dished up in an area reminiscent of a concession stand at a local craft fare. Sorry gang this experience was nowhere near what the press releases had hyped.

Was the show alone worth the drive? No. But when you add other regional activities to your itinerary then yes it did make a great diversion from the snow and ice outside.