Friday afternoon, I went to the Flower Show at Marshall Fields 8th floor in downtown Minneapolis (I really, really wanted to type Dayton’s right there). I was hoping there would be a decent link other than just to the fields.com Special Events website, but there’s not one. Which kind of brings me to the show itself. I went with my parents, my grandmother and aunt and uncle up from Missouri, thinking it would be something that my out of town relatives would enjoy. Last year’s show, Monet’s Garden, was spectacular. This year, however, is a bit of a let-down. The theme is Avantgarden, and is supposed to be evocative of traveling the Silk Road in Asia. It might just be a little too subtle for my tastes, though. The design is very good in an understated way, but after a dreary winter when we didn’t even have much of a snowy wonderland, I was really looking forward to an explosion of springtime. It’s free, though, and if you work or live downtown, it’s still very nice. Just not as…well…flowery as it could be.