Well the Missus and I trundled downtown the other day to take a tour of the Public Garden and say, it was swell.

(The tours are conducted by members of the Friends of the Public Garden, who lead them every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 am and 4 pm. Meet at the Make Way for Ducklings statues.)

Our excellent tour guides Shari and Leigh (I hope I got the spelling right) led us around the Garden’s “twenty-four acres of reclaimed land” – remember, it was once underwater before the Back Bay was filled in – and gave us any number of fun facts to know and tell.

• There’s another set of Make Way for Ducklings statues in Moscow (also sculpted by Nancy Schon), but Russian kids can’t sit on Mack and Quack and etc. So there.

• There are two redwood trees in the Public Garden, not to mention a rare Himalayan white birch.

• The Public Garden swans are not Romeo and Juliet – they’re Juliet and Julia. So all that sitting on the eggs in the fenced-off nesting area never produces any cygnets, since there’s no male to fertilize the eggs. But it seems sort of right in the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.

• The “beautiful angel monument and fountain honoring George Robert White, one of Boston’s greatest benefactors” will soon be bubbling again.

• The Friends of the Public Garden raise over $1 million every year.

Here’s their 40th Anniversary video.

We highly recommend that you stroll through the Public Garden as often as possible.

But you should definitely take a tour as well.