All About the Flowers

I love flowers.  At home, I grow zinnias, begonias, geraniums, and impatiens in the Summer.  On occasion, I’ve been known to indulge in a store-bought bouquet.  Most years, I threaten to buy myself an enormous Costco bouquet on my birthday, though I have actually done so only once.  A few times in my life, someone has brought me flowers and once or twice, I’ve been the recipient of a delivered bouquet.  Such treats feel especially extravagant.  

Of late, my flower admiration has happened in nearby gardens - the tulips at a local tulip farm, the daffodils, roses, hydrangeas, and magnolias blooms at Colonial Park.  There are two enormous magnolia trees in the park and I like to visit them and breathe in the scent of the flowers, which last late into July around here. The ivory blooms look almost artificial but they are velvety to the touch and the scent is heady.

In the rose garden, the hydrangeas are blousy and beautiful.  I have a hydrangea in my back yard but it blooms infrequently; I have never discovered the magic sauce for regular flowers so I admire those at the park instead. 

On Sunday, I happened through the rose garden after a rain storm. Many blooms were still wet from the rain, making for some splendid photos.  At least a few of these photos will make my bulletin board for the new school year, to keep me company in the months that do not feature fresh flowers.  

End-of-Summer Adventure: New Jersey Botanical Garden

T and I have been visiting state parks in NJ for the past three years.  When the pandemic struck, that interest turned out to be rather keen as the outdoors was safe for these little journeys.  When we began, in December 2018, we set a goal to visit every state park in NJ.  We’re more than two-thirds complete and we happily wander here and there as the mood strikes.  Last weekend, the mood called for Ringwood.     

Set so far north that we could step into New York State, Ringwood and the New Jersey State Botanical Garden that is across the street were, as is invariably the case, unexpected gems.      

The day was cool and a bit overcast but the gardens were beautiful, blest by plenty of rain as they had been all Summer long.    

 

There is both a formal garden and an informal one.  I liked the formal best in no small measure because of the amazing lily pads to be spied as we walked along the stone sidewalks.     

The informal garden had an area with both annuals and perennials.  

This gem of a garden will be worthy of a return visit and I look forward to seeing it next Spring. That’s happy!

Lily Pad Season

Two of the ponds in the places I go for walks have been wet enough in the heat of Summer to sustain flowers on the lily pads.    

I find them magical.   

In year when so much has felt difficult and worrisome, I have appreciated the splendor of Summer more than ever.    

That’s happy!

The Happy Gardener

I’m not working this week and the extra relaxed days gave me time to visit the Colonial Park flower garden, one of the nearby places I love.  

Flowers abound here, and that made for a nice afternoon of sitting on a bench in the shade of the wisteria-covered trellis, reading and daydreaming with no worry about time.

Gardens always feed my planting daydreams.  

That’s happy!

Enchanted Garden

T and I planned a summer adventure to visit the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park on the eastern shore of Maryland (more on that next week).  On the way south, we stopped at the Winterthur Estate in Delaware.  There, we took time to enjoy the lovely perennial garden that covers sixty acres of the 1,000 acre estate.  Winterthur was once the estate of the du Pont family and you can rest assured that they were never short of cash.  The estate has the house and a collection of the American furniture and textiles that Mr. du Pont enjoyed collecting.  They are housed in his 175-room, nine story mansion.  

Such opulence on our way to see the world to which Harriet Tubman was born seemed a little silly, so T and I opted to mostly enjoy the acres and acres of splendid and lovely gardens.

There is a fairy garden added to the estate to appeal to children and, I suppose, children at heart.  It was a quiet destination for our Saturday morning, made more lovely by the few children who were there, laughing and enjoying the fairy paths.

Lovingly designed for children with rich imaginations, the garden path meanders from a small gate to bridges, windows in which to peak, a mini circle of rocks, a thatched cottage, a place for a fairy tea party, and small tables and benches tucked into the shaded glens.

We had a pretty good time ourselves.

I am reminded how much I like visiting gardens, something I plan to make more time for in the coming years.  

That’s happy!

Wisteria Gates

I am always charmed by arbors and trellises with trained plants, even those that are a bit overgrown.  These wisteria gates were at the Thomas Edison estate in West Orange.

The surrounding beds had peonies that had already bloomed.  It was lovely in July and I expect was quite beautiful in May when the peony flowers popped open.

Colonial Park Flower Garden

There is a lovely public rose garden near my house and I visited it earlier this month.  The roses were mostly gearing up for their second growing season, though a few rosebuds remained.

I’ll come back to see the roses again later this summer.  In the meantime, there were plenty of other flowers to enjoy.  The hydrangeas are lovely.

The bench in the shade of the trellised wisteria is peaceful.  I’d love to have space enough for a display like this some day.

A lot of effort goes into a garden like this and I always a welcome a visit to this tidy garden.

My zinnias aren’t yet at this level, but they’ll get there soon enough.  

Summer, you continue to charm me.