We didn't realize until yesterday that the Morris-Jumel Mansion is also home to a beautiful catulpa tree, just like the one I had recently seen in Western Pennsylvania.
According to Jim, the head gardener of the grounds, the catulpa is an ancient tree, but this one is also dying. He pointed to a large branch overhead where the woodpeckers could be heard -- as they do -- pecking against the wood. "They only build nests in dead or compromised wood," he said. (He may or may not have used the word "compromised.") When we expressed dismay about the imminent death of such a beautiful tree, he seemed less concerned. "These trees come and go," he reassured us, before he told us that he was ten thousand years old.
Each of the flowers is like a small orchid, and the fallen petals looked like popcorn on the ground.
There is also a smaller, younger catulpa -- a descendant of the larger one -- behind the railing. Even trees that live for hundreds of years are not immune, it seems, to cycles of life and reproduction.
We strolled through the rest of the gardens, which are coming along nicely.
A patch of flowering bee balm foreshadowed the fireworks that will be the theme of this Friday night.
The echinacea was also in bloom.
As with all living things, some of these flowers appeared to be less sad than others.
I photographed a disposable coffee cup that George Washington sipped after watching New York burn during the Revolutionary War in 1776, which is probably around the time the catulpa was planted.
The black-eye susans were awed to consider the brief span of their lives in comparison to the catulpa. They sighed and then didn't think about it again. The sun was too pleasant to focus on such philosophical matters.
Besides, the ghosts of dead flowers flickered in the garden shadows, and did not seem unhappy.