After making sure our ten cats were safe and comfortable, Stephen and I took the bus up to Fort Tryon Park, which is even more miraculous today than it was last week. Here are some tree peonies already in full bloom.
The real stars of the garden right now are the azaleas, which float through the dappled shade like pink clouds.
Are these peonies, too? I'm not sure.
Crazy tapestry of flowering bulbs and bushes.
Rivers of phlox spilling through the rocky ravines.
Eden is a gloomy forest with islands of sunlit azaleas.
With a canopy of flowering dogwoods.
Back at home Elektra was spying on Dante and Zephyr.
"Umm, we see you." -- Dante and Zephyr
In our garden, some more natural and shade-tolerant phlox I bought last summer at Rare Find Nurseries (highly recommend in you're ever in central New Jersey!) were blooming. It's always nice when a plant thrives in the garden because truthfully not too many do.
Our garden doesn't have the sweeping vistas of the park, but there are small pleasures, such as this pale blue Jacob's ladder.
And our Japanese maple (Acer palmatum "Elizabeth"), which after a few rough years and transplants seems to be doing better.
We have some azalea, too, but it's just starting to open. (The white blooms behind the yellow yew and the phlox.)
"And how's the little gray kitten who just had six kittens?" -- Dante
She seems pretty content in her box with her litter of squimy little kittens, each of which is no bigger than the palm of your hand. So far all of the kittens seem to be getting enough to eat and there's no obvious runt. Nobody seems to be crying. I'm already worried about where they will end up, of course: sometimes the world seems impossibly frightening, especially if you think about things from the perspective of a small animal who's living with its mother in a cardboard box.
But spring is a good time to be born, because there's a lot of beauty, which is maybe a reason to hope.