Saturday, April 6, was the Azalea Festival at Reynolds Nature Preserve. They'd had it two weeks later last year, and all the azaleas were mostly gone. They had it earlier this year, when buds were barely beginning to swell.
Ze spouse & I still had a swell time, though, hanging out with the Professora &
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asg_qa_s7 [except when he was stalking wild turtles ;)]. The ranger talk was informative, the company lively, & the day gorgeous. Still, there should've been hotdogs, t-shirts in my size in a color I like [i.e., not white], and, oh, yeah, azaleas.
The following weekend I went to 221 B con [221bcon.com] on Saturday, for 8 consecutive hours of panels. It was excellent, entertaining and informative, but exhausting. I'll definitely do the con again [assuming they have it again], but I was a bit burnt out & so bagged the Sunday panels. Instead, ze spouse & I went intense walkabout at Reynolds with the camera. There were azaleas everywhere, vincas, dogwoods, some cool fungus, & especially walls of wisteria. Here are those pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24609723@N08/sets/72157633299854535/ We went back with a camera Sunday. What a change in just a week! The azaleas are almost all gone, bedraggled with pathetically-straggling stamen, the wisteria's faded away, the maple's gone, & the vincas are in retreat. There's no new cool fungus. What there *is*, however is roses [both Cherokee & pink], clematis, irises, white-gold azaleas, blue stars, lilies, snowballs, & dianthus. See for yourselves:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24609723@N08/sets/72157633304409231/It's like lots of plants arrived late & left early, to make up for lost time. Time is a weird thing, & insists on playing tricks.
Sara Teasdale rightly opined: There are so many ways to love, And each way has its own delight--
In other words, & still, the pictures are nice, & I hope you enjoy them.
