Planting Fields Arboretum

Dawn and I went to the Planting Fields Arboretum on Monday. This is the picture they have on their homepage right now:

And then this is a picture that I took on my brand-new camera:

Anyway. The weather was very cold on Monday, but it was so rewarding. I took over 100 pictures on my new camera--it has an automatic flower setting, so it takes amazing close-ups of flowers. We spent a lot of time in the three greenhouses because it was warmer there and that's where they have all of the unseasonal flowers. The first greenhouse had different breeds of camillias and roses, and was my favorite greenhouse. I took some beautiful pictures of soft pink blossoms and vibrant fuschia petals and buds just about to bloom that were fresh green near the stem, but moved to white and then blood red at the very tip.

I also found some beautiful simple green vines growing along the old brick of the greenhouse's outer wall. There were tiny purple flowers blooming on the vine, and it looked stunning next to the rough texture of the cumbling brick.

The next two greenhouses were the tropical wones; they were full of palms, bananas, orange trees and orchids. I took many pictures here too, but orchids don't excite me the way camillias and roses do. They are too fragile and pefect looking.

Dawn and I sat in the greenhouses for a while, warming up and just taking everything in and talking quietly. We sat and enjoyed the smells: the smell of living plants, of ripening fruit, of blooming flowers, of running water, of freshly-turned soil. We enjoyed the sound of photographers quietly setting up their equiptment, of children talking excitedly in hushed voices to their parents, of water dripping from a nearby hose and falling from the fountain in front of us. We breathed in the air and knew that it was more refreshing than any air we had encountered in months, and knew that we still had a few months to go before we will breath it again. It was alive.