Taking the winds of March with beauty..........

              Daffodils that come before the Swallow dares

        And take the winds of March with beauty!  

                                                                                 William Shakespeare

March is such a month of contrasts - snow days followed by balmy, earthy smelling days.  Winds, both warm and icy, vie for attention.  Yesterday, the warmth was the victor and we ventured out in search of a spot of color on the still gray landscape.  No better place to go than to the Botanical Gardens here in our city.

This particular destination holds such a vital place in my memories of the early days of home schooling when my oldest was very young.  We went to "the gardens" when my kids just needed to run!  They would play for an hour or so in the boxwood maze running and hiding and running again.  We would then meander like Frodo and Sam through the English woodland garden over to the Japanese garden where we dropped fish food by the bucket load over the rail of the bridge and watched the massive, orange, yellow and gray Japanese carp devour it below us in the water.  Then, during the summer months, we would run through the spouting surprise fountains.  We would leave the gardens happy, peaceful, tired, sunburned and filled with the contentment that sunshine and good air bring.

It has been a long time since those early days, but we always gravitate to the gardens when kids are home for spring break or when we just need a change of scene.  It is a short drive to loveliness!  There we can pretend we are in a Chinese garden, a Brazilian Rain Forest, a Roman villa with splashing fountains. The pace is more leisurely now that everyone is older and there are more quiet reflections than there were when we were careening around the paths with a stroller.

  But it still is a place to experience the peace of God's good earth and to find color when you are starved for it in the March grayness.  Another good reason I love living in the city!

This looks so much like an Ent..........I felt it could talk!

                                                                Pineapples!