Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Adrian and I went to the Arnold Arboretum today with her friend Ruth, to look at lilacs and other flowers. Our timing on the lilacs was close to perfect: lots fully in bloom, with a few bushes that had finished flowering, and several that were still in bud.

It's also lily of the valley season, and we sat and talked for a while just downwind of a large and fragrant patch of lily of the valley.

The rose garden is near the Arborway gate, and the rugosa roses were in bloom, which was a fine surprise.

I spent a few minutes listening to and looking for an oriole, after hearing someone on the other side of a path say "oriole." Also a treat, though I would have liked to see that flash of orange.

We took the bus over to Seattle and spent a couple of hours wandering around the UW arboretum, starting at the north end of a waterside trail (271 to Montlake Freeway Station, if locals want to try to visualize this). Nice long walk along and above Lake Washington, including some rather muddy bits that need more wood chips scattered, and then some floating footbridges, one of which was slightly below the surface for a few meters. I looked at it, decided I could deal with the wet metal surface and no handrail, and went through. (Temperature around 70F/21C, so I figured wet feet would be all right.) We saw a few ducks, some cormorants, water lily pads, but to our surprise no turtles.

Then we walked through some of the drier parts of the arboretum, with more grass and shrubs and spreading trees (and fewer ferns and moss). Some of the trees there are actually labeled, though a few of the labels felt mostly like a starting point for googling. (I thought I had a picture of the one that identified a tree as being a cross between two species I didn't recognize, at least not by Linnaean binomial, and added that this cross had been created at the Arboretum. If I can get it off my phone, I will update this point, for my reference.) There were lots of cherry and azalea and the other usual suspects; and the first we've seen in Washington of a tiny purple wildflower I don't have a name for that was always one of the first signs of spring back in Inwood. We saw some periwinkles of an unusual shade of purple, but I think that was before we got to the Arboretum. We stopped in at the visitor's center to use the bathroom, then walked out along Azalea Way and caught a 43 bus downtown and the usual 550 bus home.

It was a gorgeous clear day: we got excellent views of the nearby Cascades, the Olympics, and then Mount Rainier on the way home, the latter clear enough that cattitude pointed out that he could see two peaks, the lower one on the north side of the mountain as well as the usual fine glaciated cone that stars in all the photos.

I hadn't been to the arboretum in more than a decade, and this was Cattitude's first visit, though we've been living out here for a year. Next time we may try coming in from the other side and visiting the Japanese Garden.