For many years a friend and I would brave the crowds at the New England Flower show in Boston. We would leave early, plan on having our packed lunches at the show during a lecture, and head home before rush hour. It was pretty sad when the show was no longer produced. Happily, for the last few years there has been a much smaller but much closer annual flower show in Providence…the Rhode Island Flower & Garden Show. This year its theme was “Gardening with Heart” and for the second time my eldest and I took my grandchildren for an early look at spring.
It was a fun thing to do on a rainy Friday… Mr J and Miss E enjoyed looking out at the traffic as much as the flowers…
Miss E wanted me to take a picture of her smelling every pink flower she passed…
There were hearts everywhere this year…
…including at the sand sculpture where we watched the sculptors forming the castle of Heartland…
The Rhode Island Wild Plant Society is always one of my favorite displays…it looks the closest to my backyard…
They didn’t last long at the show before tiring but someday I hope they will remember going and seeing spring blooming indoors…
After the kids left I stayed and met Mr O…so I did get a chance to check out the shops and practice taking photos with the 50mm lens which is so great in low light…
Outside a mock greenhouse/office…one of my favorite vignettes…
And inside the mock greenhouse/office…I would love this at my house, including the yellow door…
As always, the garden club displays were fun…How can you not love this bathing suit floral arrangement!
We may be half way through March but I visited the flower show in February and I have been meaning to share this poem since February…it is almost spring but it is still appropriate here in RI…
February: Thinking of Flowers
Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.
Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.
A single green sprouting thing
would restore me. . . .
Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the tongue of the burgundy lily.
