phlox – Page 2 – In the Woods

early spring in the arboretum

3.17.24 ~ pineland phlox
Coker Arboretum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

This post is my contribution to Karma’s Signs of Spring Photo Hunt. I don’t have a prime lens, but the photos, except for the birds, were taken at about the same focal length with my zoom lens. (There was a lot of squatting involved to get the pictures.) Visit Karma’s post here if you’d like to participate.

It was spring break at UNC and we learned that we could easily find a parking space on campus when the students are out of town. And that meant we could finally visit the lovely Coker Arboretum, 5 wooded acres in the middle of a college campus. I came home with more than 300 photographs! What follows is a small sample of the birds and blooms we saw. Some of the plants were from other parts of the world.

I was especially attracted to the tiny South American spring starflowers which carpeted some of the garden plots. Something about those little purple lines on the petals. And the European spring snowflakes captivated me. They were a little bigger than our snowdrops. When I got home I learned they were native to southern Europe, all the way east to Ukraine, so I wondered if any of my ancestors had them in their gardens to welcome spring over there.

colonial flower garden

7.27.22 ~ Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park

A gray catbird greeted us when we got to the Ebenezer Avery House at the bottom of the hill at Fort Griswold. The last time we visited was in January a year and a half ago. Of course there was nothing growing in the small garden at that time. But this time the air was filled with a pleasant fragrance that must have been some herb or flower I didn’t recognize.

We had a nice walk all around the fort and then it was a delightful surprise to find this little front yard garden surrounded by a picket fence. We lingered here for quite a while, enjoying the colors, smells and visiting butterflies. The flowers were in all stages of life, new ones blossoming right alongside the fading beauties. Please enjoy!

After we had our fill we made our way back up the hill and past the fort to our car. It was a good workout. 🙂

I started to imagine what the people who were in this house during the Battle of Groton Heights might have witnessed from their vantage point that tragic day in 1781.

a secret garden

Yesterday Janet and I took a three-hour stroll through the Connecticut College Arboretum, and I came home with 147 pictures! First we made our way through the native plant collection…

5.22.10 ~ New London, Connecticut — tulip tree ~ 5.22.10
Connecticut College Arboretum
New London, Connecticut

… and then hiked through the woods, noticing the abundance of mountain laurel and flowering dogwood under the dying hemlocks, which used to rule the forest. Finally we made our way to a secret garden hidden in a corner of the arboretum, the Edgerton & Stengel Memorial Wildflower Garden.

We opened the gate and were soon greeted by a Cheshire cat, who let us know that it ‘didn’t matter which way we went’ in his lush and untamed neck of the woods. He appeared and disappeared as we explored the maze of paths, drawing our attention to various wildflowers and settings.

Janet will have to identify some of these flowers…

We were surprised to discover that maidenhair ferns have black stems – the black and green contrast was striking!

See the cinnamon sticks in the cinnamon fern?

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
~ William Blake
(Auguries of Innocence)

There are a couple of Jacks-in-the-Pulpit (aka Indian Turnips) in this picture if you look carefully – they’re not fully in bloom yet.

Sadly, all the hemlocks are slowly dying… new life is taking hold under bare branches…

The Cheshire cat disappeared before we could say good-bye.

After this delightful sojourn we sat and rested for a bit and studied our map. We still haven’t seen the whole arboretum, even after three hours! So we’re planning another visit in a month, when different things will be in bloom, and of course, we hope to come and see Shakespeare-in-the-Arboretum in July, too. Plans made, we then headed for Ruby Tuesday and quenched our thirsts with two strawberry lemonades each!