View Into the Enchanted Gardens

There is perhaps no place that looks and smells like heaven on earth more than the Arboretum's fragrance garden in late May. The flowers are bursting into bloom, and the scents are heady, almost overwhelming.

The news this week from the gardens is this: allium, iris, peony, and poppy are blooming their fool heads off. The purple round blooms of allium are among my favorite of the entire year. I like to pretend they are purple aliens.

Every color of iris you can imagine is opening, and in the morning light, their colors are saturated and beautiful, lit up like stained glass windows. The peonies have their petals softly folded like angel wings. The poppies are blooming in a shade of red the eye can barely comprehend.

I have so been enjoying my visits to the gardens this time of year. I'm there almost every day that I'm in town, if my schedule permits. I snapped this photo of a view I don't think I've shown before, down a trellis-lined path.

If you stroll down this path lined with flowers, you will reach my beloved lily pond, whose first water lilies are getting ready to bloom. But you might want to linger here for a peaceful moment, if you can, and take in the sights and sounds and smells of the enchanted gardens. . . .

The soundtrack: Stevie Nicks, with Enchanted.