Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum

We spent Mother’s Day at the Arnold Arboretum, a free park located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, sticking our noses into the dozens of newly bloomed lilacs. Loads of people were there and it felt like a fair, but all about flowers! (I’m just realizing the strange parallel to us spending last weekend at the Daffodil Festival….)

Something I love about the Arboretum is that almost every tree and bush is labeled with a little tag. It’s so nice to immediately learn what you are looking at. (Of course, if I wanted to go around using this app, like an iPhone addict, I might have labeled them all myself.)  A bunch of the lilac varieties had beautiful names like Mme. Lemoine.

The best part of the day was spotting tough guys carrying roses, teddy bears, balloons, bundles of flowers—everything in shades of red, pink and floral, all heading to the significant mom in their lives.

Joe wore blue which looked just great next to all the shades of purple. I wore horizontal stripes (why?) so I’ll spare us the photo of that.

Have you spotted lilacs in your neighborhood? When I worked at a flower store we would sell them for their tiny season and it was always sad because they just aren’t meant to be cut flowers. They die so quickly. So now I just appreciate them happily grounded in the dirt.