wisteria sinesis
Stopped by a church on the side of the road to peer at this wonderful bundle of wisteria blooms
stretching out past a stranger's backyard. My nerves settle around these flowers every time.
Over the weekend I had the pleasure of finding spring through copious amounts of wisteria blossoms. Second to irises, wisteria are my favorite flowers. The gentle slope of each bloom, the beauty of cradling a whole bundle in your hands--that's what you admire every time you have the opportunity to look at wisteria up close.
Wisteria reminds me of beloved characters. It reminds me of spring, my favorite season, the one I was just shy of being born into, a season of allergies and blooming before we wither under the full reach of the summer sun. These flowers are delicate, strong, graceful and generous from sight alone.
Sadly, all passes expire, and ours was long due. Someday we'll get it again--I don't know where we'll be in the next couple years, and if we'll even be together as a family, but I hope we get the chance to revisit our youth.
At the wild animal park (as we like to call it), we maintained a leisurely pace. After having been taking near-continuous visits to the zoo & the park over the past two decades, we're never in any real hurry to enjoy the sights. What matters most is the walking, I think--absent meandering with your loved ones, getting lost but never really lost. All the pleasant serendipity I've come to associate with these regions.
Specifically, I love visiting the bats here. At the zoo I'm fond of the albino python (the banana snake, as I refer to it as, since I've seen it since second grade). Within the Safari Park, I just enjoy the path heading to the Safari tram area, since the sight is gorgeous. And with all the rain that California's been recently blessed with, the fields were a wide spectrum of green, touched with the familiar yellow hot-air balloon and the region overlooking the lions & the Cheetah Run area.
I was a bit too fond of the wisteria I saw here, too, which I was really excited for because we always had a tendency to never visit the Safari Park during springtime. And here we were! The wisteria trellis was wonderful, although not as gorgeous as the wisteria trellis path from Temecula's South Coast Winery (and that is breathtaking).
Still, you can't help but fall in love. It's like wisteria can hold all your hopes and dreams with the simple act of swaying in the wind. The way each petal dances!
And even at the end of a long day, having to wait for the parking tram to take us all the way to our car parked in the dirt lots, I still managed to see a tiny bit of more purple in my life. If I remember correctly these are African daisies, just as beautiful as they are simple. Everyone at the zoo and the safari park tends to focus on the animals in these regions, but the flora are just as important as the fauna! The ecosystem surrounding the Safari Park's outskirts are endangered chaparral native to southern California, and within the park itself you can see all these gorgeous ferns and dainty flowers, not to mention gardens and installations dedicated to showcasing plant growth and the importance of bees & butterflies with their accompanying floral ecosystems. (I myself am fond of the Lost Forest at the San Diego Zoo, whereas my family adores any given butterfly exhibit.)
Secrets: the marble background is actually paper from Michaels!
And now I'm onto my next great adventure--reading! I still have two more works to read for March's Top Ten, and since I took the wrong book home for spring break I have the honor of reading The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, from the same author of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a bright beacon of diversity and clarity regarding writing, and I am looking forward to exploring the new world he's made for us. :)
Keep loving!
Yours Sincerely,
Dianne
