Dear Liza,
On the first day of 2019, Grandpa Nelson, Auntie Bridgett and I drove west across the Willamette, through downtown, and out the other side, up into Washington Park. I have been there many times, to see the Zoo, the Rose Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Children’s Museum, even the Holocaust Memorial last summer. But this time we headed for the Hoyt Arboretum.
An arboretum is like a zoo for trees, if you think about it. The trees are planted near others like them and are labeled so you know what they are and where they are from. Of course, the trees stay where they are put, so they don’t need fences. It felt more like a forest. An icy cold, bright, sunshiny forest.
Grandpa Nelson had done some looking and found something labeled “The Winter Garden” in the arboretum. He knew I liked gardens, and it’s winter…. so we headed there. It was still 37 degrees F, so there was a pretty lacy edge of frost on everything. Even the weeds by the parking lot were pretty.
The trees that lose their leaves already have, leaving beautiful stark branches against the blinding blue sky. I want to capture those shapes, somehow. Maybe with some nice thin lines of embroidery somewhere.
We saw two squirrels sitting on maple branches that seemed too thin to support them, methodically eating the seeds one by one and dropping the husks. Grandpa Nelson said they should keep eating until the branch breaks, because then they will know they are fat enough!
The Winter Garden is really a very small part of the arboretum and there were some little lily sort of flowers blooming, which is unusual in January. The label was too small for me to read. The ferns were frosty and there was the tiniest creek running through by them.
Down a hill past the Redwood Deck, where a wedding was being held, the trees got taller. Cedars, redwoods and pines towered overhead. We felt as tiny as rabbits.
I will tell you more about the arboretum tomorrow.
Love, Grandma Judy
