Visiting the Duke Gardens

Hello there,

Over the weekend in Chapel Hill, we went to Duke on Sunday morning. Duke has beautiful and famous gardens called Duke Gardens, so we went in. It was free too! A lovely way to spend Mother’s Day with my mom and grandmother, and the others in our family.

The weather in North Carolina was so perfect this weekend. I complain a lot about the heat and humidity in Houston, but I had no complaints about the 50-70 degree temperatures and sunshine most of the weekend. Even light rain didn’t bother us. It really felt like a nice Spring weekend up there.

I had my camera and took some pretty pictures of flowers. The purple ones are called Allium. I hadn’t heard of it but it looked like those flowers that you blow away.

Pause: Last year when we visited Chapel Hill, we drove to Duke too. We saw more of the university, like Cameron Indoor, the Chapel and more architecture. These three pictures are from last year. Duke is such a beautiful campus. I know they have a strong rivalry against UNC, but I personally don’t have allegiance to either, so I can enjoy its beauty! Their structures are gothic and old fashioned.

This year, we enjoyed the Duke Gardens.

That’s my dad above, me below. Love that it’s cool enough to need a sweater!

the graduate too.

Here’s a bit of camera talk–I only brough one lens to the garden because I didn’t want to keep switching them out, and my bigger one is heavy to lug on a walk! So with the limits of my original 18-50 mm lens, this is as close as you can get. My other lens (55-200) would have been better for this shot.

Can you spot the honeybee? Middle left.

More pretty shades of pink and purple. My favorite flower colors.

Playing with depth.

The purple flowers like the first ones.

A beautiful blooming peony.

What amazing roots.

Sitting inside the flowers.

My grandfather (80 years old!) loves to talk to dogs. If he had a treat in his pocket, he would have given them away to dogs. When he’s home in San Antonio, he always has treats. He has two labradoodles of his own! That’s the key to youth. Chasing dogs.

A pretty red bridge in the gardens. It looked like we were in the wilderness, but we were in the middle of a college campus.

My dad under a little doorway, looks very Oriental to me. Reminded me of the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco.

That’s all for this trip to Chapel Hill. Luckily, I have one more trip to the East Coast in two weeks for Eat Write Retreat where I’m hoping the weather will be great too. And then Aspen, CO in June where I’m hoping for cool temps again! I love getting out of the heat.