Bill's Trips 2021

We left Virginia and traveled about three hours north passing through Maryland into Delaware and then Pennsylvania.  It was Sunday which meant that the traffic was light although it seemed busy to this Rochester driver.  We drove through downtown Wilmington on the way to our hotel in Glen Mills PA at the intersection of the Baltimore Pike (US 1) and the Wilmington Pike (US 202.)  Happily enough our hotel was a stone's throw from a Wegman's where we did some travel shopping. Over the next three days, we visited five gardens in the area.  That seems like a lot but then the Greater Philadephia area is called the Garden Capital of America .  There are 36 public gardens within a 30-mile radius of the city.  We found ourselves in the area around Wilmington DE.  Below are some photos, a video and some descriptions of five of those 36 gardens.  We certainly got an early taste of spring after what seemed like a long, even endless winter. Longwood Gardens T...

Back in February, we began planning our first trip after our vaccinations.  While a family visit trip actually came first-- you can read about that trip here --we wanted to get south, just a bit, in order to experience spring just a bit earlier.  If you have followed our blogs over the years, you know that we love to visit gardens of all types.  Two years ago on our way back from Aidan's high school graduation in Charlotte, we spent three days in the Wilmington DE area visiting three of the many public gardens in that region.  We decided to return and stay a week to try to catch some of the early spring flowerings, especially in the woodland gardens.  The last week in April seemed a good choice but, of course, the weather would determine what was in bloom. However before we began that week, we drove to Centreville VA to spent the weekend with Tom and Sarah Pickett, Bill's youngest brother and his wife.  We hadn't seen them for over 14 months--Zoom notwithst...