“Out from the slumber of this winter, wakeup and reflect and renew.”
Dear Friends,
I inherited 12 camellia trees when I bought my home many years ago. When I relandscaped, I didn’t have the heart to remove any of these small trees, so we landscaped around them. Perhaps not the best garden design, but they were living things of beauty, so they stayed. In the front, I have brilliant red ones; in the back, I have mostly white ones and one pink one. Camellias were one of Virginia Robinson’s favorite flowers, especially the pink ones. (Nuccio’s Nursery honored Virginia by developing a pink camellia named “Virginia Robinson” in 1957.)
In the morning, as I walked through the garden, I noticed that the camellia trees were blooming. But, they were blooming in a special way. The trees were full of buds and flowers, but something rather interesting was happening. Because of the sun exposure in the front yard, the camellias on top of the tree were in full bloom. The camellias in the middle were starting to open, and the ones near the bottom were tightly closed.
Life often mimics nature. When I saw that my camellia trees were blooming in stages, it reminded me of our beautiful Robinson Gardens. At the moment, we are like the closed buds at the bottom of the tree; next we will be as the middle buds are, just starting to open; and soon we will be like the camellias on top of the tree, open in their full glory.
Our Virginia Robinson Gardens may be resting, but our committees are not. We continue to virtually connect, planning new programming, continuing to work on the children’s science semi-virtual programs, upcoming lectures, and our membership drive.
Our aviary is once again alive with parakeets and two cockatiels. Our parakeets have laid at least five eggs with many more nesting in an unseen box in the birds’ nesting area. We have a new bird that is almost full-grown. Soon we will have hatched babies with open mouths ready to begin their new life. The vegetable garden is almost ready for its first harvest, and the seedlings are ready for early spring planting.
Our gardens are a place where one can come to enjoy nature -- a place of respite, and a place to connect with nature and to feed our souls.
We value our friendships, our families, and the abundance of good that is nature.
Warmly,
Betty Rodriguez Goldstein
President of the Friends of Robinson Gardens
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