More Nature. Put On Your Sunscreen.

I know. I'm beating you to pieces with outdoorsy this week but it'll make up for the times this summer when I won't set foot outside and I whine, "I'm not going ouuuut! It's hotttt! And there are buggggs!".

I went to another park today. This one is a bit farther away but it's easily accessible to me by streetcar. I've been to it before in the middle of summer but it's this time of year that this particular park is special. I'd been told about it a couple years ago by one of Burkhard's aunties (one of the aunties that adores me) but had never seen it myself. I thought I had a few weeks time yet but my MIL told me she read in the newspaper that this is the week I needed to get down there, camera in hand.

Here's the view of the park at the entrance I used:



It look a little like pools of water in the distance or that the grass is simply blue, doesn't it?



It's definitely a blue lawn, but not grass. It's millions of little blue flowers.



That's the individual flowers. They're called in German Scilla or Blaustern and a friend told me in English they're called Siberian Squill.



They're everywhere. On virtually ever bit of grassy area are these little blue flowers. They normally don't bloom until April but since we're having mild weather a bit earlier than normal they've come out. They'll probably be gone again in the next week or ten days so folks are making sure they see them before they fade away for the year. I noticed as I walked along the paths winding through the park (this one is larger than the one I was at the other day but this one is perfectly flat - no scary stairs to contend with) that the flowers gave off a mild, sweet scent. It was rather charming in a sort of storybook way to see people laying in the flowers enjoying the sunshine. I've seen fields of wildflowers before but never this dense and over such a large area right in the middle of a city.



I have to go back down there before they fade for the season. I couldn't get enough of looking at that carpet of blue.