Magnolias | Jardin du Palais Royal

Spring in Paris has finally begun to fill the city with pockets of color... and one of the main attractions is always the dusty pink magnolia buds at the Jardin du Palais Royal. Hoping your Spring is filled with beautiful blooms and plenty of sunshine!

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Decisions | Paris & Peonies

The beginning of summer in Paris can sometimes be tricky I've discovered, not only because of constantly varying weather conditions, but also because you may just find yourself at an open market with just a single 10 Euro bill in your pocket and have to decide between a carton of succulent strawberries or a handful of the prettiest peonies... one feeds the stomach, the other feeds the heart and soul...

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The Sweet Scent of Roses | Jardin des Plantes

I often pass this gated area just beyond the main entrance of Jardin des Plantes on my way to another area of the garden, and only ever stop to photograph the sculptures inside, always wishing I could jump the fence to get a better angle. I've never known it to be accessible to the public, until the other day when surprisingly two square gates, normally locked and sealed with a padlock, were wide open. I looked around to see if the jardinieres were momentarily inside watering the plants or tilling the grounds... but there was no one working on the flora at all, just a young man walking under the trellises, admiring the roses.

Roses! A jungle of roses that were never there on my previous visits. I stepped inside with a fluttering heart. And although I overheard someone say most of the blooms had already passed their peak, I couldn't disagree more. And so I spent the better half of the morning slowly taking in the 170 varieties of European roses.

Do visit if you can... but take heart, as soon as you begin to leave, the fragrance of a thousand roses pulls you back in, inviting you to remain one minute more, then another, followed by another...

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Dahlias: A Beautiful Consolation

A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in...what more could [one] ask? 

A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars. ― Victor Hugo

The other day, I noticed these exquisite dahlias at the market up the street and couldn't resist taking two bunches home. The florist was quick to tell me that dahlias are extremely delicate and should be handled with great care, that I should change their water and clip their stems every day. Doing so would make them last longer, at least a week. So off I went (a half-hearted black thumb) with an armful of delicate beauty.

For the first couple days the dahlias lit up the room, each petal perky and bright,... but around day three I began to see browning. The disappointment that usually follows though, didn't. It was around the period of rentrée (back to school)... and their wilting petals seemed to parallel the ache that always comes this time of year - the end of summer and my boys heading off to school. So this time, I didn't blame my black thumb but accepted the fading dahlias as an act of consolation, mirroring the goodbye to the sweet summer days my boys and I spent together in our new city...

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Sunshine + Flora at Jardin des Plantes

It was one of those mornings when, after dropping my son off at school, I couldn't resist taking a small detour to Jardin des Plantes to watch the late winter sunlight flood the flora and skip along the double rows of plane trees.

Jardin des Plantes, an idyllic quiet space in Paris' 5th arrondissement, is France's main botanical garden created in 1626 by Louis XIII's physician as the royal medicinal herb garden (and opened to the public in 1640). It also houses La Ménagerie (a lovely small zoo that had my younger son riveted - we'll share these photos on another post), tropical greenhouses and magnificent museums. We plan on exploring and sharing more of this enchanting garden in the coming days...

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