Evening at the lupin garden

We were actually heading for the gymnasium and fitness centre, but there was some sort of Thing happening there, with lots of people. The space is small, and we knew it would be crowded, so we gave it a miss. Instead we took the speedminton sets and created a court on the grassy meadow near the lakefront, behind the gymnasium / health care complex. We had a lot of fun.

As it began to turn dusk, we decided to take a short walk over to the lupin garden. Every year around Father's Day the lupin garden erupts. It's not really a garden. It's a low-lying area of shrubs and cottonwoods near the lake, between the health care facility foreshore and the community garden. It doesn't have any pathways in, and to get into the heart of it you have to brave the jungle of thorny wild roses. [This is an amazing place to collect rose hips in the fall.] At the height of summer the lake level drops and you can walk along the beach to get in, but when the lupins are in bloom you have to go the hard way. Through the rose bushes.

I forget how we found it the first year, but we've gone back every year since. For a few years the full flush of the lupin garden coincided with our end-of-year Suzuki recital, and I will forever associate the smell of armloads of lupins in giant vases with my kids' violin performances -- especially "Humoresque" which was performed by my three older children at three of those lupin-infused recitals.

Someone must have broadcast lupin seeds there years ago. There's no other explanation. The colours are too varied. There are purples, pinks, whites, fuschias and even yellows. We don't see yellows in the wild much. We must have had our own Miss Rumphius at some point. There are hundreds and hundreds of flowers. They overflow onto the gravelly lakeshore, and fill the half acre of brushy area behind the cottonwoods too. When we went last night it was still a little early. Only the purples were open. Spring is late this year. We'll go back next week.

Fiona is polishing Humoresque now. Perhaps she'll play it to the scent of lupins too.