This past weekend, Chris and I trekked down to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens for the Sakura Matsuri spring festival. We went with hopes of seeing some cherry blossoms, but considering the early spring that we’ve had and the fact that the flowering trees in our neighborhood have almost all dropped their blooms, we should have known we’d be too late. In any case, Saturday was the warmest day we’ve had so far this year (80 degrees!) and it was nice to be outside, walk around the gardens, and exercise my camera muscles a bit.

Many people came out for the festival, some carried Japanese parasols and a few dressed up for the occasion.

Even though we’d missed the cherry blossoms, there was so much to see. There were purple pom flowers–that’s the scientific name, of course.

And there were dozens of bonsai trees

That looked like majestic, ancient trees

Made tiny for our amusement.

We saw fuzzy green fiddleheads

And pink, alien fiddleheads

And frondy, electric pink fan things. Again, all scientific names.

There was a crazy, tenticular hanging plant as big as a person

And spiny cacti

And this flower, that I thought looked a little wicked. But not like Boston “wicked,” more like the evil queen from Snow White wicked.

But my favorite thing of the whole day were these Japanese tree peonies.

The blooms were massive and the colors were stunning. Fuchsia

Velvety red

And clean white.

I could have photographed these all day.