Hope you're not sick of tulips, because I certainly am not, and can assure you there are plenty more to come. These photos are from last year's tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point; I visited today and splurged on a membership—between the festival and a sometime-soon visit to the butterfly biosphere, that was nearly half the cost of the annual membership. At that rate, I thought it a worthy investment. Plus, I can visit the tulip festival weekly to catch each subsequent phase, and then come back in May and June when the peonies are blooming. Win-win-win. (and if any local friends want to tag along, I can get you half-off admission as my guest!)

As I walked the tuliped paths today, someone saw my camera in-hand and asked if I was a photographer. I answered no, just that I like taking photographs. I took their question to mean 'a professional photographer,' which I am not. But perhaps to say I'm not a photographer is a half-truth. I do love photography and the express challenge of capturing with a lens the minute and exquisite detail that I see with my actual eyes. The human eye is a miraculous thing. No camera can compare, but it is still a worthy obstacle—to highlight in photos that which my eyes light upon and the wonder I've beheld there. If nothing else, I love to glimpse back at these bright moments, a reminder during periods of ennui (wintry or otherwise) of the many brilliant beautiful splendid things I have seen and witnessed—spring with her confettied gardens, tulips in every single brilliant rainbowed hue.

It is slightly unfortunate that the vividness of these colors renders these photos as somewhat blown out on a computer monitor. Alas, mother nature's beauty cannot be confined to a screen, and for that, I suppose I should be grateful—I'd much rather experience these parts of the world in all their splendor before my own eyes.

That the ranunculus seem to have provided color notes to the decor of this arbor walkway?!

I am still agog at this dense growth of grape hyacinths! I discovered today that the Ashton gardeners have since interspersed this area with true-blue hyacinths, grape hyacinths still poking through in places. I almost prefer it this (pictured) way—all dense and gangly, gardens in the English style fringed with daffodils.

poppies camouflaged amidst the tulips

these corally tones!!

The Japanese senbazuru display in one area of the garden was so lovely.

these jewel-tones!

Ever and eternally grateful for spring, omnipotent goddess thou!

Working in local government as I do, I can attest that the beloved TV show Parks and Recreation is, in many ways, a scarily accurate portrayal of my life at work. Much like in the show, our neighbors to the north often play Eagleton to our Pawnee. With their higher tax base (a more affluent community with the boon of the area's larger commercial centers, known to have, in the past, poached some of our beloved businesses to their bright and shiny new retail spaces) and other such similarities, there are frequent jabs and jokes in this good-natured rivalry. The latest of these came in the form of some videos my cousin Wade posted on his Instagram stories—a resident of Orem, he jokingly highlighted reasons you need never leave the municipality: 'why go to Europe when you can find everything you need right here in Orem, Utah?' Stonehenge, fountains to rival Las Vegas's Bellagio light show, and the Wasatch range as stand-in-Swiss-Alps-foothills. Wade's delivery and commentary evoked side-splitting laughter from me, but he makes a good point—while often derided or dissed, broadly speaking, the places where we live in Utah are beautiful and have a lot to offer. And I have another spot to add to the list—Nielsen's Grove Park.

I only just discovered this park last spring—since then, I've hosted two picnic-parties there, gone on dozens+ of walks, and swung on the carousel swing as many times. I love it so much and it's a best-kept-secret that I will not be guilty of keeping, because I feel the need to tell everyone I know how amazing a public park it is, a hidden gem in suburbia and a stone's throw from the highway (alas, the proximity to I-15 kills the vibe a little bit, but I remain an undaunted park-goer).

Nielsen's Grove is named for Jorgen Nielsen, who emigrated to what is now called Utah in the 1880s. Having left his native Denmark, a convert of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he arrived in Utah and built a homestead with cultivated formal gardens much like those he left behind in Copenhagen. The city of Orem purchased the property in the 1990s and restored much of Nielsen's original vision. NEED I SAY MORE. The crushed gravel paths, classical symmetry, manicured garden beds, and fountains are straight out of my Parisian park dreams (I know he was Danish, but my first time walking through the park I felt instantly transported to Paris!). The carousel swing is enchanting, even more so that it is a replica of the original (what a brilliant idea?!). With columnar cottonwood trees ringing the paths and fountains, (this is my best guess, based on my semi-extensive tree knowledge) so much like the columnar English oaks that I love on BYU campus, and wisteria-clad pergolas forming a beautiful picnic dining arbor, it is the most beautiful city park I have seen in Utah (more history of the park HERE).

(DISCLAIMER: DON'T WORRY, PROVO PARKS AND RECREATION, MY LOYALTIES LIE WHOLLY WITH YOU AND I TRULY ACTUALLY REALLY AS A MATTER OF FACT FREQUENT PROVO PARKS MUCH MORE OFTEN THAN THOSE OF OTHER CITIES, NEVER FEAR! Also literally nothing could ever impress me as much as the operational successes of Provo Parks and Recreation. I get paid to sit in meetings and pay rapt attention whilst taking notes on all such things, but no one pays me to have that opinion/draw that conclusion!)

Disclaimers aside, this is the time of year when I make nearly weekly visits to Nielsen's Grove Park, so as not to miss the ongoing progression of the seasonal blooms (tulips, magnolia trees, wisteria, peonies!). These photos of last year's tulips leave me once again awed.

Perhaps my biggest lament about living in Utah is the lack of public garden spaces (like ones so often seen in European cities or New York and the like). There are a few decent botanical gardens in the Wasatch Front, but few that are free and close-by and of the caliber I am so often most drawn to. My discovery of this park, so close at hand, and so chock-full of blooming beauty, was an utter delight.

!!!!!!!!!!

these fringed petals!!

this mountain backdrop can't be beat.

There are very few people who truly appreciate what I mean when I tell them I am from the Garden State.

Just now, writing that, I am suddenly feeling very nostalgic for my graphic tee from dELiA*s that bore a cute illustration and caption: "the Garden State: it grows on you!" (have just now returned from an internet rabbit hole of teen fashion research because apparently dELiA*s met an early demise but they have since made a comeback—although they certainly seemed alive and well when I shopped there as a teenager in the twenty-aughts!)

All this to say, I get as many blank stares when I say I grew up amongst forests and farmlands as I dole out when someone replies to my introductory pleasantries with a "New Joy-sey" (for the record: I do not know one! single! soul! who pronounces it such and is actually from the state; the people who say this are always New Yorkers/from Staten Island!!!).

Shocking, I know (particularly when witticisms like this abound in popular culture. Those jokes only apply to Newark)—but I grew up in a truly beautiful part of the state: south Jersey with its greenery and glorious produce. A couple summers ago (2017, to be precise), I was home for a visit to my parents and extended family, and I realized that I had a deep longing to capture the New Jersey I know and love in photographs. During my visit, my mom obliged me with many roadside stops (or in some cases,  simply slow-downs) so I could try and capture these familiar scenes of my upbringing.

Even these photos and this small photo essay do not truly do my homeland justice. To be perfectly honest, my dream is to spend a month in June or July back home, with nothing else to do but drive back roads (which are all of them) and stop at every tiny roadside farm stand, documenting this singular wonderful tradition. The notion of a proper 'farmers market' (booths and stalls and crowds and the like) was unknownst to me until I encountered them in Union Square in NYC and likewise in other big cities; where I grew up, you just stopped at the farm on your way home from wherever you had been coming or going. My family has our tried-and-true favorites (Mood's, Schober's, Grasso Girls), mostly out of convenience of the routes we frequented, but many more whose names and locations I could not possibly recall, because of their glorious plentitude.

Although I've spent nearly all my adulthood in Utah (college + post-college), I will always be a Jersey girl at heart—it is where I was raised and home of the worldview that shaped so much of who I am. A favorite story to illustrate this point: when I planned a week-long camping trip in the Canadian Rockies, I had planned out our menu in advance to simplify our grocery stop for produce before entering the park (having brought the dry goods with us). At a Walmart in Edmonton, Alberta, I asked my friend Laura how many ears of corn she wanted. She gave me a strange look and replied, "one." A few days later, I started a pot of water to boil over our campfire and we shucked the corn cobs. Because I had planned and orchestrated all of this, Laura and our fellow camper and friend Angie looked to me for direction on what other prep they could help with. I explained that the prep was done, as I dropped our four-total ears of corn into the pot to cook. Laura's exclamation and dawning realization still make me laugh to this day: "When you asked me how many ears of corn I wanted, I didn't know that corn was THE ENTREE!" I kid you not that it had honestly never occurred to me that corn wouldn't be the entrée, comprising most of a classic summer meal. When I told my parents this story, we all had a good laugh, and I expressed that my gastronomic-homesickness for Jersey sweet corn will likely never ever dissipate. I usually find all other corn to be insipid, grainy, and altogether disappointing in comparison to the corn of my childhood. It may simply be that I find the produce of my home state altogether superior in every way. I am probably not wrong—we are named for it, after all.

Anecdotes aside, I hope this post makes you smile and gives you a small glimpse into the landscapes and foods that feel like home to me.

fun fact: Hammonton blueberries (of HAMMONTON, NEW JERSEY—BLUEBERRY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD and home to the annual blueberry fest) will always be my favorite blueberries. Some of our dear family friends lived in Hammonton when I was growing up and I was always jealous of/loved their blueberry shirts, with the Top Crop top-hatted-cane-wielding blueberry mascot. 

Every summer, my dad would buy several flats of blueberries, which we'd rinse and then store in our basement chest freezer. All winter long, we'd have fresh-frozen blueberries for our Honey Bunches of Oats with almonds (or other cereal of choice). <3 Dare I say, fresh frozen blueberries are far superior to their freezer-aisle counterparts.

"NO NASTY PEOPLE"—this is so dead-on South Jersey and I love it.

LOPES. need I say more.