Darker the bark, Longer the shadows...

Shaken,
The blossoms of lilac,
And shattered,
The atoms of purple.
Green dip of the leaves,
Darker the bark,
Longer the shadows.

Sheer lines of poplar
Shimmer with masses of silver
And down in a garden old with years
And broken walls of ruin and story,
Roses rise with red rain-memories.
May!
In the open world
The sun comes and finds your face,
Remembering all.

--Carl Sandburg

Bikes and Roses

I couldn't help but grab this shot outside Barristers Garden Center. Ordinary stuff, true. But so pretty!

Barrister's Garden Center

If you take the Gold Line train to South Pas, you’ll notice a profusion of greenery and flowers just below and around the side of the platform. It’s worth it to explore the source of all this seemingly incongruous vegetation: Barrister’s Garden Center. I still haven’t figured out how they appear to have arranged an acre’s worth of plants into that tiny space next to the train station, but I don’t want to understand it. The place is magical. When my husband and I first walked through -- winding around the narrow curving pathways, past fountains and topiary and exotic foliage -- we decided it seemed kind of like something out of Dr. Who. (It didn’t hurt that a couple of San Gabriel Valley’s wild parrots were hanging out in a big ficus lyrata.)

You can get the reliable impatiens and rose bushes here, but this place is definitely NOT Home Depot. As an amateur gardener, I love to find unusual plants that I have to look up on Google, and Barrister’s hasn't let me down yet. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable, too.