love and lilacs

Happy Mothers Day to all! I am so very lucky to have a beautiful, elegant and generous mother of my own, and was able to spend a lovely day with her and my niece and nephew today. My sister and her husband were traveling back from a wedding in New York, so my mother and I took the kids to the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain. Aside from boasting an endless variety of native and foreign trees and plants year-round, the Arboretum comes alive in May when they host Lilac Sunday. Never before have I seen more beautiful and fragrant lilacs, which are truly some of my favorite flowers. They have 400 lilac bushes and over 200 lilac varieties in bloom every spring. Today they highlighted 20 varieties, some of which I've shown here.










When we got home, I surprised my mother with a citrus almond cake that I decorated with some creeping myrtle I clipped from the front yard.


After I went to grab a few plates, I came back to the table to find this: My lovely rascal of a niece, Athena, could not resist the lemony scent of the cake, and stole a small bite when I wasn't looking. After gently scolding her for eating before her grandmother, and hearing her small voice say, "I'm sorry!", I couldn't help but forgive her.