Bulbs One And Two

On Saturday, we got all our gear together and sallied forth with the infant, on her first foray into the great world beyond the front door...



We had brought our little bulb to see other little bulbs, at the Spring Bulb show at Smith College's Lyman Conservatory in Northampton.



It was packed in there when we arrived early afternoon, and the lines of people moved pretty slowly through the main green house containing the majority of the bulbs (the better to view the flowers and plants).



Once you make it through the bulb house though, you can then go with more leisure through the various other attached greenhouses that make up the conservatory. The bulb show goes from March 7 through March 22. There's no admission charge, but they ask for a 1 dollar per person donation.

I'm not very flower savvy, so I won't even try to label these colorful specimens that had caught my eye, from the thousands of other colorful specimens...











The bulb show is not only a visual wonder, but also an olfactory one; the greenhouses are rich with fragrances.











Heady perfumes and gentle bouquets permeate the air. Beautiful and aromatic scents that are perhaps wasted on the 'flaming-death-skull' set...



The temperature and humidity differences in the various rooms are also striking, with some of the rooms kept steamy and jungle like; mist-making machines periodically saturating the air with water droplets.





While other rooms immediately feel arid and desert-like as soon as you walk in...



Apparently most of the temparate regions of the world were represented in this conservatory...



We had made the full tour, and the crowd had lightened up considerably, so we circled around to the beginning for one last look around, before we left.



Once outside, since we had the battle-stroller and other baby accessories all set up, we went for a quick loop around the Smith College campus taking the long way back to the car.





Luckily the little one had shown exemplary behavior, with hardly a fuss during the whole trip. It was a good first outing for her, and several baby-road-trip lessons were learned by us...