Roses are Red

Peonies are too

I actually go places
Who wants a gallon of glue?

Obviously I should quit my day job and become a poet. No, I really shouldn’t. But my point is that I do, on occasion, go places and do things worthy of being written about. I do also have a bunch of musicals to review, but last month I left my apartment to go on an excursion to see the peonies. Apparently peony breeding is A Thing that is a Big Deal to some people, and the University of Michigan arboretum has a very large collection of peony breeds, so one evening after work I biked over to see what all the fuss was about.

Some of the peony beds + people

It turns out I timed my trip correctly because the online peony tracker later told me I was there during maximum bloom. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it was rather pretty. There was a small crowd of people meandering amongst the peony beds, and I joined them for a few laps around the garden. After a bit of this, I decided to wander around the rest of the arboretum. It’s not huge, but there’s enough space that you can find some pretty quiet areas away from the hospital complex/railway tracks/river filled with tubers/kayakers paddling being carried down the river by the current.

I found a nice wooded spot (Heathdale) filled with ericaceous and Appalachian plants. Ericaceous plants dislike alkaline (basic) soil and prefer acidic soil and include rhododendrons, heather, and northern highbush blueberry. Note that I did not pay attention to any of that information while I was actually there; I looked it up on Wikipedia as I was writing this post. I also walked out to the edge of the prairie but I was ready for dinner at that point so I walked there, looked at it for a minute, and walked back to my bike. It was flat and grassy and I suppose prairie-like.

More peonies

In contrast to the arboretum at Cornell, Michigan provides bike racks at each of the entrances. Parking, however, can be a challenge. I’ve written about this before, but the arboretum at Cornell (Newman Arboretum) has exactly zero bike racks and over a dozen parking lots. The parking lots are scattered throughout Newman Arboretum so you can drive through it; you can’t drive (or bike) through Nichols Arboretum at Michigan and have to find parking in the surrounding streets. In terms of size, according to the internet, Nichols Arboretum is actually larger than Newman Arboretum, but it doesn’t feel that way. The Nichols Arboretum is hemmed in by the U of M hospital on one side and the river/railroad tracks on the other. Newman Arboretum is surrounded by hundreds more acres of natural areas, including the land the Cayuga Trail passes through. Minus the lack of proper bike racks, I still prefer the Cornell arboretum, though the peonies were very nice.