And Flamingos are Too

Last year the peony garden at the arboretum was “closed” when the peonies were blooming. It’s an outdoor area, so the university couldn’t actually prohibit anyone from visiting, but they asked people not to go to avoid any sort of congregation at the garden. This was before there was a consensus on how transmissible COVID-19 was in general and how much less transmissible it would be outdoors. In addition, the rest of the university was still mostly shut down, including almost all experimental research, and the hospital was recovering from its April surge of COVID-19 patients, so it was a somewhat reasonable request that people temporarily find their entertainment elsewhere while the university sorted itself out.

This year indoor university spaces remained accessible to U-M people only but outdoors was open to all. I suspect they weren’t encouraging people to visit the peonies because they weren’t posting updates on the percentage of the garden in bloom as they had in the past, but they weren’t discouraging visitors either. I spent a couple weeks staking out the garden before getting tipped off on the Ann Arbor subreddit that it was basically in peak bloom one weekend. Once again, I set off for the arboretum on my trusty bike. It was a lovely warm and sunny afternoon, so the peony garden was busy and the river was full of drunk tubers blasting music.

When I arrived, it was too bright for really good peony photos so I decided to take a walk around the arboretum and wait for the sun to go down a bit. Even with the arboretum as busy as it was, it wasn’t too bad away from the peony garden and a couple spots along the river. After a circuit of the arboretum, the sun was still too high, but as I was scouting out shady spots, some clouds rolled in to block the sun and I got my pictures after all.

Previous years at the peony garden: 2017 2018 2019