My dear wife Karen and I decided a return to the Rhodendron Festival of Sandwich, Mass., for our second year running was a must.

Well actually we walked the paths of the beautiful grounds of the Heritage Museums and Gardens. Took our time. I snapped away on my iPhone.Even though we were just a year and a few days past our first visit, we thought the star plants were past peak in comparison.

Singular plants still sang out to me.

Other varieties were taking their turn, too.

Different colors and hues kept us wondering just what they might be. The stroll on the cloudy day kept us quite satisfied.

To view the colorful spectacle still again took my breath away.

Yet we admitted this year the grounds did not yield the same walls of flowers. Perhaps that is why the folks who run the place called the official Rhodedendron Festival quits the day after Memorial Day. So the day we walked the grounds was just a normal day at these spacious gardens.

The gardens still held a fascinating exhibit in the barn, <em>Creating the Cape</em> and artist-made stand-alones trumpeting sustainabillity sprinkled among the paths.

You can see those here in the next few days.