Flowers of Linden Hill

On Saturday of my weekend in Pennsylvania for Big Summer Potluck, we were taken to a place called Linden Hill Gardens.  This was where all the main events of the day took place.

My first shots were of the lovely flower arrangements placed in the windows of the barn.

When we had the chance to tour the grounds, I was fascinated by the jumbo-sized flowers on huge lily pads at the pond:

They were enormous, and had these unusual centers that reminded me of shower heads:

It is hard to see the scale of these flowers in these shots.  The closest I got to showing their size is in this shot with my sister in the background:

I should have taken a picture with Jennifer’s head right next to a bloom, because that is about how big they were!

This next shot isn’t a flower, or perfectly focused (autofocus was arguing with me again about where to focus, so I shut him off) but I love the sparkle of the dragonfly’s wings:

Black-eyed susans provided a great opportunity for a fill-the-frame shot:

After dinner, I took an chance to slip back down toward the pond for a few more pictures in early evening light:

And one more of those unusual lily pad flowers, this time a bud:

but a bud the size of a large man’s fist!

A few more shots that I took of the flowers are posted in this set on Flicker.

I loved having the opportunity to take these photos, especially since the recent harsh weather in this area has done a number on my plants.  In addition to the damage done to my veggie garden that I showed you in this post, my hanging baskets of flowers are not looking very healthy either 😦 .  Sadly I will not have lots of lush flowers decorating my deck for Sarah’s birthday party this weekend.  We had another hail storm this past Monday (thankfully no power outage this time around) and I just don’t know if the flowers will be able to recover this time.  Thank goodness the tomatoes are relatively unharmed!

ETA: Michaela of The Daily Click correctly identified those lily pad flowers as lotus!  Thanks Michaela!