Spring means spring flowers, and this week we have progressed from daffodils to wisteria. Our subject wisteria is at Filoli Center in Woodside, California.

Woodside is now home to many of Silicon Valley’s uberrich, continuing a tradition of habitats for the wealthy. Filoli was once the estate of the Roth family, who ran the Matson shipping line. In 1975 Mrs. Roth donated the estate, including 43 room mansion and sixteen acres of formal gardens, to the National Historic Trust. It is open to the public, staffed mainly by volunteers. For photographers, the combination of old stone buildings and gardens has a special attraction.

It was early spring in Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California. Saratoga is near San Jose, and the Japanese-style gardens cover 18 acres of foothills. I used a pocket camera to take this image (actually a two-image vertical panorama spliced in Photoshop™) of the Pond and Hill Garden. The original image had dark shadows and other technical problems that were adjusted to product this result: