Longwood Gardens' Hanging Orchids

Day two of my mini-vacation featured an afternoon at Longwood Gardens,  a beautiful parcel of more than 1,077 acres of gardens, woodlands and meadows near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania in the Brandwine Creek Valley. 
The living legacy of Pierre S. DuPont, the property consists of varied outdoor gardens, ranging from formal to naturalistic in landscape design, with 20 indoor greenhouse gardens.
They say that the Gardens attract more than a million visitors per year and as this day was quite a gorgeous sunny, record-breaking 80-degree day, it seemed that many of them had the same idea as my mother and I - to alleviate our cabin fever by basking in the glory of 4,600 different types of plants and trees.
I took quite a few lovely photos but, since the Gardens' current theme is "Orchid Extravaganza," I chose this shot of the reflecting pool in the indoor hall of the main conservatory, which features magnificent hanging baskets of pink and white orchids.
In today's "extra photos" section I am including three more photos - #1 is a look at the East Conservatory, #2 is a robin playing in the crocus of Peirce's Park, and #3 is one of the inhabitants of the Banana House.

"What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heavens?"

~ A.J. Balfour