Kubota Gardens, Seward Park — Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2021

Check out these 2 urban parks on the same day! Kubota Gardens is a beautiful old Japanese garden with mature trees and tons of charming little bridges, walkways and small waterfalls. Famous for the bright red bridges, there are some little wooden ones and cement ones fun to walk along also. Not too much in bloom, Cornellian cherry (not a true cherry but related to dogwoods), just showing it's bright yellow color, witch hazels are finishing up and one early rhody is starting. This garden has a lot of mature specimen conifers that are the main plant feature this time of year. There are lots of rhodies there, it should be beautiful in May!  Sanican available near the entrance. Once we were done, we drove a few miles to Seward Park. This is a great park with access to Lake Washington, but also lots of little trails thru an urban forest. It was sad to see the areas decimated by the sword fern dieback. There was a sign about it, it is not know exactly what is causing it, but it is unique to this area and it has affected many of the parks in and around Seattle. Sad. The urban wildlife sightings included a coyote, I took a picture just to make sure, yup it was Wile E, (it was pretty blurry for posting so didn't)  also eagles, golden crowned kinglets, and the usual flock of crows. We had Kubota to ourselves, having gotten there around 9:30, but Seward was popular today, parking full and we had to park on the street. Prepare to be masked for the whole time at Seward. Loo open at the parking lot. We stopped for coffee afterwards and were still on the freeway back to Everett by 1:30 to beat the rush hour.