We chose Highland Park as the site of our early-morning walk this morning, to give us one last chance to enjoy the beauty and peace of this spectacular place before the festival hordes descend.

And it was early-morning perfect. The lilacs are just a nudge pre-peak, thanks to this week's cool weather. Many of the daffodils, remarkably, have hung on and are still putting on a show in a few spots. The redbuds' flowers are beginning to fade, and there are more magnolia petals on the ground than on the trees, but the folks who go to the festival will have plenty to look at.

Highland's big draw is the lilacs, but to Bill and me, they're not its greatest attribute. We like the vistas farther up the hill, the work of exceptional landscape architects and horticulturists who have combined plants and topography and paths to create breathtaking views.

For a couple of weeks in late April, you walked up a slight hill near the west end of Highland's big hill, and suddenly a massive array of magnolias was spread out before you. Closer to the conservatory, tucked in next to a bank near the entrance of the Poets Garden, is an almost cloudlike grouping of purple and white redbuds and purple azaleas.

And on the central walkway leading to the top of the big hill, there has been a view of almost painful beauty, across rolling green hills to a giant magnolia, flowering cherries, and a delicate, wispy, weeping cherry.

As the lilacs fade, there'll still be late rhododendron and azaleas. And then things will get a little quieter - until fall, when the maples put on a show that rivals spring's.