DISCOVER A HIDDEN LILAC SANCTUARY IN IDYLLWILD

Visitors can wander colorful garden for free through May 22

Amazingly, it’s May and somehow we are on the brink of summer, a time when flowers — and flower shows — are blooming profusely around Southern California.

If you don’t mind a little drive, take a day trip to Idyllwild to wander Gary Parton’s colorful and fragrant Idyllwild Lilac Garden, with 165 different colors of the old-fashioned flowers that resemble clusters of tiny grapes with an intoxicating scent, sometimes spicy and sometimes sweet. The colors range from blue-violet and magenta to pinks and whites and, of course, dark purples, some of which resemble the burgundy hues of red wine.

In this mountain town where winter is just receding, his 300 lilac bushes are at their peak in May, said Parton, a retired El Camino Junior College art teacher, who