PHOTO ESSAY: Bountiful colors

You might not believe the bountiful color found in gardens open at the Giverny, France, home where Impressionist Claude Monet painted many of his most famous paintings. This tulip, flanked by tiny violet forget-me-nots, is just one of hundreds of flowering species at the gardens, about 50 kilometers northwest of Paris. Below are more April 21 pictures of the beauty in Monet’s gardens.  Photos by Andy Brack.

These flowers popped with bright magenta throughout the garden that inspired Monet in the late 19th century.

The variety of blooms in April is breathtaking.

You can see open windows of the second floor of Monet’s country home through the tangle of flowers in bloom.

Here is a pond made famous by Monet’s paintings of water lilies. You can see the blues and purples of sky reflections in the pond.

This is a close-up of two blooming lilies in one of Monet’s paintings housed in the Orangerie museum in Paris.

In the last edition, we showed the photo to the right as our Mystery Photo.

Hats off to several folks who identified the April 13 mystery photo — a close-up of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Among those correctly guessing were Charleston Realtor John Tecklenburg, Judy Carberry of Charleston and Chris Brooks of Mount Pleasant.

Thanks to others for guessing too.   We’ll be back next week with a new photo mystery.