Botanics, the floral side

 

C likes the traditional bright yellow eschscholzia. I quite liked these pale yellow ones, and it was odd that only a handful were dotted so copiously with small flies.

We were lucky to be at the right time to see the handkerchief tree in full bloom.

This was a tall palm-like "tree" in the temeperate zone glass house, with leaves something like banana tree and a bloom amazing like Bird of Paradise, only much larger and less colourful. 

Botanic Birds and Beasts

 I'll split the Botanic Gardens into two posts as I have several mandarin duck photos...

As per the title, this one is (mostly) birds. 

A snatched shot of the squirrel. From the sound in the bushes we had thought it was a bird, but I think it was the squirrel taking a flying leap to grab a berry from the tree. 

I'll be back with May Favourites tomorrow, and then the flowers from the Botanic Gardens.

The full album can be found here. 

Botanic Gardens

 We've had an amazing run of weather the last ten days or so - due to end this week. On the Saturday if the St. Patrick's Day long weekend we went up along the coast, but I have no pictures from that. I do have some from our trip to the Botanic Gardens yesterday - and if you have the appetite for more, the full gallery (approx 70 photos)  is HERE. 

Brief highlights follow. Unedited, due to lack of time.  Plenty of  Spring bulbs...the magnolia patch was fenced off so we weren't able to go into it, the one photo here is from the walled kitchen garden. It looks as if they had cut down several of the established magnolias and planted some new ones.

For the first time since Covid, we were able to go into the glasshouses - and I'd forgotten how quickly glasses  and camera lenses steam up! The strelitzia are in the glasshouse for South Africa and Australia. I liked the dead ones, which made me think of the vultures in The Jungle Book. 

This one was right up at the top of the Palm House - and reminded me of an elaborate fascinator

Enjoying the sun - and I had to look twice to be sure it wasn't another bronze sculpture like the one in the other lily pond. 

This was an intriguing narcissus, with alternate layers of coloured and white petals

And this one made us both think of one of those classic origami flower folds. 

Better late...

 All month I have been meaning to get back and add some photos from the Sculpture in Context exhibition. Life just seems too busy - but a singularly wet morning and a day off are a good combination.

All 74 photos I uploaded from my visit are HERE, but for anyone like me with less time, here's my quick pick of some favourites.

This was a whole array of raised dishes in a circle under some trees. The fallen leaves were a great addition

There was a companion hare to go with the fox

I'm pretty sure I remember a chickenwire sculpture from another year, a fox perhaps. I must look back. 

I can't remember the title of this, I think it had Spring in it. I would have called it Bird Brain.

Botanics

 Here are a few photos from Saturday. I didn't want to include sculptures, because I hope to be back to see the full exhibition, but I've added a couple of close-ups of the steampunk dragonfly, and one of someone resting mid-installation. There was the most horrendous squeaking and creaking sound, which turned out to be two people pulling this up the hill on a little trolley. 

It was actually quite interesting being there on a set-up day. I had seen one sculpture, and then when we went to the grass garden at the end, there was one very similar. In fact, it turned out to be the same one - when I asked, the artist said he had been asked to move it because it had a couple of spikes, so it was being relocated to a position where children would be less likely to hurt themselves. We met another couple installing "Butterfly Tree" at the foot of the herbaceous border - he was painstakingly rubbing gilding into the rim of a circle.

The flower beds were all full of bees and insects of all sorts. Not on this first one, which C said looked like an origami flower, and I take his point. I have some pink California poppies this year myself: I'd been disappointed that they were so much smaller than the traditional yellow ones, but then I saw that these ones were also much smaller. And not nearly as vivid a pink as in the seed catalogue. We have some good sunflowers ourselves this year - also attracting the bees. 

No photos because I was in the middle of cooking at the time, but on Sunday we took all the compost out of the compost bin so that we could dismantle it and put it together again - over the years it has started to come apart a bit at the corners. The birds like it like that, I quite often see blackbirds perched near it and reaching in for some insects on tap, as it were. The compost, as usual, was a lovely rich loam and absolutely full of worms. A robin thought it was Christmas, his birthday and every other holiday rolled into one and helped himself several times, a bit like an all-you-can-eat buffet. We now have the two more damaged sides turned to the two walls, and it looks almost as good as new again, and I have several containers of compost kept out to mulch the beds with.