Botanic Gardens - Flora

I meant to post this last night...
Not only is it the time of year for the Sculpture in Context exhibition in the Botanic Gardens, it also feels as if we have been having more sunshine than we had all summer, almost. It's just a shame that it's so late in September that there isn't a lot of warmth left in it, but it's beautiful to wake up to blue skies and sunshine for several mornings in a row. Saturday was one such morning, so we headed over to the Botanic Gardens for what is, I think, our first visit this year because of the weather having largely been so uninspiring.

Still life in the peony border...

The kitchen garden was mostly faded, but the chard was a glorious riot of colour

From a distance, this looked like a little cameo, and at first we both thought it was part of the sculpture exhibition!

Colchicum - they looked as if a shower of little darts had landed in the ground

Bokeh effect - lily leaves, sunshine, and water

Water-lilies

The weather is meant to be cooling down - so hopefully I can get back to editing Greek photos (and selecting ones to print!).
In the meant time, I did say the water-lilies in the Botanic Gardens were quite lovely - here are a few.
I love the names for water lilies, too - nénuphar in French, Nymphaeaceae as the Latin family name, which makes me think of naiads and dryads.

Summer days...

It's still hot and sunny here.
We made time for a quick visit to the Botanic Gardens this morning because there was a patchwork exhibition on which I didn't want to miss. Of course while we were there we had to fit in a short walk around the gardens - along the borders where they plant annuals, down the herbaceous border, around the ponds and back. Plenty of waterlilies in the ponds - photos to follow. I'm not sure that we've ever seen them looking so beautiful before.

This was in a wildflower border:

And the mating dragonflies were down among the waterlilies.

Purple in the woods

This was one of my favourites from the Sculpture in Context exhibition at the Botanic Gardens when we went recently. From a farther distance than the photos, I saw the splash of purple and thought maybe it was colchicums. Perhaps because I was too busy looking at it, I didn't pay a lot of attention when I heard something fall - C was ahead of me and I could see he hadn't dropped anything. It never occurred to me that I had - but a while later C informed me that the weight of the tripod had pulled the back flap on my rucksack open - and my portable hard drive was missing. Luckily I knew where I had heard something fall - so we got to see this beautiful creation twice. It was called Pretty Purple, created by Sarah McGloughlin, and seemed to be a mix of crochet, knitting and felt. A perfect example of a sculpture truly in context.

Orange

From the Botanic Gardens last Saturday. My own escholzia is a very pale buttery yellow.

Heron

Last of the Sculptures...

This one was called The Bigger Picture. From a distance it didn't look all that interesting; we'd passed it in the distance, and it just looked like a tall chicken-wire cone with bits and pieces all over it. I'm so glad that we ended up passing much closer because we went into the Palm House through the orchid rooms and ended up coming out the front entrance. If C's feet weren't starting to give out I could have spent a lot longer admiring all the little details.

Flying frogs - I think it's funny that they were for sale individually,  they look just right like this.

And this fun one was in the botanical family beds, and was title Family Bed Labelling. It reminds me of drawings from when we did plant biology in school.

Next post should be back to France - one outing left in the LaRoche Posay area.
Election today today - I don't know which particular vote caused such a turnout, but I've certainly never seen it so busy, and the officials at the desk where we picked up our ballots said the same. For us we had a bye-election as well as the presidential election and the referenda.

More of the Sculptures

His Master's Voice - for an idea of scale, the figure wasn't more than 6 to 8 inches high.

I liked this one  - it was called Green Shoots as far as I remember.

Master and Muse

 These ceramic seed-heads were another one I wouldn't mind having in the garden - I've always loved the shape of poppy heads. I wasn't quite sure about the one with a face in it, though.

It's miserable wet and windy weather here with a severe weather warning in place. It rained all the way down to my brother's yesterday, but luckily it stayed dry for most of the drive home; I hate night drives in the rain, they make me a very bad passenger.