Botanic Gardens ~ Sculpture

I'm so glad we went to the Botanic Gardens last week and didn't leave it till this weekend. After a week of beautiful sunshine we woke to a dull grey morning - and this time it wasn't just a mist which burnt off as the sun rose. Revisiting the sculptures as I edited some photos was good enough for today.

Some here, more to follow tomorrow.

This was C's favourite of the indoor exhibits; pyrography and colouring.

These flowers were in the main entrance to the Curvilinear greenhouse; made from recycled metal, beautifully textured as if they had been corrugated.

This might be the first year that we didn't buy a catalogue, so I can only remember a few exhibit titles. This one was easy to remember - Flotsam and Jetsam.

In the grass garden, a flock of birds...

From the back, I had thought that these were cracked eggshells, because we could see the birds in the background beyond them. But once we walked into the grasses, we could see that they were flowers.

September Favourites...

Favourite cards from September. A couple might look rather Christmassy but they're not particularly intended as Christmas cards - in fact, one has already been sent.

I had very few suitable photos from last October for a blog header. I was going to use one from the Mourne Mountains, but it wasn't suitable for cropping to a landscape format. So instead I went looking through photos from October '13 and found this wagtail, taken along the seafront in Greystones.

Liffey Birds

A sunny morning, a misty morning...

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

France - le fin

A dragonfly photo I missed out on earlier because it was the only photo from a walk in woodlands near Le Teich.

Le Teich reserve was our last day. We shopped for dinner on our way home, and after dinner, took down the big tent, set up the small one ready for a quick getaway the following morning, and packed up the car.
And then we decided to go and find the port that we were within metres of finding on our first night, le Port Des Tuiles. It was much less "developed" than Biganos, port, and the little cabins weren't as spruced up. But it was a lovely way to spend the last evening. The name comes from the fact that it was the port where tiles manufactured in Biganos were put on boats and distributed to all the ports around the bay, where the oyster growers used them as a substrate for growing the baby oysters.

We had a long drive ahead of us the next day - nearly 700 kilometres. We left in good time to fit in a supermarket shop in the town before Roscoff, and still had time for a short walk round the town of St. Pol-de-Léon to give our legs a good stretch after a day in the car.

One last bird...

Le Teich Ornithological Reserve (4)

A final few birds, some non-bird photos, the local "harbour"...

Little ringed plover

Distant lapwing

Lizard in the sun

I remember when we had our boat trip in the Marais Poitevin, the "ragondin" was one of the animals our guide mentioned as being an introduced species and somewhat of a pest. We saw some of their tracks, but didn't actually see any. This little one was grazing happily away near the birds. I think he looks very cute munching away, but they can do a lot of damage to the local ecosystem. His coat looks so shaggy, and he was so small, that I find it hard to see why they were farmed for fur.

Coypu. Nutria (myocastor coypus)

This was the local harbour near the reserve. As everywhere else in the bay, it was very tidal. You would certainly develop a great awareness of time and tide, I am sure. The first photo was taken when we walked to the beach to look at the swimming area and lie in the sun for a while after our long walk round the reserve. Even by the time we were walking back to the car, the tide was already rising.