Savour

The Botanic Gardens, where two ladies endlessly pause to appreciate the moment.

Autumnal

Garden's a buzzing today: songbirds are a'tweeting; squirrels are gathering supplies; The Lady of the House is in residence in the flower pot; and Dubh is all 'So many fish, so little time...'

Back to work for me :-)

Chelsea Blooms

Some images from Chelsea Physic Garden, where I spent a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Founded in 1673, it's a lovely place: mostly open-air, with a tropical corridor of wooden greenhouses. It nurtures a variety of plants from around the world (with Jamaican provision gardens a current highlight); plants that made fortunes and empires and transformed lives: cocoa and tea, orchids and mandrakes and bananas and Cinchona, from which quinine is derived.

Medicinal plants are of course a focus: the Garden of World Medicine offers traditional plants from ayurvedic, Maori, Native American, Chinese and European herbal medicine. The Pharmaceutical Garden lays out beds of plants in world-wide use for anaesthesia, oncology, parasitology, cardiology... The deadly nightshade is in the cardiology bed, covered in jet black, poisonous berries. Its latin name - belladonna - comes from the plant being historically used by women to dilate their pupils. Cuck-koooo.

Anyhoo, there's a great poison section, neat bee hives (which yield 140lbs honey per hive in a good year), and an ornate gate at the wall by the riverbank that is only opened for royalty... and manure :-)