Botanics By Daylight

Our Sunday Service was on Zoom today, which gave us a longer time afterwards so we returned to the Botanics to see in daylight some of the features that impressed us during our recent visit to the light show.

In particular I enjoyed these openwork metal spheres, which looked rather different surrounded by flaming torches and with a burning flame inside but in daylight, without the pressure to keep walking, we could pause and examine each more carefully. The thumbnail is that that appears in my collage of the evening. (They should really be read in the order in which the public would see them, that is, from the bottom row, right to left, then top row, right to left). None of them is strictly of a Christmas theme, rather representing winter, with snowflakes, snowmen, baubles and bows and the like, rather than a crib scene or Wise Men riding camels, though I particularly like the quartet of singers outside a church, as we have had so few opportunities to sing carols this year.

Having achieved our goal we wandered around more of the route, which we had noted avoided the area past the glasshouses, and found these barricaded off as they are under planned restoration. We did, by chance, discover a newly constructed route to access the nearby alpine garden, via the experimental gardens and through the Queen Mother's Garden; however, not one Witch Hazel did we see, as many are in the closed-off zone.

I understand that this evening is the last of the light show so tomorrow the entire set of installations will be removed and, quite likely, displayed in a garden in another part of the country, while a set of new designs will delight us next winter. I look forward to that.