Rebooted

Continuing the free spree, today I visited the SF Botanical Garden. This place... wow this place... what a treasure! It has become, hands down, my favorite place in the city. It even beats out REI and Chinatown (of course, those are much more fun with my boy is in town...but he makes everything better!) Visiting the garden today was refreshing. It was almost like the feeling after a hike... getting out of town...losing yourself in the trees and variety of life and feeling like, in some distant but real way, that I am a part of all that. The families of plants and their distant relatives spread all across the globe are phenomenal to see gathered here. And, tucked away in the Golden Gate Park, this little gem, quiet and unmonumental beside its new neighbors, the deYoung and the California Academy of Sciences, rebooted my system. (I apologize for my inability to edit the number of pics... it was just too much fun to run around with the camera!)

In New Zealand... here you see the New Zealand Christmas tree to your right

And here you see one of its hanging branches...looks like capillaries...

And then I looked down... sometimes the gathering of fallen flowers was much nicer than the living ones on the plants...

Or even those plants that refuse to limit their lives to borders... this is in "Africa"

Also, in Africa...

And here we are in Chile, checking out the crazy varieties of hanging flowers...

Even something that looks like an enormous squash blossom... this bloom was about 8" long, by the way!

The marsh between the Cloud Forest, Africa and East Asia was a pleasant surprise...

And, in East Asia there were blossoms everywhere... I kind of dig the "ruins" that have been placed throughout... seemingly kitschy... but surprisingly non-disruptive...

bananas!

loved the color of this bamboo... so soft and unexpected...

kind of like the Botanical Garden itself.