Cautionary note to readers – this post is not compatible with mealtimes
A few weeks ago I’d taken my mother to Christchurch Hospital for an appointment. I’d no sooner got her settled back in the rest home when I got word that a friend was in hospital so I tootled back to the inner city and parked in the middle of Hagley Park.
Hagley Park, Botanical Gardens carpark
The hospital is over there!
Botanical Gardens carpark, Hagley Park, Christchurch
From here it was a pleasant 10 minute stroll through the Botanical Gardens nestled in their intestinal loop of the Avon
Christchurch Botanical Gardens are cradled in a loop of the Avon
with late autumn displays and a brilliant blue sky
Swamp Cypress, Taxodium distichum
The air was redolent with the pungent odour of a Cook Strait ferry
Power gives way to sail – “Yeah Right!” Cook Strait ferry brushing aside yachts in entrance to Wellington Harbour (Whanganui a Tara)
after a sailing where the stewards were busy gathering up used paper bags.
It took a while to work out that it was all natural, nothing more than the bountiful leavings of the maiden hair trees, Ginkgo biloba.
Ginkgo biloba, Hagley Park 
Maidenhair autumn leaves 
Ginkgo biloba fruit
The fruit (bottom right) are pretty golden globes, not what you expect from something related to pine trees, but each fallen
ginkgo fruit smells like a cup of warm sick
Elsewhere winter was in place but the gardens are full of trees with winter virtues.
black alder has 
craze-ey bark
Nearing the hospital there is a group of paper-bark maple holding up the sky
Acer griseum, paper-bark maple
and warm toned, many textured bark
Acer griseum paper bark 
paperbark maple. Hagley Park 
Acer griseum with hammer bark
Advertisements
Share this:
