A peedie jaunt aboot the gairdens (1)

For once you'll be glad to hear I'm puggled (very tired) and nae (no) real blethers (chat) for you all. You'll probably be very happy about that! (Enjoy it doesn't happen very often.) Here's a peedie (small), wee (small - we've many words for small in our land of the scots!) peek at a tiny bit of our lovely adventure at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh - where I learnt alot about plants when I studied there. I've been lucky enough to study their twice - (very lucky) and I love it there. We had a lovely lovely lovely lovely time! Grinning the whole time!

A lot of the early spring flowers were going over (witch hazel and the other very early chaps) but alot of the alpine garden was looking amazing including this pasque flower - gorgeous huh? I'll not bore you with the latin (or the boring, made up grown up name as my daughter calls it (!) - her grown up name is Corylus....!)

 I loved this path filled with mosses and the patterns they create.

 And the tenacity of the wee Chinodoxia popping through the bricks when clearly they were'nt supposed to!

 Now this I liked - I don't know this plant - it's lovely though - Synthyris platycarpa......

 And beside the Corylus - beautiful Forsythia - don't see much of that here - but I love its vibrant colour at this time of year. And, then we wanted to go into the glass houses but you have to pay - permanent pass forgotten (you get one when you learn here), - I asked at the desk how much it was to pay for us all *the gardens are free* but you do pay for the many glass houses to keep helping with their costs. Anyhows - when I said I'd forgotten my pass - he didn't mind - and we got to go for free - yippee - good old honesty does pay after all (or not pay actually)!

I love ferns - I really do!

And of course the fish - which my daugher remembered - she's been visiting the gardens since she was three - considers it her second garden! Very lovely to go back and to see her enjoy it so much and remember so much - beautiful infact.

 Did I mention I love ferns and well I love everything with a choloroplast don't I? - The unfurling ferns look like monkey tails - I told the kids when they were litte thats how monkeys grew such fun tails to look like ferns - eternally now fern croziers are known as 'monkey tails' to us.

 Green flowers?! Must be in a tropical glass house....................

And the orchids - my word - we've a lot of photos of those but here is my absolute favourite orchid - vanilla - the most useful orchid in the world - able to make a mean ice cream sunday or a perfect custard! What an utterly beautiful useful plant!

 It climbs and climbs.....

 And then makes you some lovely vanilla pods!

The interpretation in the greenhouses are great - I'm a great fan of ethnobotany and our use/culture with plants - the gardens helps to explain our relationship with plants very well - truly inspiring! We'd truly be nothing without them! Anyways that was a  wee peek - I'll pop more photos up in a peedie blink (a short while)!

Time for bed!