FOLLOWING CHERRY BLOSSOM TRAIL IN AUBURN BOTANIC GARDENS

Hello dear readers, how are you all?

Here we are again talking about transitional and change of seasons clothes.  While those of you who are living in the Northern Hemisphere are packing your summer clothes away, we, here in Australia, are busy doing back burning to avoid, as they predicted, the worst bush fires at the same time impatiently waiting for the warm weather to arrive.

Officially, the end of winter in the Southern Hemisphere ends 31 of August and that’s often a cut-off time to visit national or private parks to admire the splendour of winter colours before they close the gates till next winter.  The other attraction that you can only witness towards the end of Australian winter is blossoming of cherry trees.  

We just made a beeline to see the last blooms at Auburn Botanic Gardens.  Sadly, we left it to the last minute as the delicate pink flowers had started to fade, wilt and fall to the ground making it look like a magic carpet but it was still a beautiful sight for the eyes.

This botanic garden like many other in Sydney, spread over a big square of land which is mostly covered by the local flora, except one corner where the gardeners planted cherry trees and transformed the surrounding landscape into what looks like a Japanese garden with its traditional attributes such as blue water lake with Coy fish swimming in it, the light wooden bridge painted in a bright vermilion  colour thrown over it and artfully placed stones and boulders.  There was even a miniature waterfall.  It looked and felt very Zen.

One aspect of this trip that we didn't enjoy, was the sheer number of people who, like us, left it to the last minute.  As a result, the park was rather crowded, especially as people would stop to take multiple photos so we had to wait for our turn.

In some areas the pass was quite narrow so if you wanted to take a photo, an attendant would ask you to step aside to keep the human traffic flowing.

But even if it was busier then we hoped, we did manage to have a good look around, take some photos and generally had a good time. I even spotted a male peacock in the bushes with its tail shown in its full beauty.

We ended up having our lunch at the Japanese food market where multiple stalls were cooking various Japanese dishes.

Luckily for me, it was quite a heavy overcast day so I didn’t need to wear a hat to protect my nose.  I talked about this in my previous post but in case you missed it, I had to have plastic surgery to remove a cancer spot from my nose and need to be extremely careful, especially during the time of healing, to protect it from the sun.

All and all it was a lovely day and we went home feeling refreshed and recharged.  What is your idea of a good weekend?

Until then,

Anna

xoxoxo