Choc-Box Time in the Gardens of the West

It makes me feel very lucky, to be able to spend my lunch hour exploring scenes like these, though I do usually end up tracking mud onto my office carpet. I usually have the entire university botanic garden to myself for 40 minutes.

These were taken yesterday. I can't resist those Autumn colours and sunshine.




And why not? I can only hope they give you the same kind of lift they give me.

This reminds me of a story which illustrates my idiotic tendency. A few years ago, I was asked to provide an image for the University's official Christmas card (no, really). The image that leaped to mind was a great shot from the Botanic Garden of some dead Gunnera manicata (those immense spiny rhubarb-leaved things) in the snow -- beautiful browns and decaying greens and yellows, sprinkled with snow, drooping like thorny prehistoric wings over a sinister black stream. But this was not the sort of thing the PR people had in mind, it seemed. In the end, they used another, rather boring shot I'd taken in the Botanic Garden of some apples covered with snow. They haven't asked me again.