Flowers and Plants on a Sunny/Rainy Day in the Botanical Garden.

The weather here it most unpleasant!  For some reason this year, English cloud  and school holiday drizzle have followed me to Germany, and is proving to be an unwelcome partner.  It  tends to be wet and gloomy all day, but in the evening the sun comes out,  (well it would wouldn't it.)  My neighbours cannot barbeque in their gardens, my friends in the corner house can't mow the lawn, and the sunshade remains unopened in our garden.  I took these photos last Sunday morning in the Botanical garden, when the sun shone (not for long) on the hydrangeas and me sitting on my comfortable park bench amid the colour.  Every Sunday it is possible to have a guided tour around part of the garden, and listen to information about the different plants.  These tours are well attended and I sometimes tack on the end of a group, and catch whatever I can in German, which is usually spoken much too quickly for me to understand. 

This day the group was too big to join, (the sun was shining) so I sat and read my book, but was later joined by a young lady with a small baby in a pushchair, who was dressed in a pink checked, Russian looking child's sunhat.  The baby was much more interesting than my book, and so we talked adult and baby talk in German whilst enjoying the limited sunshine.  The multi coloured hydrangeas were beautiful, and the small, Box hedged herb gardens smelt, well herby, on the warm air in the dappled sunlight.   Ahh very poetic!

The mega sized floating leaves of Victoria Amazonica.

The "Victoria Amazonica" waterlily above is about to bloom, a rare occasion that has to be captured quickly on camera.   Nothing was happening on Sunday, although the floating leaves have doubled in size since I saw them a few weeks ago.   A friend promises to email me when the flowers start to bloom, and I will then dash off on the M3 tram to witness the moment.

Carnivorous "Pitcher" plants waiting for an unsuspecting victim.

The photo above shows insect eating Pitcher plants in the carnivorous plant house.   It is not possible to go for a closer look,  I'm not keen anyway,  so the photo is taken through glass, hence its blurriness. There is something very unpleaseant about these plants, especially the Venus Flytrap, which viewed on the other side of the glass showed a collection of dead flies stuck to its fine, sticky filament fingers.   The plants above, have long tubes with open lids, and when some poor, unsuspecting fly pops in for a look around, the lid closes, and it becomes the plant's evening non-vegetarian meal.   Very nice!