FLOWERS EVERYWHERE!

The Auckland Botanical Garden in full Spring bloom

October is said to have been the coldest October here in twenty-five years! We've been wondering if Spring would ever truly come to stay. Finally, the weather is becoming a little more predictable, so we're trying to get out every weekend again. We've either been kept in by bad weather, or worked so many Saturdays, that we're anxious not to waste a minute of our free time here. There's just so much to do, so many beautiful places to go, and all within an hour or so drive! We were to the Auckland Botanical Gardens in the middle of winter and wanted to come back once the weather was better, so made another trip just recently. The gardens are in full bloom, as you can see above. Shrubs and trees as well, below.

Both of these flowering shrubs are rhododendrons, but one has obviously been around longer! Look at the size of it, and it's covered in blooms.

A beautiful flowering cherry tree in full, fluffy bloom

A tall stalk of lavender bells

This is a close up of a fern uncurling. It's an image seen all over New Zealand, a symbol of "New Zealandness." It represents peace, tranquility, personal growth, positive change, awakening.

And we came upon this little guy, who wasn't afraid to let us up close at all. We'd never seen anything like this and didn't know what it was. It's about the size of a football, covered in spiny things, and was so hunched over, it looked like it was going to do a forward somersault. It's nose was stuck in the ground. When we could finally get him to look up and move, we could see he had a long snout. A passer-by told us he was a hedgehog! He's the first animal we've seen in the wild in the whole time we've been here. The funny part of this is that just a week or so later, early one morning before the sun was up, we were out walking and heard a sound in the parking lot like a paper cup being tossed around by the wind. Except that there was no wind. We followed the sound until we could see (barely) that it was an animal and a cup. Here was a little hedgehog who had stuck his snout into a Slurpee cup domed lid and gotten his face stuck in the lid and couldn't get it out. He was frantically running all over knocking the cup on the ground, trying to get loose. John finally caught up with him and got ahold of the cup and pulled it off his face. Poor little guy!