{"id":5716,"date":"2014-02-27T11:04:30","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T00:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=5716"},"modified":"2018-08-28T08:37:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T22:37:27","slug":"one-trip-every-month-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=5716","title":{"rendered":"One trip EVERY month: February"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month I took a trip without leaving town:\u00a0 my husband and I hopped on our bikes and rode to the National Botanic Gardens.<\/p>\n

I posted about the Gardens not long ago, here<\/a>.\u00a0 But what I didn’t tell you is that it’s a great place to de-stress.\u00a0 Just take a look at the Eastern Water Dragon up in the header.\u00a0 Is he stressed?\u00a0 Nup.\u00a0 He strolled up onto the caf\u00e9 deck from the forest floor to sun himself, not at all afraid of the visitors.\u00a0 The dragons are a thrill for caf\u00e9 customers taking morning tea.\u00a0 But of course you can’t go there for coffee and cake and leave without exploring the unique gardens and forests and the comprehensive collection of native Australian plants.<\/p>\n

Up in the dry gardens, there are tall eucalyptus trees that are a living support system for other life forms like staghorns and climbing hardenbergia and fungus.\u00a0\u00a0How beautiful are the burnt black and rust tones of the flaky bark on that tree I spotted near the bike racks!\u00a0 It’s simply nature imitating art.\u00a0 Down in the rainforest, accessible by timber steps and boardwalks, it’s darker and the atmosphere is noticeably cooler and more humid.\u00a0 I read the sign telling me to ‘breathe’, and instinctively did.\u00a0 The air was fresh and cool and clean.\u00a0 Here, tree ferns and Stream lilies, ‘Helmholtzia glaberrima’, one of the few flowers in these Botanic Gardens, grow in lush gardens beside the stream that flows below the wooden path you’re walking on.\u00a0 Writing about it makes me want to go there right now.<\/p>\n