The autumn colours are starting to show through quite strongly now in Dublin. Earlier this week I went back to the National Botanic Gardens to collect some photographic evidence of this.
Maybe it is because the environment is still a novel one for me, or maybe the somewhat enforced retirement has caused me to slow down a little more, but is was very pleasurable just to wander through the Gardens with nothing on my to do list other than enjoy Nature’s colours. This is not something that I have been accustomed to doing in the past.
The quickest way to the Gardens from our apartment is to walk down Prospect Rd to the John Kavanagh pub, known affectionately to one and all as the Gravedigger’s, mentioned in earlier blogs, I’m sure. Alongside is one of the formal gated entrances to Dublin’s celebration of death, the Glasnevin Cemetery, through which the gravediggers apparently would troop to their local at the end of a hard day’s digging. Through the gate and you skirt the edge of the cemetery until arriving at the National Botanic Gardens.
Reds and oranges predominate although a tangle of flax shows an interesting variety of muted colours – is it too far-fetched to imagine that close-up flax shot framed and on the wall of some trendy abstract art gallery? Yellowing leaves look good at the foot of the large trees while those that have already fallen provide a carpeting of the grass.
At the far side we arrive at the rose garden, well past its best now, with only a few stragglers left, mostly misshapen but still holding their colour very well. Another abstract pattern showed itself when I got close up to the red rose.
I hope you enjoyed the walk as much as I did.
