#sunken gardens

[boneszphoto]

spring will be here so soon 💕

[rosesandmoonstones]

Lovely day at Kensington Palace 4th June 2022. Highlight was seeing the Cambridges helicopter arriving to take them to Wales.

Spot the helicopter

[travelingmaverick]

🌼 My photography of a sunken garden.

[cabg]

—sunken gardens—

[footloose-travel]

Sunken Gardens Lincoln, Nebraska

[oceaniatropics]

Mount Gambier: the city of cenotes, South Australia

[creaturesfromelsewhere]

Secret Garden

February is springtime in La Florida.  Might be hard to imagine for folks still frozen in those more northerly of places, but by mid-February, Winter has released its weak and arthritic grip on our peninsula of sand and ship wrecks and the flowers are back in bloom. In my particular neck of the woods, the former owner planted a perfusion of pink flowering shrubs.  I’m more keen to the screening aspects of these fine plants than I am to their flowers, but to each their own.   Their dense foliage does a fine job of screening my secret garden from prying eyes.

Goths love our secret gardens.  Whether on a balcony or in a back yard, we enjoy our private garden space where we can relax and let the flora screen us from unwelcome eyes and shade us from the blistering sun.

Now, there’s nothing about a secret garden that is especially Florida, except for the early time of year when one can enjoy it.  Back when I lived in Minnesota, my balcony secret garden was useful for about three days in August between the Spring and Autumn blizzards, and when I lived in LA my balcony garden was only nice whenever the smoke from the wildfires cleared on those two days in June, but I have to say - my Florida secret garden is amazing year round.

A short, leaf littered trail through a sea of ferns leads one beneath a new iron trellis (replacing the 40 year old rotting wooden one left by the previous gladewarden) to a cast aluminum bistro nestled among the ferns where one may read or lunch in nature’s embrace.    A perfusion of Spanish moss filters the sunlight. 

For night time relaxation, a single candle and solar lantern softly illuminate the glade.  Good conversation and crickets provide the soundtrack.  What more could one possibly need within a secret garden?

If you’re visiting the Tampa Bay area and you want to experience a truely magnificent secret garden, you need to visit the Sunken Gardens at 1825 4th St. N. St. Petersburg.  This is an old school, densely planted kind of arboretum - plenty of shade from the evil sun and the parking is good, too.  Unlike modern arboretums, the plants at Sunken Gardens are packed together like a jungle.  I’ve brought several dates here and they’re always stunned by the natural beauty.  And I have to say, seeing a lovely goth goddess drifting through this garden is a rare treat not many are privileged to behold.  Honestly, I don’t know why they stopped arranging arboretums in this fashion, but this is the way they should be.  One of the best kept secret gardens in the world.

As for my own secret garden, I’ve not shared it with many.  Only a privileged few will ever set foot within my hidden glade, and that’s as it should be.  The darkly inclined treasure those places that enfold us, embrace us, and shadow us away.  And above all else, we strive to keep them hidden.

I make sure there are plenty of seeds for the birds and fresh water for all the critters within my secret garden.  At least one black snake and one black vulture have visited in addition to several resident squirrels and countless song birds.  A red tailed hawk stops by in the day, always watchful for any squirrel that becomes complacent.  After dark the bats flutter about and hawk moths visit the night-blooming flowers.  The bats dive-bomb the bird bath and skim the water to slake their thirst by moonlight.  Unseen things are heard scurrying about within the ferns under cover of darkness.  Sometimes, the morning reveals the mangled corpses of small creatures that were not quick enough to survive the night.  The black vultures take care of the remains.  Whatever kills by the light of the moon remains unseen, which is as it should be. 

It is a secret garden, after all.

CreaturesFromElsewhere 2/27/2021

[haleyamelia]

Santa Barbara, Feb 2019.