Longtime friends will know how much I love gardens. I was so fortunate to live close to the University Botanic Gardens during my medical degree – in fact, I’m not sure I would have gotten through it without them. I think being in a garden is the closest I ever get to being wholly immersed in the present moment, especially if I have a camera with me – it’s the one occasion when I find taking photos actually helps me zone in and focus entirely on whatever it is I have in front of me. And sometimes you just need that complete break from everything else going on in your mind, a rest from all the rumination. Gardens are soothing, hopeful and reliably full of tiny moments of beauty, distraction and joy. I went to the University Botanic Gardens when I didn’t know how I was going to make it through my first term, when I was in the throes of a constantly angst-provoking (largely unhappy but occasionally wildly breathtaking) relationship, and when that relationship ended, when things at home felt as though they were imploding, when I was struggling to get through one day after the next. I went there alone, I went there with any friends who came to visit. During one otherwise terrible summer, I spent a whole wonderful day there with my sister Bel, gradually winding our way around the paths and beds, in and out of the glass greenhouses with their tropical subclimates, stumbling through the rockery, traipsing around the pond, watching small tousled-haired toddlers tumble on the lawn. They were where I chose to go the moment I finished the final exam of my medical degree. They were also the last place I visited before driving to Heathrow on the day of my flight out to Auckland. If you click on the link above, you’ll see a lil album from those years.
Like so many others, our plans for leave were dashed last week when Auckland went back into lockdown. So we stayed local. Four hours of walking outside in the sun, around thirteen kilometres of fresh air. We started up by the Visitor Centre, meandered happily through the Edible Garden, descended down into the Arboretum, picked up the Puhinui Stream Forest Trail, hopped over a style into Tootara park, paused to watch a squabble of brightly coloured parakeets, then climbed through fields of cows up onto the lookout, before dropping back amongst the trees and winding our way home through magnolias, camelias, and daffodils.
Enjoy the photos!
Z <3
Mad to Live 