Winter at the Botanic Garden

Well here we are with our very first article since the move south to Christchurch. One of the many big differences between here and Auckland is the weather. Auckland has a sub-tropical climate whereby the summers never get too hot and the winters never that cold and always plenty of rain. Christchurch in stark contrast is very much an oceanic temperate climate. The summers get much hotter and drier than those of Auckland and the winters can be extremely cold.

Only a fool would rise from their warm bed on a wintery Saturday morning to walk around the botanic garden and this article is a short story of that fool's walk. I wasn't the earliest riser though. This song thrush below was in full swing when I arrived.

And although it was dark, this guy had absolutely no idea where he was going. The blindfold wasn't helping much, mind.

Love it or loathe it, Christchurch is home to some fine English architecture and one can positively say that the central area of the city feels quite English.

The finest of this architecture is around the perimeter of the botanic gardens like this grand old building here. I say old but in truth it's probably no more than 100 years old.

Very little in NZ is that old quite simply because it's such a recently colonised country and only really became populated from Europe from the 1900s.

Just to add a splash of native culture here is a Japanese style waterfall to go with the Victorian architecture!