China Guizhou Province

In November 2009 I was in China and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit a few places in Beijing and Guizhou Province. Here are some photographs of some of the places.

Unfortunately I did not keep a photo log and cannot give precise details as to the locations of most of the photographs. The photo above is of a statue that was along aone of the footpaths in huge natural reserve / park in Guizhou Province which has a waterfall  among other sights.

This is a view of a Miao Village in Guizhou Province that we visited.

We stopped briefly at a small park which had ducks and peacocks. When I was a child we visited a park that had peacocks in Brussels and everyone made admiring comments about the peacocks because supposedly they are vain creatures and if you tell them how beautiful they are they will start showing off and dsiplaying their tail feathers.
When I mentioned this everyone started doing that and soon enough the peacocks started strutting their stuff.

In one of the Parks we visited we saw a bunch of ducks congregating just under a small waterfall. I used the zoom to try and see what they were up to. They were acting very suspicious we decided they were having a secret conference close to the waterfall to foil any eavesdroppers.
I suppose that in reality they were just feeding on some shrimps or something.

I have no idea who this is supposed to be but I liked the style and the way the sculpture blended in with the surrounding nature.

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Forest & Uccle Communes in Spring PART 3

A group from the Commune of Uccle had a project where they gave free packs of mixed flower seeds to people in the Commune to plant in the various little plots of ground found along the sidewalks.
Most are the spots where trees are planted but there are some which are bigger and are part of traffic islands etc.
They used various seed mixes using native wild flowers. The types you would normally find growing wild in meadows and fields. The idea was to create a natural self generating flowering plots as they selected plants that would self seed. I guess we will see what happens next year. Some plantings were more successful than others.

The main problem for those that did not succeed has been due to some people chucking their rubbish bags on the spot where the seeds were so they got squished which is what happened to my efforts.

Here is a big area that was seeded and also had a mini picket fence and a big sign as well. I think that the big plots on the traffic islands were planted by the Commune (Town Hall).

They had so many different types of meadow flowers whenever I walked past I would slow down just to admire them.

Another thing that you see around in varrious communes here is baskets of flowers hung up on lamp poles. They stay up through Spring and Summer and come down around Autumn / Fall.

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Forest & Uccle Communes in Spring PART 2

 

 

 

 

 

Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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Forest & Uccle Communes in Spring PART 1

I wish I knew what the velvety crimson flowers are. They look stunning with the lavander.

 

 

 

Avenue Des Sept Bonniers with Church Spire at Altitude Cent in the distance.

 

 

 

You can see some of the flowers planted at the foot of the trees along the parking spots. I need to find the photo I took of the trees in bloom. There used to be Cherry Trees but they were all cut down a few years ago due to many having been infected by some disease and they were replaced by some other tree whose flowers were not as spectactular.


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Floria Brussels, Château de Grand Bigard: PART 7

Floria Brussels, Château de Grand Bigard: PART 7

Here are some more photos from the 2012 Floria Brussels at Chateau Grand Bigard in Belgium.

Above three different types of tulips.

Just another example of the amazing range of colours not to mention the brilliant floral combinations that add to the visual experience.

I have to admit I really loved the massive swathes of mixed flowers.

Here is a close up which shows the mix includes daffodils, tulips and grape hyacinths

The grape hyacinths are so amazing

View of the Chateau or Stately Home. Visit my blog The Blood of Souls for a discussion of some interesting translation issues regarding the French word "Château" and "Donjon".

Another mix with grape hyacinths

And yet another combination. This one with blue grape hyacinths, white hyacinths and mauve tulips.

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Floria Brussels, Château de Grand Bigard: PART 6

Floria  Brussels, Château de Grand Bigard: PART 6

Grand Bigard Keep. This is the oldest structure dating from the 12th Century. It is refered to as the Donjon which confused me. I am covering that issue in my blog on language, translation and etymology: The Blood of Souls.

View of the Chateau from path across a part of the moat

Mixed flower beds along banks of the moat

View of covered wooden footbridge

Field of mixed flowers mainly tulips and daffodils

Swathe of mixed flower in foreground with beds of tulips of specific colours in the distance

Mixture of different tulip varieties along banks of the moat

View of the Chateau from the side next to one of the footbridges

Assorted tulips

Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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