Tiny pine cone from my walk at the botanical gardens with puppy on monday afternoon. Just love their 'petalled' look ^^ There were still some as well stuck on the trees that look just like the dried ones, except for the fact that were still ... soft and squishy :P Passed by some toadstools. For some reason or other we started talking about the reason behind their name, and I was saying they could be stools for toads, and then puppy said (what I thought he said at least) yeah, they're toad's stools, where stools meant seats, which was practically the same as what I said. It took me some time before I realised he was talking about stools as in poo -_-"' Lol. Gardens was still pretty with some flowers still out, and saw lots of aloe species in the african themed part of the garden. The cherry tree walk still had it's beautiful grassy green patch in the middle. The cherry trees are looking rather sad, leaves wilting making them looking rather stunted and forlorn. Not very impressive despite the explanatory sign saying that every year the cherry (why do I keep on typing it as cheery?!) trees grow bigger and more impressive... hmm...

Purple lantern flowers from the little plant at the side of the path to my house. Photo might be a little overexposed, since the purpley bits are supposed to be of a richer deeper hue and bright cheery pink for the outer petals, instead of this pale shy looking pink. Love how I managed to get teh background a little blur ^^!

Toadstool, not from the botanical gardens, but one we found along the path while walking back from the signal hill lookout. Went there for the family expedition today, instead of having it on wednesday as planned before (forecast was for rain in the afternoon... so it better rain tomorrow afternoon!). Problem was wormy said she wouldn't arrive until late morning, about eleven. So the planned meet-up at the link was set for half-past. Only that she failed to arrive at that time, no thanks to unplanned for hp calls and meetings by the driver, but at least he sent her straight to the house safe and sound, and she was welcomed warmly by Chyikee. Lol, she arrived just as puppy and I got to the link, so it was a mad dash back to get her.

Thinking innocently that it would take us 40 minutes to get to the signal hill lookout (since puppy's flatmates did it in that time), we set out happily towards the north. Only problem was we didn't factor in the fact that his flatmates were loads fitter than us, and we reached our destination at past two. What was supposedly a 40 minute walk took us two hours I think? Weather was really warm today, which in itself was a good thing, except that after walking for ages, us five girls were certainly starting to wilt. Just as well the thought that we had walked so far already just made us go on. No point abandoning it halfway when we had been through so much... *ahem* torture?? Haha. We did ask for it after all. And so we climbed... up and up and up... and up... and up... some more. Puppy went on ahead to see how much farther it was and probably spent a good deal of time waiting for the rest of us to slowly arrive lol. And this is the view from signal hill. Too bad it was cloudy when I took the picture. Blue skies would make this scene worthy of any gallery... and I was there to see it ^^

The picnic lunch we shared was well worth the pain and sweat though. The food was nice, but the peaceful surroundings, the knowledge that we had 'earned' our lunch, the feeling of togetherness made it all the better. We probably brought along too much food but surprisingly we finished most of it in the end, so it was a whole bunch of bloated kiddies sitting out on the field at the top of signal hill today. Ooh, and we saw a little brown rabbit there too! ... which probably explains the pellets scattered around the field lol! And it was games afterwards. Without our cards, we had to think up games. So it was mafia (no idea what the actual name is, some killing by winking game it was), a number game, and Q's 'pabo' game. It's been a long time we've all laughed ourselves windless I think *grin* Some picture taking afterwards as a group as well... *double grins* And took this picture on the way down (we took the bus back down to town as it was getting late and our feet were really sore). See the cow/ bull at the bottom corner at the left!