Let It Snow

This stretch of the garden is my FAVORITE place in the autumn. The ginkgo trees create an arc of gold. I wish the picture here did it justice, but I guess that's what you get when you ask random garden visitors to take your picture. It's magical to walk through.

Autumn is a funny thing in our neck of the woods. Living in the Botanical Garden, you'd think that we would have beautiful fall colors every year. The problem is that Beijing is also windy. So, as soon as the winds hit, any leaves that were thinking about turning golden are blown away. A lot of times it just ends up being green leaves and leafless branches without much in between. This year was gloriously different. This year we had beautiful leaves that lasted a while. And then, to boot, we had a snowstorm that showcased the leaf colors. It was a wonderful way to end the season. We took the camera out the day after the snowstorm and took these pictures.

This is one of our favorite places in all of the garden. In the Spring, we come to see the buds and have picnic lunches overlooking the pond. In the summer, we look at the bats flying around the pond and look at frogs and scoop up tadpoles. People do tai ji here in the morning. It's peaceful.

Windows

This pond has great windows. One aspect of Chinese gardens is that no matter where you are, you are supposed to be greeted with a new view. Each spot in the garden should be unique. It makes it interesting to walk through the garden and see all the different perspectives.

I first heard about this and thought, "Nah. Couldn't work." A few days later we were walking around the garden and I looked in these windows. They're just a few feet apart from each other and from far away they just look decorative. But, when you look inside, you see how they frame their surroundings in back. Each window and background looks completely different.

These two are a bit overgrown, but when they're trimmed up, it's beautiful.

This is before the snowball fight started.

What an amazing end to Autumn.