A low sun.....

I just bought a new camera  ( Lumix FZ 200) and I had to try it out. The sky was looking almost blue and the sun was shining low on the horizon. Walking in the polder, finally I saw these small greenhouses on some allotments. They looked enchanted by the light.

And this is what modern , professional, high tech, greenhouses look like...

No romantic rubbish around. Sharp lines, but it has a certain charm of its own.

It smells like autumn……

Fresh, blue sky and almost no wind.  It smells like autumn: Herbs, rotting leaves and mushrooms. The weather is crisp (and crunchy too - like “Dennis the Menace” once said). 

After walking around a bit I decide to go to the Arboretum in the Delftse Hout. It is a like a small sheltered valley divided into differend habitats. (I just hear on a BBC gardening program that an Arboretum is the place to go in autumn!!)

Orange and yellow leaves float on the water. Most leaves are still on the trees. The reeds are dying off.

On my way to the Botanical Garden of the Technical University in Delft it is obvious that winter is coming. Dead leaves gather in quiet corners against a wall.

The fallen berries (very poisonous) of the Taxus Baccata are alarmingly RED. 

The first thing that catches my eye in the Botanical garden is a sign calling attention to the fact that Delft University is working on alternative ways to get Taxol from the needles of the Taxus tree. According to the text Taxol is the most expensive drug in the world in the fight against cancer.

The Botanic garden is hidden behind some old university buildings. It is hard to imagine that the entrance on a busy street corner gives way to an unexpected green oasis in the city of Delft.

 

 

Although the greenhouse is not as grand as the one in Leiden it is worth visiting. It contains tropical and subtropical plants. In some places you see additional educational information.

But the best part are the mini quails. I was warned that I had to be carefull not to release them from the greenhouse. At first I thought they were all gone. I didn’t notice them. But then there was this soft squeaky sound in the “bush”. Surprise; they are really mini. A few extremely well camouflaged chicks were walking almost under my feet. Keeping in mind that they are completely deaf……. 

An old polder landscape….

We had to get up early for our annual outing…..  

For me, going on a bus trip still has the enchantment it had when we went on our school trips. Excitement, the need to sing, the smell of fresh sandwiches;  longing to eat them straight away.

Where would we go today?  We were guessing for a long time. Is it the code of all school trips and company outings that you only know what to wear, but not where you are going?

Off course it was important where you were going, but somehow I best liked the bus trip itself. I love looking out of the windows to the passing world. Watching the landscape flow by from high up; at least much higher up that from a normal car. Watching people in cities wrestling through the traffic or going about their business in any other way.

This morning, a long time ago,  there was a little haze on the meadows. Just enough to make the landscape a bit distant, quiet and unreal. The pictures were taken through the coloured windscreens of the bus. So the tone is a bit artificial. And don’t ask me why some are more orange and others are more blue.

The old and new windmills, the greenhouses, the birds, the cows in meadows. A typical Dutch polder landscape. The cool air, the sun is low. It is almost autumn……