Spring on the Mountain

Spring is in the air! So many places are inviting garden lovers to visit them with special spring festivals or Open Gardens. Last week it was Toowoomba that was the subject for my camera (video) and this weekend it was a place much closer to home, Mount Tamborine. This time around I used the Nikon D70s and had a great time in the perfect sunlight capturing both wide angle shots of scenes as well as close up shots with wonderful bokeh (wonderful broken shapes in the background caused by the shallow depth of field) such as in my first photograph of cherry blossom.
The first garden I visited was actually the Botanic Gardens and the weekend was a fund-raiser for this new and developing garden. What has been done already is wonderful and it is a pleasure to wander around with a camera.
One part of the garden is devoted to palms and the light and shade created by the palms gives a wonderful atmosphere of being in a jungle. A raised boardwalk keeps the tramp of many feet off the soil so that water courses are not formed when there is a rainfall and also so that the roots of the trees are not damaged. There are companion organisms in the soil around the trees that could be destroyed with the weight of walking feet and raised walkways are very much a feature of some sensitive parts of National Parks too.
Yet another part of the Botanic Garden is devoted to the Japanese style of garden along with raked gravel and arched bridge with red uprights. Comparing this with the Japanese Garden in Toowoomba and the Japanese Garden in Cowra would not be very fair, this one gives the impression of being very new and not really very Japanese. But I would guess that things will change over the years and it will grow to be an impressive area.
More on the other gardens in another posting.
AJ