Another Great Exhibition Connection...

In the tropical pond at the Edinburgh Botanics Glasshouses, the water lilies are in bloom.The huge leaves belong to the Victoria Water Lily, which is a native of the Amazon.Smaller lilies nestle in amongst the giants.I reminded my boys that the Victorian botanists who first introduced these to Britian used to sit babies on the giant leaves, to show how magnficently strong each leaf was.When I searched for the Victorian-baby-on-leaf photo on Google, I found instead this picture of Joseph Paxton's nine year old daughter Annie standing on one of the leaves! I wonder if she could swim. Joseph Paxton was the gifted gardener-turned-architect who designed the beautiful and innovative Crystal Palace, based on the incredible structure of his giant water lily leaves! The Crystal Palace was the venue for the 1851 Great Exhibition, so I found myself coming full circle back to yesterday's beautiful telescopic picture.A bit of Googling showed me that the child-on-leaf idea, which appealed greatly to Son 2, is still in use for botanic garden publicity around the world.

This leaf seems to be propped, which is probably all for the better.My own boys had no chance of going on the leaves, but Son 2 did his best to get into nature by skidding magnificently in a rare muddy patch within two minutes of entering the gardens. He was chasing pigeons, of course.We mopped him up as best we could in the Ladies'.

Yesterday evening we met up with Ben's brother and his wife for a meal and a late night trip to the cinema. It was a great chance for the boys to meet up with their uncle and aunt, whom they don't see very often. We all had a great time, and are having a quiet day now to recover from a very late night!