the girl with leafs in her hair: My Day in Pictures

For my final day of 2012, I have put together a photo blog. Today in pictures:

Sunrise this morning. It was a bit stormy.

Post-morning sweatfest - ending the year right!

This little guy was too cute not to include. I thought his little curls were precious and then he passed out with his mouth open! This is on the lonnggggg but very scenic bus ride to Queen Elizabeth Botanical Gardens.

I have had several favorites on my trip and the Botanical Gardens are absolutely on my favorite list - perhaps my most favorite. I love being outside and seeing beautiful snippets of nature and I often find myself at gardens in various cities as I travel. I kept finding myself with a huge smile on my face and laughing out loud. After two highly emotional days, this was a great way to end 2012.

I thought of my British grandparents throughout the trip to the garden. They love greenery and often send us photos of butterflies on flowers. I have a new camera and the combination of admiring the gorgeous and plentiful butterflies with my new camera's zoom capabilities was really fun for me!

I spent a lot of time in the gardens chatting with the butterflies and telling them how lovely they are.

I can't even imagine. What a blissful life.

The actual tree wasn't anything spectacular to look at but I'd like to know the history of it's name.

Another gorgeous little butterfly!

I chatted with this little guy for awhile. My family used to have a very loving iguana named Bernice so every time I see one I'm reminded of her and want to believe she can hear me. I told this guy what big mus(K)les he has!! I wanted to squeeze them like we did with Bernice.

Beautiful face.

The story of this tree is amazing. See below.

More garden photos

Cat's Whiskers!! I LOVE(d) this plant. I adore cats and anything cat related. I mayyyybe told this plant how wonderful it is.

Sweet little ducks.

Anyone else impressed with this photo? I thought it was really cool and felt artistically satisfied.

See below for the warning sign that comes with this tree.

I forget to do things like charge electronics so around this time in the garden my camera died. I was SO bummed! I attempted to make do with the camera on my phone but it's pretty poor quality.

This itty bitty tree is MEAN! It's actually parasitic to the surrounding roots of neighboring plants. Now THAT is survival of the fittest.

Look between the tree and the leaves and you'll see a head. I stood silently watching this little guy (I was SO bugged about my camera otherwise I could have gotten a good shot) for at least 20 minutes. Then a couple came along, asked what I was watching and it of course ran off. I told them what I had been watching and the man laughed and said I'd been watching an Agouti - basically a large rodent. He seemed to find it humorous and I was annoyed he'd chased off my first mammal encounter of the day.

Agouti sighting # 2. If you look verrrrry closely you'll see the little guy back there.

Apparently they're very shy so it was really special that I got to see two!

Really, they look more like this. Thank you, Google Images.

The aforementioned male pictured above. I thought this was a sweet photo even though I felt a little strange taking a photo of people I don't know.

I took this for my sister, Luisa. She LOVES wisterias and I think this is one?

My journey home was an interesting one. I've become a little impatient with the bus system. At moments I continue to marvel at it but those times I want to be somewhere at a certain time, I'm pretty annoyed. So, today when I was told that a bus would pick me up in 45 minutes and I was a 30 minute drive from the Gardens back to where I'm staying, I decided to be bold and ask a couple of firefighters if they'd take me home. This particular guy in the photo ended up being very creepy, asking me to party with him tonight, to meet him in Miami to party, and to exchange email addresses so we could keep in touch and party around the world (ummmmm??). He didn't get detailed with his definition of party but I was pretty sure I'm not interested. Thankfully he was only giving me a ride in the firetruck for cool factor because I was getting a bit nervous. When it was time to exchange contact information, I told him my name is Roberta and that my email address is roberta001@aol.com. I really hope this isn't anyone's contact information but I was in a pinch.

My new penpal driving away in my first firetruck to ever ride in. I was later told I could brag to my friends that I rode in the most expensive truck on the island. Purportedly it is worth $1.3 million. Who knew?

The ex-fire chief took me the rest of the way home. His name was Roy and much more honorable than his buddy. He told me stories about his wife and 6-year old grandson. Just as Maxine had a fascination with back when mosquitos killed cows, Roy LOVED talking about Christmas lights and his love for them. Sweet man.

And the fireworks show tonight. Right off of my balcony.