Flarz.

So right now my camera battery has thrown up its little lithium hands and said "no more!", making the taking of further photos impossible. I got a lot done before this happened, though, so we'll have something to occupy ourselves.

On Easter Sunday I went to Kew Gardens, where I had heard tell there was to be an easter egg hunt. The "hunt" part was sadly underwhelming, and rather than searching for little foil wrappers in the flower beds I was walking sheepishly up to people dressed as giant venus fly traps, bumble bees and SOMETHING black and white, asking for my little token which, when I gathered three, were presented amongst the little persons to the Easter Bunny, and there I claimed my chocolate egg. These are the photos I took on my search for tokens:

An extraordinarily pretty gazebo.

Here's a girl playing in a puddle. I have called it: "Girl in puddle":

In fact, it's difficult to photograph kids without their parents getting antsy, but they're the only size of people doing interesting things. At any rate, I'm pretty proud of this shot:

A rare moment of sun on some lovely pink blossoms:

And in case you are tiring of flowers, here's a peacock doing what it does best. Showing off to the rest of the animal kingdom:

(I should admit at this point that after I took its photo I chased the bird around for a bit, trying to get a feather. Turns out they're pretty attached to them. And not very nice.)

The rest of the garden was really nice, and I especially liked the bluebells, or at least the blue-coloured flowers. Of which here is a picture:

I think they're star flowers, actually...aha, here are some bluebells:

I got quite obsessed with these flowers, the hunt for which took me to the far end of the park to the alleged "badger sett" which, I am sorry to report, contained no badgers, only small children running around a giant dirt burrow. Sigh. Still, I bought a teeny souvenir badger at the gift shop to console myself.

At the back of Kew is Queen Charlotte's cottage, which was used purely and entirely as a picnic house. There are two rooms: one to display art, another for the "picnic" (is it still a picnic if it's inside?). And here I've been all my life using a rug like a sucker. The house itself was nice enough, but the bluebells I was promised were noticably absent. Displeased. Observe on the right: no bluebells! But in its stead a really gorgeous little wood. A "prettyish little wilderness" if you will.

On through the park, and encountering a number of strange objects, including the worlds most enormous banksia pod (you should've seen the tree):

A slumbering statue:

And, for some unknown reason, a Chinese pagoda:

Around this point I went a little crazy with my macro settings.

There's more, of course (oho! there's MORE) but I'll leave you with this last shot, taken at one of the gardens I passed on my way back to the train station.