At the Gardens:
The situation improved dramatically when we arrived at the Royal Botanical Gardens (Sydney). There, a staff horticulturist
named Gareth Hambridge kindly took the time to give us a tour of the glasshouse displays and propagation areas.
I was expecting this to be a 20-minute "Hello-and-off-with-you" kind of tour,
but instead Gareth showed us practically every plant in every room in every glasshouse in the Gardens. It was great!
The Gardens had on display a nice show called "Sex and Death", which focused on insect-plant
interactions--yes, this meant plant carnivory but also included matters of botanical
seduction and deception for pollination purposes. It gave Gareth an excellent excuse for displaying both carnivorous plants and
orchids. Very nice. Gareth had selected some of my photographs for the display, and it was a pleasure to see them
used so nicely.
Our tour lasted several exciting hours. In this photo you can see (left to right) my brother-in-law, myself, Gareth, and Robert
enjoying the conversation about plants. Exciting indeed for us. However, at the lower-right you can see my little niece, who
being somewhat more normal in her interests and tolerance for long conversations about nothing, is clearly bored out of her
skull.
