Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

We’ve had a pretty relaxing time lately. The other weekend we drove to Kirstenbosch, a botanical garden located on the mountainside in the suburbs near us. It’s actually a pretty big area, and we spent a good 3 hours just wandering around looking at all of the plants. The plants around here are really quite the spectacle, at least to those of us foreigners who have truly never seen anything like them before. In fact, this region has its own floral kingdom, one of the six unique floral kingdoms in the world (so says Wikipedia). And according to another website: “The smallest of the six floral kingdoms, the Cape Floral Kingdom is a global biodiversity asset of great importance. It is home to more types of indigenous plants than any other similar sized area on Earth. At least 70% of the 9,600 plant species of the Cape Floral Kingdom are found nowhere else on Earth.” Anyway, Kirstenbosch has a nice feel to it because you can sort of wander around as you please or just pitch a blanket on the grass and enjoy your own picnic, as opposed to being one of those garden areas where you’re not allowed to touch anything/walk anywhere. I’m already excited for the summer concert series held in the gardens every Sunday night.

And once again I crossed another huge mental barrier by not only driving us to Kirstenbosch and back, but also dropping Julia off downtown afterwards. Of course the only reason I drove downtown was because no one else drives on Sundays, but oh well. Aside from a few screeching tires and the incident when I stalled approximately 5 times in a row trying to start on a hill before realizing the car was in 3rd not 1st, I would say it went ok. If only it weren’t for the ubiquitous hills!

Of course I took a million photos of weird plants…