friday p-day at the batanical garden

For p-day we love to find

a park in Sao Paulo to stroll through. So for my birthday I got to choose.

this botanical garden use to be a private estate.

one of the buildings in the park is a plant museum.

I love the little details on this building.

Vernon/Grandpa enjoys the museums more than most of us because he can read the text that goes along with all the displays.

but I can still enjoy the architecture and the stain glass windows (this was the ceilingin in the entry) without a good command of Portuguese

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these wide open areas are such a refreshing brake to all the freeways, skyscrapers, cars, concrete, and graffiti

Off in the distance are green houses.

Here we are inside one of the green houses.

Even those these gardens are inside, we often see just as lush folage in outside landscaped gardens throughout Sao Paulo.

Many of the gated communities that surround the skyscraper communities here in Sao Paulo look very much like these botanical gardens only on a smaller scale. It is amazing how far away you feel from the city when a wall of natural growth surrounds you.

Wow! I just love all the variety of theses different sizes and shapes of these leaves.

This was one of the hotest days we have had so far in Brazil and inside these green houses it was almost too humid and too hot to stay very long.

There has been so much rain in Sao Paulo that a trail washed out and cover the park with mud. All the water was muddy and these water lilies were covered with mud. There were workers throughout the park that were shoveling out walkways and spraying the plants that were covered with mud.

Some of the walkways were covered with puddles and some of the stair ways looked like water falls from the ground water that was draining off. We have had rain everyday in Sao Paulo for about 45 days straight. Usually the day starts out hot with clear skies then some time between 4 and 6 the skies cloud up and we have a thunder storm. Fortunately it helps things to cool off but the ground has just become so saturated that even some trees are falling over.

These stairs looked like something out of an ancient Mayan ruin. There were two sets of stairs on either side of a large multi circular pond. stairs looked like something out of an ancient Myan ruin.

This day was almost too hot to be out, but it was amazingly cool in the shade. After we got home I think we all felt exhausted from a little heat exhaustion.

The flowers are just breath taking all over Brazil. I never seem to be able to get use to seeing these types of flowers out in the open. Back home they would only be inside, in a green house, or a floral shop.

Blue flowers that looked like orchids were growing as a bush which we had never seen before.

This walkway was covered by tall bamboo. It was like walking through a natural vaulted ceiling as high as you might see in a cathedral.

Originally I wanted to bring a picnic but when we found that there was this delightful out door cafe at the park we decided to have lunch under these gorgeous arbors

We did bring some fruit with us. The Brazilians call it "lashiba". They look like old strawberries, but when you peel them they look and taste like a sweet peeled white grape.

But inside is a huge pit.

It turned out to be a perfectly refreshing day.