Not too bad, eh? Well, that's only because some of the flowers were not from the botanical garden itself... Oh, and by the way, this was where I went:
I've set the Huntington Library as a benchmark. As a result, I wasn't very impressed with the arrangement of this garden. It was beautiful, no doubt. But Huntington's cacti collection puts Santa Ana's to shame. Their specimens in the desert oasis were healthy, but lacked the grandeur presented in Huntington.
Ah, but what am I saying? I'm being far too critical... This place deserves some credit. I can only blame myself for choosing winter as the season to visit. Everything looked green, if that's any way to describe a garden, and I greatly appreciated the amount of walking I did. Conifer enthusiasts, this is the place for you. I was frankly surprised to find out they had a single coast redwood tree and a couple of giant sequoias. Though... I might be swapping those figures.
Nonetheless, it was the perfect day to be out. For a long time, the weather forecast finally showed "Sunny," with a high of 62. I was content. Definitely one of the better ways to end my winter vacation in LA.
Here are a few more post-worthy pictures I've snapped form the garden:
I'm still waiting for that nymph to pop up anytime now...
My only frustration from this brisk walk was that I couldn't seem to locate the crucifixion thorn, a rare shrub apparently. Then again, it is a shrub, and I'm no expert horticulturalist. How am I supposed to find such a thing when I couldn't even locate myself on the map?
About noon, I began my journey to the neighboring Claremont Village, which is supposed to be somewhat like Omaha's Old Market area. Pretty neat place. I even got a chance to snap this:
The best part about the village was that it had a bookshop. And the best thing about this book shop is that it sells rare and used books at a standard price. $4 on all hardcovers and $2 on paperbacks. Regardless of their condition. In other words, I walked away with these three beauties: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Iliad's The Odyssey.
Now I have all three of these, but the books by Twain were collectibles, and The Odyssey was brand new. In fact, it looked as if someone bought it out of B&N, changed his/her mind about after paying for it, and dropped it off at this bookstore. I got this friggin' thing for only $2. How can anyone say no to that?
The cafe latte wasn't mine, unfortunately.
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