In the Land of Cotton

I went to the East Georgia Botanical Garden in Savannah, Georgia on the trip down to Florida.  I was startled by a crop in the vegetable garden.  Clearly it was cotton.  I'd never seen a cotton plant.  My picture has captured cotton that has been left on the plant over the winter, so we don't see the fluffy cellulose at its best.  It remains a major crop world-wide.  I can't think of any crop here in Niagara that has such a pretty winter show.  For me, it is pussy willows in the spring that give this sense of delicate fluffiness.   Our next picture is one that we associate with Florida.  It is a cypress tree reflecting in the water - a wonderful natural landscape within the botanical garden.  We can grow cypress here in Niagara and many parts of warmer Ontario.  Like the Dawn Redwood, it is a striking structure in the landscape - vertical, fanning out towards the bottom. No garden is complete without a reference to the human element of structures and buildings. The warm colour of the wall gives us a sense of the backdrop we can expect in tropical gardens. Our northern backdrops are most often grey, blue, white, red brick, taupe stucco - all quiet colours in the winter that blend in with a white winter setting.