Sicilia - Part I 🌴

Dear reader, one cannot lie. Days in a row with no sunlight are a little bit torturous. If you've heard of white room torture, where they do nothing but stick you in a white room, with a white bed, white table, white chair, white everything, until you lose your pebbles, you'll understand what I'm hinting at.

It isn't graphic, gory, violent or anything, yet it will get to you. Break you.

Sun, please come back for ____'s sake.

You know what they say (by they I mean I), it's sunny somewhere.

In this much anticipated, take me back kind of edition, the sun was in...

🥁

P A L E R M O 🌴🌴

Far down in Italy's Sicilian boot toe, I landed in thunder and lightning 🛬🌩️ It was dark, but just bright enough to see three symmetric giants hovering above city lights just before touchdown. Hills? Mountains? 👁️

Above, admire Palermo's Botanical Garden Orto Botanico entrance - a find of my Google Maps Noob Compass Method which involves walking to the nearest green patch I can see. It doesn't always work, but this time... 😍 It worked.

Tall, tall, taller trees, basketfuls of golden dates threatening to obey gravity, unheard of citrus species, and a beautiful gradient of sea-to-mountain enshrouded in wonderful new shapes and species for me to discover.

It was, of course, all about them as far as my camera was concerned, but all about me - or even us - during an opportunistic photoshoot in Palermo's historical centre. What's certain is this beats my selfies 😅

Usually, I optimise the crop of pictures, but how else could I convey this height I keep mentioning? 😲 In earnest, let's step into the Orto Botanico di Palermo, the star of this edition (more will follow!).

Ancient fig trees are a key feature of this area, as my lovely photographer revealed, with their roots visibly inspecting the ground as the mirror image of the tree crown, and trunk dimensions comfortably encompassing people.

In this climate bracket, cacti are at home, and it was so cool to surround myself with them as the default plant out and about 💖🌵 The garden contains many varieties of trees and plants, and even some surprising animals - really high in the palm trees you could see flitting green parrots, the kind you would only expect in pet shops here, flying about, quite loud, but nowhere near the ground. 🦜

Then, on a lucky sunlit morning, I caught this large community of turtles toasting their reptilian blood on the right side of this lily pond. It was funny to see something very unexpected even as I myself was there to do the same thing 🏖️ (just on a bench!)

Thanks to the previous rain, I got a moody shot of this insane hibiscus flower with pearlescent gradients from within and across. Alien, art, I don't know what to call it. Wow.

The garden was deceptively large, with many separate areas focused on flowers, trees, cacti, citruses, etc. etc. etc.

I visited twice. The first time, I knew nothing about this large, unusual wasp. (Unusual to me - I want to emphasise the subjectivity of much of my perspective; and maybe anyone's perspective)

It flew confidently across the pond, interested in something. That is huge, I thought. Let me get closer...

Cute, right? 😁 It was only later that I got home and looked it up. Oriental hornet. Aggressive. On purpose. For no reason. Has a problem with bees. And things. A wasp jerk if ever there was one, a commenter wrote.

Oops.

On my second visit I saw them again, many of them hovering in the same area. I walked right on.

I will leave you for now with this framed shot from within the bamboo hut pictured earlier, overlooking the classic row of palms vibe that can propel anyone to paradise.

As we say goodbye to Orto Botanico, we will spend a little longer exploring other wonders of Palermo, Sicily 🍋 I can promise lizards and even goats.

Until then, remember that the sun is shining somewhere - literally and figuratively 😉