London, March 2004 (page 2 of 8)
Gardens
For a city that spends most of the year under a grey curtain, London has some truly lovely gardens. We hit two of them.
On the day we arrived, we knocked off one of Edie’s must-see London sights: the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. Edie’s always been a huge J.M. Barrie fan, so that was at the top of the literary landmarks. I was amazed at how different Kensington Gardens was compared to parks in New York. First of all, apart from Central Park, the parks in New York are tiny. Kensington is huge. Huge, spacious, and flat. The planted lines of trees and wide open spaces of Kensington Gardens make the planned faux-nature of
Central Park feel even more faux. Despite the relative sparseness of foliage, being in Kensington Park did feel like being out of the city proper. Perhaps it was the lack of tall buildings surrounding the park that gave it a sense of isolation; whatever it was it’s certainly a pleasant place to get away from the city.
The statue itself was about what you would expect. It’s a tall statue with Pan at the top; children and animals are at the base listening to him playing a pipe. Plenty of children were running around the statue. There was a particularly cute little Scottish boy who gave his parents a good workout. His mother was trying to get him to name the animals at the base. “Look, Andrew, a squiddel!” Growing up in the south, I used to add syllables to words like “stair”. Maybe that’s why I like Scotland so much; they’re also unafraid of expanding words.
Our second day looked to be brilliant and sunny when we awoke. The day, however, followed the same pattern as all of our other days in London: Partly cloudy by the time we showered and ate, and fully overcast by the time we reached our destination. Nevertheless, we decided to head out to Kew Gardens. Kew Gardens is about twenty minutes from central London by subway, and it makes Kensington look like a corner park in New York. It is
impossible to describe the variety of plant life that we saw. Befitting the start of spring, there were fields of blooming daffodils. The greenhouses had plants from around the world. My personal favorite was a blooming cocoa tree. I’d never seen real cocoa pods; they’re yellow and about the size of an American football.
Kew Gardens provided a few notable moments apart from the plants. It was the first place where Edie and I realized the amount of magical symbolism that pervades London. There were statues of unicorns, griffins, and all sorts of fanciful creatures. After we saw the relatively large statues at Kew Gardens, Edie started to notice unicorns all over the city.
Kew Gardens was also the place where I came closest to death. No, there was no bomb threat or terrorist scare. There were, however, the meanest geese I have ever seen in my life. After walking through some of the gardens, Edie and I decided to sit down on a bench beside a stream. There was an island in the middle of the stream, and lots of ducks and geese generally enjoying the spring. All of a sudden we hear what can only be described as a scream. One goose is chasing another in the stream around
the island, nipping at the tailfeathers and generally causing a ruckus. The chasee runs ashore a few feet from where we’re sitting and, like any intelligent animal, runs away. The agitated goose gets out of the stream, sticks its tongue out (and let me tell you, geese have long tongues! It was longer than the beak, and no, I don’t know how that’s possible, only that it is and it is terrifying), and continues to holler at the other goose. This is one angry goose. Edie and I stand up slowly trying not to attract the crazy goose’s attention, and we turn our own tails and flee.